You do home inspections to make sure that you understand what you’re buying. Your real estate agent cannot pick your inspector for you. It’s your responsibility to choose the inspector that you want to hire to inspect the home you’re buying.
Four-point Inspections
Your real estate agent should be able to give you some recommendations for companies that their other clients have used in the past and have been very happy with. Make sure that if the home is over 30 years old in the state of Florida, you get a four-point inspection, and that is for the major plumbing, electrical, roofing, and HVAC systems. The insurance companies will require this in order to quote the policy.
Availability
I always call my home inspectors prior to giving out their names. And I ask them, hey, how many days out are you scheduling right now? That way I can only pass along the information for those companies I trust, which are scheduling within the time frame that we need them to do. There’s nothing worse than having a recommendation and you start calling around and nobody’s available. You can get frustrated. So I take that frustration away from my buyers.
Home Inspections vs. Appraisals
The inspection is different than an appraisal, which is when the bank hires a certified appraiser to go through the house and make sure that it’s worth the money that they’re loaning for. A home inspection takes about 2 to 3 hours for a normal-sized home. And it depends on how many home inspectors there are. You should generally get the report back that night or at the very latest the next morning.
If you’re looking for home inspectors, I recommend that you reach out to my top three go-to home inspectors as they have always been there for my clients and have gone above and beyond:
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