Adventures in Home Buying
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Adventures in Home Buying
Every Home Buyer Needs an Inspection (Even for New Builds)
Would you spend $289,000 on a house only to discover it needs $323,000 in repairs? That's exactly what happened to one family whose child became seriously ill after moving into their seemingly beautiful "flipped" home. Their nightmare scenario perfectly illustrates why home inspections are non-negotiable in the buying process.
Laura and Jim tackle one of the most critical yet overlooked aspects of home buying – professional inspections. They emphatically debunk the dangerous myth that new construction doesn't require inspection, sharing shocking examples of brand-new homes with faulty electrical systems that could cause electrocution and widespread mold issues that can lead to serious health problems. From foundation issues cleverly hidden behind multiple layers of drywall to termite-infested floor joists that builders simply covered up rather than treated, the hosts reveal how easily cosmetic renovations can disguise serious structural and health hazards.
The episode provides practical advice for finding trustworthy home inspectors who will thoroughly evaluate your potential investment. Rather than automatically accepting your agent's recommendations, the hosts suggest researching inspectors independently and even using an agent's inspector list as a screening tool to evaluate the agent themselves. They explain why comprehensive inspection companies that offer additional services like mold testing, radon evaluation, and specialized inspections provide superior protection during the home buying process.
Ready to protect your investment and your family's health? Listen now to learn how proper inspections can save you from purchasing a money pit disguised as your dream home. Then visit homeinspectionsinohio.com to schedule your professional home inspection with experts who prioritize your interests above all else.
Hey everybody, welcome to Adventures in Home Buying, so Laura.
Speaker 2:Jim.
Speaker 1:We went through finding how much you can afford make sure you can afford something Right Finding a real estate agent by pretty much asking friends, family and a home inspector who they would recommend using. Third thing is this is going to come up should you get the home inspected.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes is the only answer that's acceptable, because we have seen horrible flips. We've seen horrible new builds.
Speaker 2:We've seen moldy new builds.
Speaker 1:We've seen moldy new builds, yes, so you definitely should get a home inspection. Do not waive that at all.
Speaker 2:And if you get an agent that says no, you have to waive the home inspection. Sign this get a new agent, because you need to protect yourself and your investment. There is actually a lawsuit going on right now in Alliance Ohio where a couple with a kid and a dog bought a house $289,000. It was a flipped house that had sat unlived in for 10 years and was actually condemned before it was purchased at an auction, and the-.
Speaker 1:Probably got. You would think they got a good deal on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the agent that bought it owned her own flipping company. The flipping company came in and flipped it. It looked all nice and pretty. You know, the lipstick on a pig statement that held true in this family moves in and their kid starts to get sick, like really sick. So they end up then deciding to get a home inspection and they find all these issues that, according to them, are going to cost $323,000 to fix. That includes foundation issues, mold issues and all kinds of other stuff, apparently Wow.
Speaker 1:So If they had a home inspection.
Speaker 2:They would have caught the foundation issues.
Speaker 1:Foundation issues should have been caught, unless they.
Speaker 2:Covered that up with.
Speaker 1:I've seen basements where they put a finished wall on the foundation walls and interior.
Speaker 2:To cover it.
Speaker 1:I assumed to cover the foundation because it's a new wall and I could still see the foundation. In fact, there's one house. I inspected it twice Okay, first time there's one house. I inspected it twice Okay, first time unfinished basement foundation issues. Second time inspected it still foundation issues, but it was a finished basement now.
Speaker 2:I'm like oh, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:Look at the window here, I can still see there's an issue back behind here. So hopefully they said, no, we need to have that wall opened up to have the repair done. So, finding a home inspector, you always need to get the home inspected, but even if it's a new build, here's something that's not. It's a myth. A new build does not need to be inspected.
Speaker 1:That is very incorrect. We had a house the other day and this is the GFCI. It's an electrical protection device. It's those outlets you see in the kitchen and bathroom countertops. You get the reset Test and reset button. Yes, so what it does? It's somewhere to get wet. It shuts off the power really quick so you don't get electrocuted, you don't get shocked. We had one brand new build. You push the test button. It stayed powered for like a second, easily a second. It stayed powered Well, the whole time. You're getting shocked that entire time. Typically, when you hit the test button, it shuts off the power in milliseconds.
Speaker 2:Immediately almost.
Speaker 1:So that is a safety issue and then so there's some debate how long it should take, but generally they need to trip instantly. Even if it's, say, the standard which the city said it can take up to five seconds to trip, that if I was a home buyer that's unacceptable to me because I don't want my kid getting shocked for five seconds five full seconds before your little safety thing trips, something's wrong with it because it's not tripping as fast as all the others that we come across.
Speaker 1:so if something's wrong with that, it may mean it may mean code which is really code is just the lowest quality allowed by law. It's not as safe as it should be, but you should always find a home inspector to inspect your house.
Speaker 2:And don't necessarily go with just your agent's recommendation. Do your own research. What kind of like the inspector that they've recommended? What kind of reviews do they have? Is this somebody that you want doing your inspection? If you think about the fact that you're living in this house, this is the largest purchase of your life. Do you want somebody that's got bad reviews or do you want someone that's been in business for a long time and has a reputation for being thorough and for having good integrity and dealing with clients and agents and in the real estate industry in general?
Speaker 1:Yep, and this is sad to say, do not expect your agent to have only the best, most you know, highest integrity real estate. I mean inspectors on their list, cause we do know that we are not on some agents list Because and they tell us because we find things that they don't think we should, I'm sorry. The things we find are things that the client, the home buyer, wants to know.
Speaker 2:Well, until it's their kid that wants that's buying a place, and then we do their inspection.
Speaker 1:Correct. Yeah, some agent will not have this on the list, will not use this for years and years and years. As soon as their kid buys a house, bam, for some reason we're doing their inspection. I wonder how that works, such a double standard. So always have your house inspected, even all right here. I had I inspect the house two, three weeks ago. It was completely gutted where they tore down everything in the interior walls, take all the drywall, fix the the foundation, while the floor joists I should say some of those had termite damage. They got rid of those, put new joists in there or they sistered them. It was a builder, all right, you should be pretty good Builders. That's better than just a renovation company. Perhaps is the general assumption. No, there were some issues in the house. They were live termites on the joists, so they repaired the damaged joists or replaced them. They didn't treat live termites on the joists, so they repaired the damaged joists or replaced them.
Speaker 1:They didn't treat the termites but they never treated for the termites, did he?
Speaker 2:even know what they were, though Like did he even realize that that was damage from termites? Because, as a builder, he may not, which, once again, why you need a home inspection.
Speaker 1:If you're a builder and you don't know what termites are, I'm like, all right, maybe not, but if you're in the field for any length of time, you're going to see what termites look like.
Speaker 2:Not for a new build.
Speaker 1:What? All right, this is an older house. That's my point, yeah.
Speaker 2:If you're a builder, you're just doing new construction Sure.
Speaker 1:And you won't see termites builder, you're just doing new construction and you won't see termites, I guess, I guess. So yeah, but how easy is it now to take your phone, take a picture of bug and go hey, google, what, what the heck is this bug? And they go oh, that's a subterranean eastern termite. Like it's easy there's no excuse. There's really no excuse not to know things anymore google does make it very easy it does make it very easy.
Speaker 1:And then you got it very easy and then you got Grok. You can send pictures on there and I can answer things. I think ChatGPT it will answer it does stuff too. Yeah, there's no excuse not to know. Maybe you don't know everything, and nobody knows everything. You can't know everything immediately, but you can be like all right, let me look this up. Oh, ok.
Speaker 2:Google. Google has like a snapshot thing where they can look at pictures now too. Very similar.
Speaker 1:But you need to have your home inspected. We've seen houses that have been flipped, like Laura said.
Speaker 2:Lipstick on a pig.
Speaker 1:Lipstick on a pig where there's no substantive repairs. It's just making it look pretty. I see a basement that had four layers of interior wall material because they just kept covering up the old stuff. Oh my God, everything was yeah, it was bad. The foundation had issues.
Speaker 2:Probably mold behind one of those layers at least, which would come out and make people sick.
Speaker 1:Mold. This has been a very wet, hot humid year Disgustingly hot year. There is a well, we did an inspection for these people buying a brand new house. They put their deposit money down.
Speaker 2:Have not lived in it yet.
Speaker 1:No, that's not even done. Being built, it wasn't even built.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't even finished.
Speaker 1:They're still finishing up the drywall. We come out and do Because she saw some growth and we went there and I'm like, yeah, this definitely looks like some mold. The builder had their preferred company do a mold remediation to it Three times, three times, and it still came back positive. We tested after the third time, right, and we tested after the second. We tested after the second time.
Speaker 2:And they went and remediated and then they tested the third time.
Speaker 1:And what did the results show?
Speaker 2:Oh, of course, everything was fine.
Speaker 1:Everything was fine. Well, maybe they got it, but they did two other times and no.
Speaker 2:Nothing.
Speaker 1:In fact the mold, the spores were floating upstairs beyond the basement. So anyway that client. They decided like, well, maybe we won't buy this house, let's look at the other houses in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2:And they were just as bad.
Speaker 1:They all had mold going on in the basement. And then here's another way you can use a home inspection that protects you that way. All right, environmental issues, but I did an inspection the other day, a pre-drywall inspection. The client had not signed a contract with the builder to buy the house Right, and the builder's sales rep was really trying to pressure him Like no, no, no, go ahead and sign the paper here.
Speaker 2:Why would you want an inspection if you're not buying the house? Just go ahead and sign.
Speaker 1:Yeah, save your $300 for the inspection Just go ahead and sign, just go ahead and sign Just get the house. She's like no, so I did the inspection. There's mold growing down there and her and her husband. They're sensitive to mold.
Speaker 2:They have some genetic thing that makes them not able to flush mold out of their system. Correct, correct, and there's a certain percentage of people that have that automatically. I think it's becoming more common where people are sensitized or they get sick from mold or they get sick from chemicals, and there's just a lot of people that have sensitivities. They get sick from chemicals and there's just a lot of people that have sensitivities and you need to be careful even with new builds because they are. Almost everyone we've seen lately has mold issues.
Speaker 1:We'll do an episode strictly on new builds. Okay, we'll do one of those, because that's a choice if you want, if you're gonna buy a house, and I recommend you do- don't sign off that you're not getting an inspection for a new build.
Speaker 1:Do you have a new build or do you buy an existing home? There's pros and cons either way, but yeah. So this buyer, who was not in contract on this new build, had me come out and do an inspection. She was concerned about moisture levels in the basement, on the wood, and I tested things. There was a little bit of moisture in the basement, which is common for new builds.
Speaker 3:so I don't say like this is normal.
Speaker 1:This is nothing unusual, however you found some I did find mold growth on the on the stairs and that's been a common area.
Speaker 2:Surprisingly, almost all of the houses that we have found that are new builds have mold on the stairs which, yeah, so builders, and I don't know why you're not pre-treating against mold growth or covering stuff up hard to do, in fact.
Speaker 1:Builder, if you want to contact I mean there's, there's companies, I mean environmental consultants could of ohio probably could take a fogger and pre-treat your wood as soon as you put it in there. Treat it to help prevent mold growth.
Speaker 2:And that you could charge extra for that and people would pay. Just saying.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, they would.
Speaker 2:Especially what we've seen nowadays. People would pay extra for you to pre-treat lumber to prevent mold growth.
Speaker 1:And you can subcontract that out, yep. So just a thought, so anyway you should always have it inspected and you need to find an inspector so you can look at your agent's list. If you always want to have an agent, go through their list and then look up. Do the Google reviews or any reviews really see what kind of stuff you can find?
Speaker 2:We've had a lot of clients call us lately that have gone with us and not who was on their agent's list. Oh, have we and not wanted their agent to get the report.
Speaker 1:Yeah, see.
Speaker 2:And that makes me wonder what's going on.
Speaker 1:That tells me they regret picking their agent.
Speaker 2:They don't trust the agent enough and they can't get out of the contract just yet.
Speaker 1:Yes so. Well and lipstick on a pig.
Speaker 2:There was a recently renovated house that you looked at a couple years ago, and you're looking at the foundation and something doesn't look quite right. So you pulled something side and saw that it was decking, and when you went inside you found that the flippers had created two new bedrooms literally just over top the decking. They hadn't put down any wood, they hadn't fixed or repaired anything, and they just put carpet over it.
Speaker 1:I almost, and I almost guarantee you that they had no permits to do that. I don't know why a city would give.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you just put carpet on top, straight on that deck and then close in and call it a new room, because that's where you're going to get moisture and you're going to subsequently get a bunch of mold and people will be sick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so always get an inspector. But yeah, look see who your agent has on their list. If all the home inspector companies they have on their list are bad, that's a bad agent. In fact, that might be an interview question for finding your agent. Hey, can you show me your home inspector list?
Speaker 2:And then do some research on them and see who they are. Yes, and that will tell you If you're in.
Speaker 1:Central Ohio and your agent does not have habitation investigation on their list. I would habitation investigation on their list, I would wonder. I would wonder about that agent. I personally really would, because here habitation investigation has, which is our company. So everybody know that. But we have won best in the midwest three years consumers choice consumers choice award.
Speaker 2:There's something out, but we were in a business magazine for the commercial and the property inspections for Best in Ohio. We were the only inspection one for trustworthiness.
Speaker 1:So there's a fourth thing. But we've won awards and we've been in business. We'll be 23 years this November, so we've been around for a while, and if they haven't heard of us, I'd wonder they're either new or they're like nope, they find too much stuff which is not going to serve you as a home buyer's needs. That's not what you want, so that would be a perfect interview question for real estate. Hey, can you show me your home inspector list and see who's on there? If habitation's not on there, nope time to move on.
Speaker 1:Or, if you like the agent, all right, we you could. You could ask them hey, why are they not on your list? Remember that one agent that had to go to a hearing for her ethics behavior? Um, she was telling a home buyer that we did an inspection for him because the home buyer wanted to use us. He's like, oh no, no, no, we've had problems with them. In fact, we have a hearing regarding them. And the buyer told me like, all right, listen, that hearing is against her on her behavior and her ethics, because we filed the complaint against her yeah, and the buyer's like, oh yeah, so buyer totally used us, loved our report.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, agents are just above used car salesmen and level trustworthiness. That was like a 2019 was a purple bricks, purple bricks, purple bricks did a study.
Speaker 2:Yep, agents are just barely above car salesmen now there are some agents that we have worked with that are absolutely amazing oh, 100.
Speaker 1:There are some that if I, if there's so many buying a house, say, out in Cambridge Ohio, 100% I know the agent who I'm going to recommend that they use and you know this agent as well 100% she's amazing. This is who I'm going to tell them to contact to use Marysville. Is there an agent out there? Yep.
Speaker 2:There's a couple out there.
Speaker 1:I got something that I would recommend and maybe a few that are strike off your list. If you show me a list of looking to downsize.
Speaker 2:I've got an agent that's been doing that for years.
Speaker 1:It has all that set up A whole team that just specializes in that. You live in your house 20, 30 years and your kids have moved out. You're one of the downsides. We have the real estate team that sends you to because we know that they are ethical and they they have that they have that thing all down, they can help you out.
Speaker 1:They've been doing that for like 10 years easily yep, so we can help you all kinds of ways. And the home inspectors. They will be a great resource for you to buy real estate agents. But you need to find a good home inspection company because I I'm just assuming I know some home inspectors that probably go. Now I'm not going need to find a good home inspection company. I'm just assuming I know some home inspectors that would probably go. No, I'm not going to report that because the agent will be mad.
Speaker 2:I'm like no, that is not how you're supposed to do business at all. There was a company in Dayton just this year. They found out that three of their five inspectors didn't renew their license and were unlicensed in doing inspections and being referred by agents.
Speaker 1:That is a serious violation. That is definitely a problem. Now, the agent it's not the agent's fault that the inspector didn't renew the license, but you know what?
Speaker 2:Every report needs to have the inspector's name, their license and their expiration date on it Every report. If they did not have that on their report, that agent should have caught that and should have asked where that was at, Because that is a state law.
Speaker 1:Correct, assuming they even put a. Well, we know there's some real estate agents. They don't read their whole report, they go straight to the summary and that's it.
Speaker 2:I don't have time to read the full report.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what that's your job yep, well, we had one agent complain because while they had the water here, they had it fixed and the outer flame shield was was was not on there. Maybe it was the inner flame shield, I can't remember it was it was missing and she's like oh, the repair guy said this is really dangerous, it could have burned the house down. Like really over-dramatized it.
Speaker 2:Of course he did.
Speaker 1:But you know, and she complained about that, I'm like dude, it's over here in the report. It's like well, I just read the summary. I just read the summary.
Speaker 2:I just read the summary. Why is it not in the summary? Because it's a simple repair. Yeah, it's like sense. It wasn't anything at that time to go ahead and repair it, just a few bugs.
Speaker 1:Yep, so if you? Well, here's another thought. Well, we'll talk about this next. How do you looking over the home inspection report? How do you figure that out? Because that's confusing, because most people have never seen her home inspection report many of them so maybe when we do that next one, we can upload a sample report maybe, or we'll give a link to uh there's a sample page, so I think I found this one.
Speaker 1:So this one you absolutely need to find a home inspector, find what's been around for a while. If you, you probably should find one that has more than one service. And I'm not talking about repair service. Home inspectors should not be doing repairs on houses. They inspect. But you want to find one that can do your mold, your radon, your wood destroyer insects, sewer scope, chimney scope. Sewer scope, chimney scope, we can do those. Scope your buried downspout extensions.
Speaker 2:Not everybody does new home builds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or log homes.
Speaker 2:We're basically a one-stop shop.
Speaker 1:I like doing log homes.
Speaker 2:Oh, I do too, especially the areas yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and find little diners to visit afterwards. Yes, so that's it for this one. Thank you everybody. All right, bye-bye, bye-bye.
Speaker 3:Habitation investigation is the way to go for a home inspection in Ohio. Trusted licensed home inspectors for your needs. From radon to mold to warranties For a great home inspection, you really can't go wrong. Visit homeinspectionsinohiocom.
