Dear Sellers “Get a home inspection before selling your home”.

If you are contemplating selling your home or already have it on the market, go ahead and pay the money and get a home inspection before selling your home.  You and your REALTOR have worked really hard to get the offer on the table and then comes the Home Inspection report with a laundry list of problems you didn’t know about.  Nothing will kill a deal faster than a lengthy list of issues that need to be repaired.  Even a bunch of small items can turn off some buyers and you end up losing the deal.  In the Texas Hill Country you can have an average size home inspected for about $300.  A lot of my sellers say, “well the buyer should pay for the inspection”, and they will when the time comes, but believe me that $300 buys a lot of piece of mind.

After you get the inspection report you can fix that leaky faucet, sticking door, broken electrical outlet or whatever other problems the inspector finds and believe me they will find things you weren’t aware of.  By knowing the problems upfront, you may have just saved yourself the heartbreak of a deal gone south due to surprises you weren’t expecting.  Most all buyers are going to get the home inspected, but if you’ve already had an inspection done, then there shouldn’t be any surprises when they do theirs.  Remember though, the items you are aware of now, due to the inspection, that you opted not to fix need to go on your Home Owners Disclosure.  Its easier to address these issues up front than to try to negotiate them away later.  You may find items that you aren’t willing to fix and you can reflect that in the price upfront instead of having to renegotiate the price or the repairs later.  Think about it, once you have accepted their offer they are in a much stronger negotiating position later to demand either a decrease in the selling price to off-set the repairs, or a less than amicable deal for you in paying for the repairs.  This is a lose/lose position for you the seller.  Instead, bargain from a position of strength because you have either addressed the outstanding issues in your sellers disclosure, or you fixed them after your home inspection.