The goal of a home inspection is to determine whether the property you’re thinking of buying or selling has problems that may impact your final decision. If your San Marcos home inspector doesn’t find any serious issues, you can breathe a sigh of relief and proceed with the sale.
Sometimes, however, a home inspection uncovers serious problems that require costly repairs and may even endanger the lives of the residents. If the buyer is still interested in purchasing the property, they’ll have to negotiate repairs with the seller, or demand a lower asking price so as to cover the repair costs.
In the following article, we’ll give you an overview of what you can expect in case your home inspection discovers damages that can’t be overlooked. Keep reading to learn more.
How long does the seller have to agree to repairs?
Your home inspector will give you a verbal estimate of how much the repairs would cost and (in case of severe problems) whether full restoration is even possible. All these problems will be described in the official home inspection report that your inspector will send you after the inspection.
At this point, the buyer should compile a list of repairs they feel the seller should make before the property can be sold. Buyers are advised to focus on the big defects and not sweat the small problems that can easily be fixed down the road.
Standard purchase contracts give the seller 48 hours to respond to a repair request. This is by no means set in stone, seeing as real estate agents are free to allocate more or less time based on their judgement and prior agreement with their clients.
What happens if the seller does not complete repairs?
Sometimes, the seller agrees to do the requested repairs, but then ends up doing repair work that’s not complete, not up to code, or different from what was agreed on. Do not proceed with the deal until this issue is resolved. The last thing you want is to try to get a seller to finish the repairs after they’ve already taken your money.
You can avoid this problem by:
- Visiting the property multiple times and performing a re-inspection before closing to make sure everything is in order,
- Having a well-written contract and repair agreement,
- Creating a clause in the contract that compels the seller to pay for the re-inspection if the repairs aren’t performed correctly or on time,
- Getting the receipts for the completed repairs before doing a re-inspection (the seller is required to provide receipt copies according to the NEFAR contract),
- Requiring the seller to send you photos or videos of the completed repairs before scheduling a re-inspection,
- Refusing to close the deal before the repairs are done.
What if the seller can’t afford to make repairs?
Some sellers won’t agree to repairs not because they disagree with them, but rather because they lack the necessary funds to do so. This is often the reason why they’re selling the property in the first place.
If this is the case, the buyer and the seller should choose a vendor that can provide the repairs, and then subtract the cost of those repairs from the final asking price. This allows the deal to proceed in a way that doesn’t require the seller to take a loan to cover repair expenses.
Where can I hire a first-in-class San Marcos home inspector?
Let’s say there’s a property in Lake San Marcos that you’re thinking of buying or selling. Unless you work in construction, the only way to ensure the place doesn’t have any serious problems and meets all relevant safety standards is to enlist the services of a top-notch home inspector.
That’s where Inspectors Company comes in. Every inspector on our team is fully licensed, highly experienced, and has access to state-of-the-art home inspection software. Call us today.
