Home inspection

[Anonymous]

We found a home that is perfect for our family, made an offer seller accepted started financing. Well today we had a inspection he found 23,000 dollars worth of work that needs done in the house some very major and not safe at all a lot of fire hazard things. What do we do? What are our options I'm asking incase anyone here has been they same situation. We're very upset never dreamed it would come back so bad. Has this happened to anyone else???

[Anonymous]

By the way we are going conventional

[Anonymous]

I've owned real estate since I was 18 and in every case I had to find myself 10 "dream" homes before I closed on one that wasn't a problem in some fashion.

Might be time to talk to your agent to renegotiate the price based on what you discovered.

[Anonymous]

I live in an area of mostly older homes 75+ years. Pretty much every home in my price range had issues. Lots if times sellers are aware of the problems and price accordingly. If you feel the price is asking to much do as ABCD2199 suggested and try to renegotiate. When I bought my home it had a few issues, mostly minor. I was able to get the sellers to update the circuit box and line, as well as pay for radon mitigation but kept my original asking price. Everything else I'm pretty much doing the work as I get to it...including everything that didn't come up in inspection. Yes there will be stuff even the best inspector will miss.

I will say as someone who has been around home construction. I will take an older home in need of work over a newly built home any day. Developers only care about a fast profit...new homes and housing plans are poorly designed, poorly constructed and overpriced. Trust me...if not wait ten years and hear me say told you so.

Having a conventional loan I think helps its much more flexible. If the next buyer is FHA all the problems you describe will have to be addressed anyway make an offer and use that as leverage.

Good luck!

[Gunnar419]

While $23,000 is certainly a whopping figure for a home inspection to uncover, large discoveries aren't at all unusual in older homes.

Your options are:

1. Renegotiate the price downward, buy the place, and take care of the repairs (assuming the lender is okay with that).

2. Have the seller fix all the problems as a condition of closing. Or have them put money in escrow at closing to pay the repairs (possibly your lender would be happier with that).

3. Walk away and find something with fewer problems.

I agree with OpenG, though. I've bought a couple of older houses that needed major repairs. Because I got bargain prices on them, I didn't mind doing the fixup.

Also, be aware that if you buy the house when it still has problems, you may have to get non-preferred homeowners insurance until you get the big issues fixed. Non-preferred is much more expensive for the same amount of coverage, but once the problems are taken care of, you should be able to return to lower cost insurance.

Good luck!

[StartingOver10]

^^^Every single post above is right.

I'm a Realtor and depending upon the issue - sometimes you renegotiate and sometimes you walk away and find something else.  Just had one a couple of week ago where the roof was 21 years old. If the roof was less than 20 years old we could have closed. However, with the roof being 21 years old the insurance had to go to a special carrier which increased the insurance rate more than double (to $400 per month) which threw the buyer over their DTI. We found another house with a newer roof.  

That is just one example. There are many.  This is why we have inspections so you don't end up with a problem. Most of the time sellers are reasonable and will repair items or regenotiate price - but not always.  You don't want to buy someone's (major) problem.  All homes need some repair (never seen a perfect home). But you have to know going in what is possible for you and what isn't. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone... we are waiting to here back from the sellers realator, really hoping we can work something out. I understand all houses are going to have no problems not one is perfect, however I was shocked at this report. There is some things that we are willing to deal with and cover knowing that there are going to be problems just hoping he will take care of the majors or come to some type of agreement. Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions

[Revelate]

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@StartingOver10 wrote:

^^^Every single post above is right.

I'm a Realtor and depending upon the issue - sometimes you renegotiate and sometimes you walk away and find something else.  Just had one a couple of week ago where the roof was 21 years old. If the roof was less than 20 years old we could have closed. However, with the roof being 21 years old the insurance had to go to a special carrier which increased the insurance rate more than double (to $400 per month) which threw the buyer over their DTI. We found another house with a newer roof.  

That is just one example. There are many.  This is why we have inspections so you don't end up with a problem. Most of the time sellers are reasonable and will repair items or regenotiate price - but not always.  You don't want to buy someone's (major) problem.  All homes need some repair (never seen a perfect home). But you have to know going in what is possible for you and what isn't. 

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Hah, would've been prime candidate for a new Tesla roof where you are me thinks!

Hallelujiah for home inspections, worth their weight in gold as a buyer.

[Anonymous]

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@Revelate wrote:

Hah, would've been prime candidate for a new Tesla roof where you are me thinks!

Hallelujiah for home inspections, worth their weight in gold as a buyer.

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The last home I bought I waived inspection.  It got listed on the MLS at 10am, I saw it at 11am, made a cash offer at 11:30am waiving inspection and disclosures and they accepted it at noon and we closed a few days later.

The Realtor was stunned the entire time because I had no agent myself and told her to just shut up and listen.  I would not recommend others waive anything if they haven't had at least one $30,000 house oops in their past.

I priced the Tesla solar roof and according to my calculations, I would pay $35,000 up front and NEVER recoup it even in 35 years, lol.  I currently have a small used solar panel on my garage that works great for charging my electric power tools, though.  My region just doesn't get enough sun to ever make it useful or profitable.  My electric bill is typically $26 a month, though, lol.

[Revelate]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Revelate wrote:

Hah, would've been prime candidate for a new Tesla roof where you are me thinks!

Hallelujiah for home inspections, worth their weight in gold as a buyer.

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The last home I bought I waived inspection.  It got listed on the MLS at 10am, I saw it at 11am, made a cash offer at 11:30am waiving inspection and disclosures and they accepted it at noon and we closed a few days later.

The Realtor was stunned the entire time because I had no agent myself and told her to just shut up and listen.  I would not recommend others waive anything if they haven't had at least one $30,000 house oops in their past.

I priced the Tesla solar roof and according to my calculations, I would pay $35,000 up front and NEVER recoup it even in 35 years, lol.  I currently have a small used solar panel on my garage that works great for charging my electric power tools, though.  My region just doesn't get enough sun to ever make it useful or profitable.  My electric bill is typically $26 a month, though, lol.

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Heh S10 is in Florida which gets plenty of sunshine, though I didn't look into the numbers more than casually but looked like around where I am in S. Cal if I had a SFH that I intended to stay in it would make sense on back of napkin calculations.  

Yeah, the majority of people here aren't investors, for me while I'm sure I could learn what I needed to do a basic sanity check on a walkthrough plus whatever public record data there is, it's a handy thing for preventing making a dumb mistake; I suspect with your buying strategy you may be putting some cash in anyway to pretty up the place so to speak anyway which might cover a bunch of things that get found during inspection time?