Ok! You’ve found a great house! It has almost everything you want (I’ll admit sometimes we do have to compromise on our wish list). You have your agent make an offer, negotiate a contract and then you enter into the Option Period. This is a 7-14 day period (in Texas) in which you have the unrestricted right to terminate. During this time you hire a professional Home Inspector to spend about 4-6 hours going over the home with a fine tooth comb, you do not need to be present during the entire inspection – try to be there at the end so the inspector can go over the report and point out what he’s found.
Don’t freak out over the report and don’t sweat the small stuff! This will be about 20 pages of anything and everything the inspector found. A good inspector will give you his professional opinion of what is a major concern and what is normal for a home of that age. Hopefully there aren’t too many major items.
The inspection report will be broken into different sections:
Structure, Grading, Walls, Roof, Plumbing, Electrical, etc…
Each section will list all of the inspector’s findings and he may even suggest a professional be hired to come in and further evaluate. Keep in mind an experienced inspector has been trained and hopefully has substantial experience in many aspects of home repair but he’s not a licensed plumber, electrician or roofer.
Again! Do not freak out over 20 pages of everything that’s wrong! I’ve had brand new homes with some substantial issues to be fixed, of course on brand new you can expect the builder to fix everything but not on resale…keep in mind you are buying a used home that may be 20+ years old and it’s expected to have some issues. The question is; are they issues you can live with? Maybe it has a toilet that runs – this is a simple fix that most people can do themselves for an $8 replacement kit. Don’t make this is a make it or break it item.
I suggest you do the inspections as early as possible in your option period so you have time to bring in a contractor to give bids so you have an idea of an accurate cost of the repairs. There may be a cost associated with obtaining bids.
The thing to do is determine the top 5 or 6 items that must be repaired based on the inspector’s opinion and any bids you may have obtained and then have your agent ask for about 10 things to leave room for negotiation. DO NOT submit the entire inspection report. This will actually put you in a very poor position for negotiating.
There are several ways repairs can be negotiated – 1. Have the seller complete the repairs prior to closing. 2. Request a credit towards your closing costs to free up cash and have the repairs completed yourself after closing or 3. Request a price reduction in lieu of repairs.
Stand firm of the 5 or so items that you expect to have repaired this is when an Experienced Agent and Great Negotiator come in handy!
Best of luck in your repair negotiations!
Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, I’m happy to help!
Deanna Parnell
RE/MAX Heritage
[email protected]