Wondering if a home inspection is worth the expense? A good quality Inspection will help you avoid costly mistakes and realize value for your money. It can also save time, energy (and leverage), by pointing out problems before they become major issues or disasters! San Diego realtor Kyle Whissel goes through everything you need to know about the home inspection process here in San Diego CA.
Learn the Home Inspection Process Inside and Out
If you are buying a home in San Diego, one of the things that you're going to want to do in that process is getting a home inspection. In this video, I'm going to tell you everything you need to know when it comes to your home inspection. My name is Kyle Whissel with Whissel Realty Group here in San Diego.
And I want to share with you everything you need to know when it comes to getting a home inspection on home 'cause that's one of the important parts, right. If you're buying a home, we want to make sure that this home is going to be a fit for you and your family and it's going to be safe and you know what you're getting into. 'Cause the last thing that I want to happen for you is for you to buy that home shortly after moving in everything starts falling apart and now you're coming out of pocket for all kinds of expenses that you weren't prepared for.
And now your whole home buying experience is ruined. I don't want that to happen to you. So here's what you need to know when it comes to your home inspection. Traditionally, when you're buying a home in San Diego, you're going to have an inspection period, by default that period is 17 days, but it's going to vary based on market conditions. Now, here in 2022, the market's pretty crazy. It's very competitive. So a lot of times you're going to find buyers who might be willing to buy a home without a home inspection.
Now, that's a little bit of a scary thought. So you need to be competitive and if you want to be competitive and win today, maybe you want to go that route. But here's something that can be done, is you could actually get a home inspection done before you write an offer on a property, a little bit unconventional. A lot of agents don't even realize this is possible, but if you want to get a leg up on the competition and write an offer that's not contingent on an inspection, you go see a property today. We got home inspectors. We could get out there tomorrow to go look at that home and do an inspection for you.
So you could write your offer, literally with no inspection contingency 'cause you know exactly what you're getting into. Now, when you come in with the offer with no inspection contingency, you get to the front of the line and you beat the competition and get the house that you want. So keep that in mind. If you're in a house, you're looking at a house it's in a competitive situation. Maybe you want to get that inspection done before you write the offer. Now again, you don't have a lot of time. You have to do this within a day or so but that could help you beat the competition. When it comes to the inspection itself, Here's what this inspection is for.
This is really to look at the key components of the house. HVAC system, if you're not familiar with that, it's heating ventilation, and cooling. So your heater and your AC. We want to look at the plumbing the electrical, the roof, the foundation, kind of the key components of the house. We also want to look for health and safety things. So we want to make sure we don't have any unsafe electrical. We don't have plumbing that's dripping and causing mold, things like that. Those are the things we're really looking for. Now, an inspector is going to note things like that.
They're also going to note small things like there's a little hole in the wall and, you know, there's scratches here and little things like that. Well, those cosmetic things, typically when you're buying a home, you're kind of taken home as is when it comes to these cosmetic things. But if it's for the HVAC system's not working that might be something we might request a repair on from the seller. Maybe the electricals are completely miswired. and you're going to have to spend a ton of money to redo the electrical. That might be something that you could request from the seller, but the smaller little things are the cosmetic things. Most of the time you're going to kind of take those as-is. Now, this inspector, when they come out you understand these are a general home inspector.
They're literally roof, foundation, plumbing, electrical. They're looking at the whole entire house. They are a generalist. They're not a specialist. So what will happen a lot of times is the home will come out and they'll tell you, "Hey, we need to look at this electrical. This does not appear to be wired right. I recommend you have an electrician come out. Hey, the roof is sagging. I recommend you have a roofer come out." So now you go from the generalist to having a specialist come out. So you can actually attach numbers to what it would actually cost to complete the repair that's required for whatever that might be. That's something that we do here at Whissel Realty Group. We'll get you connected with all the specialists that you need to make sure we know exactly what you're looking at.
So there are no surprises. Now, once you know these numbers you're going to have a few choices on what you could do. Number one, just understand this is what I'm buying and take it as is. If you're doing that inspection upfront, more often than not that's going to be the scenario you're in. You're going to know, Hey, I'm buying this house. Here are all the problems. Here's what it's going to cost me, and you're going to make your offer accordingly. And you're going to come in and say, "Hey, I already know everything about the house. I'm not worried about any repairs. I'm taking it as is and you just factor it into your offer What it would cost to make the repairs that you feel are necessary."
Now, the other option is let's assume we didn't go without an inspection contingency and you do have an inspection contingency to use. You can now approach the seller and you got a few different things you could do. One, you could say, "Hey, we're good with the house as-is. We'll remove our inspection contingency." Option two is you could request repairs. So you could request from the seller, Hey we want you to fix this and this and this and this and this and this and this.
And it's all negotiable at this point, there are no guarantees. The seller has no obligation to make any of these repairs. It's all in negotiations. So you got to decide what do you want a request. Now, they can come back. Whatever they want. They can say, "We'll do all of them." "We'll do none of 'em." "We'll meet you in the middle." Or they could come back with option number three which is to do credit in lieu of repairs. So that means rather than the seller actually completing the repairs, they just give you a credit towards closing cost, save you the money on your closing cost.
So you can use that money to make the repairs after it closes escrow. Now, I'm personally a fan of option number three. What I've found in my 15 plus years of experience is when I'm representing a buyer, we ask the seller to make repairs, very rarely is my buyer satisfied with the repairs that the seller makes. Whether they hired the highest-end contractor in San Diego or they hired the guy from the home Depot parking lot. The buyer is just never really happy with the repairs. So I found what's best is let's just get you a credit. After the property closes, you can hire the contractor that you choose.
They can do the repairs; make sure it's somebody that you know, like and trust and you're going to be satisfied with our work. And that it'll have a warranty that'll protect you moving forward. So those are the things you want to know when it comes to that home inspection. The other thing is you really want to make sure you get a home warranty, which can also help you out. So even if you get a home inspection done, and everything looks good, maybe you have an issue.
Like my house, the refrigerator had an issue two weeks after we moved in. There was no issue in the home inspection, but after we moved in once the seller had moved out, the ice frosted over. It blew out one of the motors and we had a refrigerator repair to make. Well, we were able to use a home warranty and what that'll do is cover you for the first year of ownership, where if there's an issue that occurs, you just simply pay a deductible, usually around 50 to a hundred dollars, and home warranty company will cover the rest of the cost.
So in addition to your home inspection, I recommend you always get a home warranty just to cover you on the backend. It's always nice, to get that peace of mind. And if you work with our team, one of the things that we guarantee is part of our VIP buyer program is we'll get the cost covered for you. So make sure, to reach out at the phone number down below, call us or text us. We'd love to guide you through the process and tell you more about our special VIP buyer program. My name is Kyle whissel with Whissel Realty Group, thanks for tuning in.
