How To Prepare For Your Home Inspection

May 7, 2020

Wondering how to prepare for a home inspection? When someone buys your home, they’re putting a lot of trust in you and your Victoria real estate agent. They trust that you’re going to properly represent the property that you’re selling and give them an appropriate price. However, there are some mechanisms to put a check on that trust, and the home inspection is a key example. Even if it’s not required, most sellers get this done before they start reaching buyers both as a sign of their trustworthiness, as well as a way to put together their asking price. Here’s how you need to prepare for your home inspection.

How to prepare for your home inspection

One thing you want to do is sit down with your Victoria BC realtor and get a full understanding of what the inspection is going to cover. A third-party professional is going to come to your home and look at just about every component of your home, but some will be a top priority. These include:

Major appliances like the refrigerator, washer/dryer, stove, and water heater.
Key home systems like HVAC, electrical and plumbing
Important structural components, like the roof and foundation.

Why focus on these? If a person buys a home, then discovers issues in these areas after the fact, these represent some of the largest expenses possible to fix. Inspectors will help disclose these to protect the buyers. If you have an issue in these areas, and don’t want to fix them, this doesn’t mean you can’t sell your home (in most cases). However, you will need to be ready to lower your sale price to account for the extra financial burden the buyer is taking on.

Your goal in terms of prep for the inspection is making all these key areas as easy to access for the inspector as possible. This means making sure you get all the clutter out of any access points like the attic, basement, or furnace area. You should also run your own basic tests of things that the inspector will be checking, like lighting, plumbing, and heating. If there is an issue, you can let the inspector know ahead of time to make their job a little easier.

Generally, an inspector will need about an hour or so in the house uninterrupted in order to do their job. So, when you schedule the appointment and prep the house, you’ll need to find something to do for a little while. Leave paperwork for any recent repair work behind, any keys they will need, and sketches to help them locate things like the well/septic tank.

A home inspection is an essential key step to take your house closer to that final sale, and you to the next stage of your life. It’s essential you have all your priorities and steps in order to keep things moving after a successful inspection. In order to get this priority list together, and increase your chances of a quick and easy inspection, you want to talk to the best realtor in Victoria, BC. We can help connect you with the ideal professional for your needs, so be sure to contact our team today.