How You Can Prepare Yourself for a Home Inspection
A pre-inspection is necessary in the world of real estate and will give you a heads-up on what buyers will eventually discover and will give the seller an up on identifying what to update and what to fix altogether. Deciding when to sell your home is the easy part. Preparing your home for sale is the hard part, as is preparing yourself and your home for an inspection. Having an inspection report handy is key to getting your sale to go through, which is why sellers opt to complete a pre-inspection before buyers walk through the door.
In this article, we will discuss why a home inspection makes sense and how you can prepare yourself for a home inspection.
Reasons Why Completing a Pre-Inspection is Important
- A Sign of Honesty. Doing a pre-inspection will send a prospective buyer a clear signal that you are not trying to hide anything. It might make a buyer more inclined to submit an offer. Even if a prospective buyer decides that they will pay for an independent inspection, having a pre-inspection will be a big indicator that you care well for your home. This is useful if you plan on selling your home on your own without the help of an agent.
- It Can be Used as a Negotiating Strategy. Having an inspection done on your home will keep you from feeling blindsided by a problem in a buyer’s inspection of the home. You will know when to stand firm on a price point and when to give a bit. Knowledge is power on your side.
A Checklist of Preparing for a Home Inspection
Consider steps that you can take on your own to ensure that you get a smooth inspection report back from the buyer. The following is a great list of things that you can do:
- Declutter and Clean Access Points in the Inspection
- Deep clean the furnace filter, or replace it if it is damaged.
- Deep clean the oven and stove.
- Empty out all the storage from the attic space.
- Clear 4 to 6 inches of space around the home’s exterior perimeter point.
- Test Functionality of Appliances, Systems & Structure of What an Inspector Will Check
- Open and close the windows, and test the locks, and the seals to ensure they work properly.
- Run all the faucets and flush the toilets.
- Run bathroom and ceiling fans.
- Try all light switches to ensure they are in working condition.
- Open and close garage doors manually first and then with the remote, and test the reverse safety setting.
- Make sure that the weather stripping on doors is intact.
- Ensure the heating ducts are connected in the crawl space.
- Check that the fan ducts are venting properly out of the attic.
- Take Security and Safety Precautions
- Replace the batteries in all the smoke detectors.
- Test the carbon monoxide detector to ensure that it is in working order.
- Prepare a fire extinguisher and make it available.
- Gas lines and chimney entry points should be capped.
- Bugs and rodents should be exterminated.
- Make all the Necessary Repairs and Upgrades to the Property
- Replace all light bulbs in the house that are out or flickering.
- Re-caulk around the bathtubs and sinks to freshen the space up.
- Repair water damage in bathrooms.
- Remove drain clogs and clean them deeply.
- Update and clean dingy grout.
- Replace cracked windows and torn screens.
- Place missing shingles from the rooftop.
- Replace any insulation in the attic that has been damaged as well as the crawl space.
- Cover the crawl space with a 6 mm plastic sheet.
- Complete Improvements on the Home’s Exterior
- Sweep debris off the roof and pressure wash.
- Trim trees near or hanging over the roofline.
- Clean out all the gutters.
- Clear debris from the A/C compressor, downspout drainage, and the foundation vents.
- Slope the soil away from the home so that water can run off.
Bottom Line
Completing a home pre-inspection is up to you, and taking the time to properly complete it can help increase your odds of a smoother closing, placing the value of your home back into your bank account. Do this all with the help of a trusted real estate agent, particularly when you are in the process of selling your home and checking off the list of things to get done before doing so successfully. Trust the real estate professionals at Coastal Realty Group to guide you in finding and settling down in the home of your dreams in the many beautiful waterfront properties that make up the neighborhoods on the Forgotten Coast of Florida, today.