So the time has come for you to start fresh and you’ve decided to sell your home. Congrats! That’s no small decision. So I imagine that you’ve got it all planned out then? At least the basics right? What about a home inspection?… No?

That’s only for buying a home right? Why would you want to get an inspection when you’re about to leave? Well! Obviously, this is not a requirement of putting your home on the market, but the benefits of getting a pre-inspection before selling your home are highly advantageous. Let me tell you why.

Firstly, when potential buyers come to inspect your home, they’ll be coming with a specific intention to make sure that your property is structurally sound, pest free, and basically just isn’t going to fall apart as soon as they sign the papers and move in the next day. So, with this in mind, it goes without saying that a house for sale that has undergone a pre-sale inspection will bring much peace of mind to those coming to see it.

More than that though it will…

  1. Minimise the chances of a walk-away

By getting your home inspected by a professional before putting it up for sale, you’re basically doing everything that you can to ensure a successful deal with any potential buyers committing to buy your property. A professional home inspector will meticulously survey every section of the property and determine any issues that need to be sorted or safety concerns that need to be repaired. Either that or you’ll be given the green light and be told that everything is in perfect condition.

Either way, this is going to be a million times better than the alternative. The alternative being that you haven’t had a house inspection and come across a willing buyer, they however, do want a house inspection. This can be a terrifying propect since you have absolutely no idea if they’re going to find something bad enough to break the deal and leave you hanging. If a potential buyer did decide not to go through with the deal then you’ll be forced to put your home back on the market and potentially even accept a lower offer the next time around. Essentially, it’s not the most favourable scenario you want to find yourself in, but all the stress of walk-aways can be almost copmletely eliminated by getting in first and having your home inspected for all the peace of mind you can get.

  1. It could end up SAVING you money

One of the biggest advantages of getting a pre-sale inspection is that you will know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether or not there is anything serious that you need to address before you list your home for sale. By finding out if there’s something significant that needs fixing, you can ensure there’s no chance a potential buyer will pick up on it first, which is when the real problems begin. If an interested buyer comes across an issue – found either by them or through a home inspection – that they are not prepared to let you fix or willing to remedy themselves, there is every chance that will just walk away. This is not uncommon and could potentially be the difference between you selling your home and completely losing out, for if there are no other interested buyers or say housing prices fall, you may very well end up worse off than you started.

I’m not trying to scare you here but if you weigh up the risks and benefits, the cost of getting a pre-sale inspection could very well end up being a heck of a lot less than what you could potentially lose out on if things don’t go to plan. And honestly, when do things ever go to plan?

  1. Making sure buyers don’t mistrust your judgement

This is an important one because even if you’re a very trustworthy person, which I’m sure you are, potential buyers can be very, very cautious of putting their trust in home owners even at the best of times. When hundreds of thousands of dollars is being thrown around it really isn’t that hard to understand why. So if it just so happens that a buyer comes along, falls in love with your home, but then finds just one problem, this will often be enough to scare them off forever. This can happen very easily because just one thing like a small leak can skew a buyer’s whole perspective. Even if you’re the most honest, considerate, and reliable person on earth, an already sceptical buyer is going to be on edge and looking for problems from the get-go. If they do happen to find something they don’t like, you could automatically become the devil incarnate and they won’t trust a thing you have to say thereafter.

Decisions as big as this can make people go a little crazy sometimes since there really is a lot at stake, and no one wants to be taken for a fool. You can’t really blame them either since in reality there are hoards of untrustworthy and dishonest creeps out there practically waiting in the shadows to prey upon these people just to make a quick buck. So even if you do have a heart of gold and a soul made of rainbows, it’s not going to matter if a buyer spots something they don’t like. The paranoia will take over and rainbows or not, they’ll be thinking about all the potential defects they could uncover behind every door and under every floorboard.  

  1. Offering buyers complete peace of mind

This is the most important point of deciding to get a pre-sale home inspection. If you do have someone look over your home and everything turns up hunky dory with nothing to worry about, then what better way to showcase your credibility and trustworthiness than by putting your inspection report on display for every buyer to see? You can’t really be any more transparent than by showing everyone that you have absolutely nothing to hide. Anyone coming to take a look at your home is going to be a million times more confident that the property on offer is problem-free and that they will have nothing to worry about if they do decide to go through with the sale.

If you happened to get a home inspection that brought up a few problems needing to be addressed and you went through the process of fixing those concerns, invite the home inspector back around and they’ll be able to update your previous report to show that everything is clean as a whistle. Basically, you want to do whatever you can to put the buyer’s mind at ease since the process of home buying can be incredibly complicated and anything you can do to make their lives easier is going to give you a massive advantage.

A pre-sale home inspection is highly recommended for any homes that are more than a couple of years old because no matter how confient you are in the stability of your home, unless you’re a seasoned house inspector you really can’t be too sure. There is just too high a chance of problems being found when all you want to do is seal the deal. The last thing you want is to find a buyer willing to pay full price, only to walk away after finding something they don’t like. Additionally, I would especially caution those who have built their home from the ground up as they are most likely to bypass an inspection thinking that they know every inch of their home like the back of their hand. Well, I don’t doubt your confidence levels, however, problems do have a way of slipping through the cracks, and it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve found something a homeowner wasn’t expecting.

So to sum this all up, getting a pre-sale home inspection is really just a matter of giving yourself and your buyers total peace of mind and the confidence to follow through with a sale without having to worry about coming up against any hidden problems.

In a nutshell, it’s really just about making everyone’s life a whole lot easier in the long run.