Disclosure requirements are no reason to skip a home inspection
Q. I don’t understand why you often tell buyers that they should always make their offers contingent on obtaining a satisfactory report from a professional home inspector. Nearly every state requires sellers to disclose defects that they know about, and buyers can sue if the seller isn’t forthcoming. So don’t you think paying hundreds of dollars for an inspection is just a waste of money?
A. No, paying for a professional home inspection is never a waste of money. Every buyer should order one, even if they’re purchasing a newly constructed house directly from a builder.
True, most states require sellers to disclose any problems that they know about. But even then, those sellers generally cannot be held liable for failing to disclose defects they didn’t know existed.
To illustrate, say you purchased a house without ordering an inspection, and it slid off the foundation when the first rainstorm arrived. The only way you could collect damages from the seller would be to prove that he knew about the problem — or at least should have known — and failed to tell you about it.
At best, you would have to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees and countless hours in court pursuing a claim with an uncertain outcome.
Had you instead hired a professional inspector, it’s likely that the inspector would have noticed telltale signs, such as fissures or buckling in the cement, that the foundation was giving way.
You could have then negotiated with the seller to have the necessary repairs made or reduce the selling price, or you could have simply used the contract’s inspection contingency to cancel the sale and get your deposit back.
REAL ESTATE TRIVIA
The U.S. Capitol, which stands on 4 acres at the east end of the National Mall, has about 600 rooms and 658 windows. Elected officials and their staffers can move about the massive complex with the help of an underground, three-line electric subway system.
Q. I was watching the TV game show “Jeopardy!” a few weeks ago, and one of the contestants said she lived in Colma, California, which she described as “the necropolis of San Francisco.” What’s that all about?
A. A necropolis is a large cemetery, usually featuring hundreds or even thousands of elaborate tomb monuments. The term stems from an ancient Greek word that literally translates into “City of the Dead.”
Colma, about 11 miles southwest of San Francisco, fits that description to a T. A bit less than 2 square miles in size, Colma has 17 cemeteries — most of which were established after 1900, when officials in San Francisco banned new interments within city limits.
With more than 1.5 million bodies buried in Colma, there are about 1,000 folks resting underground for each person in the community (pop. 1,800) walking above.
Most of the good (living) folks in Colma, a lovely town that I have visited twice, take their city’s reputation in stride. The city’s website boasts of the town’s nickname, “the City of Souls.” Tongue-in-cheek, many T-shirts and bumper stickers proudly state that “It’s Great to Be Alive in Colma!”
Send questions to David Myers, P.O. Box 4405, Culver City, CA 90231-2960, and we’ll try to respond in a future column.