Unprofessional home inspectors tripping up solid deals, some say
Most homebuyers and sellers don’t think much about what might derail their deal. But here are sobering facts: One in 20 contracts crashes and burns, and roughly 1 in 4 runs into an issue that delays closing.
Home inspections are the No. 1 dealkiller, accounting for nearly one-third of all terminated contracts, according to a National Association of Realtors survey. Inspections also ranked as the No. 3 cause of delayed settlements, accounting for 13 percent.
Most of those inspections probably turned up legitimate defects, but some surely went too far. Take this example from Diana Dahlberg, owner of 1 Month Realty in Kenosha, Wisconsin. She was representing buyers whose local inspector “went crazy saying there was a cracked heat exchanger” in the furnace, Dahlberg recounted on ActiveRain, a real-estate website. The inspector said to the seller, who was nursing her baby: “If you don’t want to kill your baby, you better get a new furnace.”
Both the seller and the buyers “freaked out,” and the buyers canceled the contract. A subsequent inspection, Dahlberg said, found “there was no crack in the heat exchanger.” The sellers were so upset, they took their house off the market.
Nonetheless, Dahlberg supports the value of home inspections by competent inspectors. “We do need that thirdparty opinion” to be certain about the condition of a property, she said. But inspectors need to be professional.
Scott Godzyk of Godzyk Real Estate Services in Manchester, New Hampshire, described his own dealdamaging inspection on ActiveRain. The buyer’s inspector issued a report that noted the roof was at the end of its 25-year life; the furnace hadn’t been serviced in years; the oven smoked; and kids’ toys presented a trip hazard.
Those were curious findings given that the house was 9 years old and dated tags attached to the furnace showed it had been serviced for seven years straight. The inspector didn’t take out plastic containers stored in the oven before turning it on, and finally, kids’ toys do not convey with the house.