Don’t lose a deal because of a home inspector
Igot a call from a buddy and fellow investor yesterday. He was quite frustrated because he’d received a termination on a sell contract that ended abruptly.
Now, we’ve all been there before. Buyers will put offers in on multiple houses, fishing and hoping to get the house they want but being willing to take a different house if they can’t get the one they want.
What happens in this case is the buyer will get the house under contract and then use the due diligence period to decide which of their accepted offers they plan to pursue. They then terminate the other contracts and move on.
This was not the case for my friend. He had a nice, three bedroom, two-bath double wide on a permanent foundation. He listed it and got a great offer from some folks who really wanted the house. They hired a home inspector to come out, he did his report, and that’s when the unexpected termination came in.
The inspector wrote in his report that the skirting on the house had no block behind it and therefore was not a permanent foundation. In the buyer’s mind, that killed the deal because in order to get financing the home had to be on a permanent foundation. And they would not be dissuaded from this thought.
The problem was the home inspector was wrong, and he didn’t understand mobile homes. You see, the permanent foundation on a mobile home has nothing to do with what goes around the perimeter of the structure like on a site-built house. Instead, the foundation is made up of the piers that support the entire frame of the mobile home. They are what hold the house up and what you have to consider. What goes around the perimeter, however, is just cosmetic.
And even though my friend had a structural engineer report saying the home was treated correctly, the fact that the home inspector said something was wrong scared off the buyers.
During the call, my friend asked me how to combat erroneous information like this in an inspection report from a home inspector.
We have a strategy that we have had good success with, and I’d like to share it with you.
What I do is make a video outlining what the inspector found and what needs to be done to remedy it. And let me say this before I get too far into this: Home inspectors are really good at their jobs, which is to find any and all defects in a property. (They even say this is their job description in their reports.) And they have found things we have missed on our houses.
The problem is that buyers do not understand the difference between a home inspector, and the county building inspector. They often assume they are one and the same.
In my video, I outline the difference between the two inspectors to educate the buyer. I let them know what the home inspector’s job description is and then tell them that a building inspector is charged by the county to ensure current state building standards are maintained.
I normally say something like, “The home inspector said that this is not a permanent foundation. But the County building inspector, who is charged by the state with making sure current building codes are maintained and enforced, says that the foundation is not what goes around outside of the house like a site-built home. Instead, the county inspector says the foundation is the piers that hold up the frame of this mobile home. Now, I have to do everything the county inspector says, and I have a structural engineer report stating that the foundation has had everything done to it to make it a permanent foundation, according to the current state standards. And I would love for you take a look at that.”
I say lots more, but the whole purpose is to ease the minds of the buyers and to help them feel comfortable. You see, buying a house for them is a big deal. It is a big deal to me that they are putting their trust in us with such an important purchase. I tell the buyer this and let them know I want to do everything I can to make them feel comfortable. And if there is something on the home inspector’s report that we need to fix, I go over that in detail and tell them what we plan to do to fix it. I even offer to send them pictures and videos of the repair in progress and finished.
We have had a lot of success with this strategy. And if you implement it, you will be less likely to lose a deal because of a home inspection report.