Over the past 10 years, home buyers have begun to realize the benefits to having a home inspection performed soon after their offer is made. Buyers can determine the overall condition of the home, ask for items to be repaired, negotiate a lower price, at least know what they are getting into, or walk away from the deal altogether.
Lately, sellers and their agents are realizing the benefits of having a pre-listing inspection.
A prelisting inspection is a home inspection performed prior to the home being placed on the market. Occasionally the inspection is paid for by the agent as many know the value far exceeds the cost.
Here are some of the advantages of having a prelisting inspection.
1. You have the opportunity to fix any items prior to listing.
2. You can disclose all of the defects you choose not to fix which reduces what a potential buyer can use to negotiate a lower price.
3. You can set the price of the home to reflect the defects, thus reducing the chance of any lower negotiating by the buyers.
4. You significantly reduce the chance that a buyer will sue you or the realtor for failure to disclose. You did everything you could to disclose all the defects by having a pre-listing inspection.
5. Faster Closing. By having a pre-listing inspection, many buyers will waive their own inspection contingency, and thus reduce the overall closing timeframe.
If you want to get the highest possible price for your home, you should consider paying for a pre-listing inspection.
Here’s a quick example. Let’s say you have a home you want to sell for $200,000. It’s an older home with an older roof. The buyers inspector comes in and says the roof has reached the end of it’s useful life and that it will need replacement in the next year or so.
The buyer will not be pleased and will probably ask you to either replace it, or may renegotiate for a lower price…Lets say they ask for $10,000. off the asking price.
If you had a pre-listing inspection, you would have had the opportunity to have it repaired yourself. (by negotiating, the buyer will never give you an accurate figure. They will always go with a high number) and lets say a new roof would cost you $7,000 instead of $10,000. The pre-listing inspection could have saved you $3000 for a $400 inspection cost.
In another respect, knowing the roof is bad, you could reduce the listing price to say $196,500, thus splitting the cost with the buyer. By letting them know in the disclosure that the price of the home reflects the need for a roof, you have just helped yourself and saved $6,500.00.
There is nothing but benefits to you in having a pre-listing inspection performed.
