Benefits of Prelisting Home Inspections

Can I really obtain the home inspection in advance? The process seems to be useless since the prospective buyer gets the mortgage and then pays for his or her own inspection. It would seem like a good selling point if the property already had a clean inspection or the indicated repair were already taken care of. Michelle A.

You absolutely can and should obtain an inspection on your home before you put it on the market. Given the way mortgage lending guidelines have tightened up and the fact that appraisal and condition issues are killling a larger number of transactions, obtaining a prelisting inspection differentiate your home from the competition and boost your home's chances of selling by helping satisfy prospective buyers that the property will:

• Pass the lender's and appraiser's condition guidelines;
• Not have surprise condition issues arise during the sale process and escrow; and
• Be in a condition that reflects to the price they've agreed to pay for it.

Here are some things you should think about as you decide whether to move forward with obtaining prelisting inspections and figure out a plan around how to leverage the reports.

1. Prelisting inspections won't make the deal, but they can help optimize your chances of closing the deal. Buyers are not going to buy a house they wouldn't consider otherwise because it has reports, but if they are debating between your home and another property, a house with no issue, documentation that needed repairs have been completed, or even reports showing what needs doing and a corresponding discount can persusade buyers off the fence.

Many homes fall out of escrow because of condition issues not discovered until the transaction is underway. Sometimes, advance inspection reports can surface issues, allow you to get repairs completed and thus avoid that fatal  issue. However, at other times, prelisting inspections show issues too big for you to have repaired that will be deal-killers for almost any mortgage lender. In this case, you do yourself the favor of forgoing even bothering trying to get it past a mortgage lender and empower yourself to list it as a cash-only sale for a fixer-upper price.

2. Your prelisting inspection won't replace the buyer's inspections. To be clear, whatever inspection(s) you obtain won't be the inspection, it will just be an inspection. You don't want the buyer to rely totally on it and forgo his own due diligence for liability reasons; your aim is to either verify the place is in good shape, clear the place of major repairs or brief them on why the property is being priced in that way and what they'll need to do (or won't need to do) later, assuming you can negotiate an as-is offer.

But you also want the buyer to still obtain his own inspections, so he can attend, ask questions, select the inspector and not fault you for anything that is missed. And you should work with your listing agent to require that the buyer sign your written advice to get his own inspections, as well as to make the property available to the buyer for just that purpose.