Choosing a Home Inspector

A house inspector can let you know if you're about to buy a lemon of a house or warn you about potential problems. (Art courtesy of ArtToday.com.)

When buying a home, a house inspector can be your best friend.

A house inspector can let you know if you're about to buy a lemon of a house or warn you about potential problems. At best, you can move into the house confident that it's in good shape; at worst, the inspector's report can let you back out of the deal if the house has major, unexpected problems.

A general inspector can't detect every problem, though. That's why it helps to know how to select an inspector and when to call in a specialist.

"What a home inspector does is provide an independent review of the property, not influenced by any of the other professions in the transaction," says Mike Casey, an inspector in Haymarket, Va., and president of the American Society of Home Inspectors.

What Casey means is that the inspector doesn't have a stake in the outcome of the inspection. Inspectors get paid whether or not the sale goes through. In contrast, lenders and real-estate agents make a profit when the sale closes.

More than three-quarters of buyers hire inspectors. Most of those buyers have a clause in the purchase contract that makes the sale contingent on acceptable results of an inspection. The buyer can void the purchase or renegotiate the offer if serious problems are found.

The cost of a home inspection varies by inspector, region and size of house. About 40 percent of buyers pay $200 to $250. A typical home inspection includes an assessment of:

• Exterior features such as outside walls, soffits, decks, the roof, chimneys and drainage conditions;

• Interior items such as the condition of windows, doors, plumbing fixtures and electrical outlets and switches;

• Heating and cooling systems;

• The attic and crawl space and whether they have adequate insulation and ventilation.

Casey says inspectors do visual inspections--"we don't take things apart"--to look for evidence that an item is close to failure. "We're looking for big surprises and anything that's a significant safety hazard," Casey says.

Casey calls home inspectors "expert generalists." Usually they're not equipped to do specialized work such as checking for termites. That's a job for a pest inspector.

Likewise, you usually have to hire specialists to assess the conditions of swimming pools, septic systems, underground storage tanks for heating oil, and the health of trees and shrubs. There are exceptions: some general inspectors are qualified to examine swimming pools and septic systems, Casey says.

Not all inspectors assess appliances such as washers, dryers, dishwashers, refrigerators and stoves.

The most common way to find an inspector is through a real-estate agent's referral. If you would rather find the inspector yourself, you can ask friends and relatives who they have hired, look in the Yellow Pages under "Building inspectors" or "Home inspectors," or visit the ASHI Web site, which has a search page at www.ashi.org/find/ that allows you to type in your ZIP code and get a list of certified inspectors in your area. Or you can call an ASHI referral line at 800-743-2744.

ASHI isn't the only game in town. There's also the National Association of Home Inspectors, and it's Web search page can be found on www.nahi.org.

Inspectors usually recommend that the buyer accompany them as they look at the house. They can explain the severity of any problems they find, give maintenance tips and answer questions.

"The buyer should see what the inspector sees so there's no misunderstanding," Casey says.