Home Inspection

Another installment in the ongoing tale of selling my house... ;)

Mona, my realtor, got the buyer's home inspection report back, and told me to sit down before she summarized it. The buyers were asking for a little over $11,000 off the price of the home!

We met to go over the report, and found they listed a lot of nit-picky things. Items such as "sliding glass door sticks" for which they wanted $150 to fix. Fix windows that have broken seals, $600. Replace partially rotted deck stair, $150. Fix pocket door, $150. Fix support beam under house, $350. They also put down "add fan to bathroom" for $500, "new water heater" for $500, and of course the big one "replace roof" $8000.

Instead of any fixes, they just wanted the cash transferred to them in what my realtor called an escrow holdback. This is very unusual, and after a few phone calls, my realtor found that their own lender was unwilling to do this. Since we didn't want to do the escrow holdback, this was good news as she could show to the buyers their own bank didn't want to do it.

Mona commented that half the items they listed were cosmetic and expected in a 25 year old home - if the buyers want new water heaters and things like that, they should look into buying a new home. Plus, all the prices were inflated. She also said it was odd to basically ask a seller to begin renovations for them, such as adding a bathroom fan. Same goes with GFCI outlets (I have a few, but none in the kitchen) - while that is the current spec, when my house was built it wasn't. Again, if you want a home that meets current codes, buy a new house, or do these sorts of improvement after the purchase.

We went through the list and marked the "must fixes" which we had to do for any seller. There were only three of these: the roof, the windows, and an allowance for a support beam under the house. For this, we counter-offered $7000, to be applied towards their closing costs. I got a bid on replacing the roof for $6300, for fixing the windows for $400, and we decided to allow the support beam cost since by the time we got someone out to check for us, it would cost that much anyway.

I decided if they wouldn't accept this, I'd back out and put the home back on the market.

Later in the day Mona called and said the counter-offer on the home inspection report was accepted! The $7000 was split partially towards closing costs and partially towards the price of the home, so the official sale price is now $363,500. I think this is pretty good considering my next door neighbors sold their home a few months ago for $365,000.

Now, the process moves along to the bank, which will send an appraiser to check the home appraises for about the amount of the loan. I guess this is a step to verify the bank won't have a bad loan, if there is a default.