Selling and buying a home are equally exciting (and equally stressful ventures).
While you're gearing up to sell, someone else is gearing up to buy. Everyone involved needs to be as prepared as possible.
Allowing a reputable and experienced home inspector to conduct a home inspection is beneficial to both buyers and sellers. If you are a seller and you appoint someone to do an inspection you will be informed about all the latent defects that the home may have and you can fix it long before listing stage. This will not only save valuable time when it comes to selling and ensure a faster and more hassle free transaction, but you will also be able to ask more for your home when you know for a fact that it is in tip top condition and won’t need major repairs.
More often than not however it is the buyer who requests a home inspection after the offer to purchase has been accepted by the seller. Sellers generally won’t be present for home inspections as this is the buyer’s opportunity to ask all the questions they want to and also because the seller is the person paying for the inspector’s time and expertise, but that doesn’t mean the seller does not need to be prepared.
How sellers can prepare for a seamless, successful home inspection:
- - Make sure that you are ready to leave the house when the inspector and the buyer arrive – don’t linger, hover or hang around.
- The house should be neat and tidy and create a favourable impression
- Ensure that the buyer and inspector have access to the whole home – don’t lock any doors or make it difficult to enter any rooms and leave the keys to outside buildings.
- It is very important that plug points, air cons, heaters, taps, sinks, ovens, geysers, storerooms etc. are easily accessible.
- Make sure that you leave all the utilities connected.
- Remove pets or anything else that could draw the inspector’s attention away from the task at hand.
- Unclog drains and replace light bulbs – by repairing minor things like these you will avoid the idea that your property needs a lot of work.
- Inform the inspector and buyer of anything faulty that you are aware of before the inspection takes place. Transparency is the best policy.
- Do as much research about home inspections as possible before the scheduled inspection so that you are aware of the things that inspectors focus on and that you are equipped to fix it beforehand.
- Provide the inspector with an Entomologist certificate, electrical compliance certificate, electrical fencing certificate and gas compliance certificate if relevant and if you have them.
- The best advice is probably to hire your own inspector before the actual home inspection, but if this is not a possibility be sure to follow the above advice!