Why New Homes Should Be Inspected For Defects
This post sponsored by Lawyers Conveyancing
If the house is brand new there should be no reason to have it inspected for defects, right? This article by Reuben Saltzman explains the reasons why a newly constructed home should be inspected by s qualified and independent building inspector. While the article was written for an American audience, it is just as applicable in Australia.
One of the newest inspectors on our team is Patrick Brennan, who worked as a project manager for Charles Cudd building new homes for many years. Because of his background in home building, Patrick brings some excellent perspective to the table when it comes to inspecting new construction homes. For the majority of the new construction inspections that Patrick has done for us, the builders have actually been quite appreciative for the inspections that we provide. It gives the builders a chance to address defects before they turn into big problems, and there are no occupants that have to be disturbed while corrections are taking place.
Here are some of the most common arguments that we hear against new construction inspections:
- The house has already been inspected plenty of times by the city. We’re private home inspectors. We only have one or two inspections to do each day, so we often spend more time during our single inspection than the city inspectors all spent combined at the home. This isn’t a knock against city inspectors; it’s simply a fact that private home inspectors have the luxury of more time.
- The builder already has a one-year warranty, so anything that comes up later will be addressed by the builder. We do a lot of inspections for clients right before their one-year warranty is up because they’ve had a lot of problems with the builder, and sometimes can’t even get the builder to come out. Builders also seem to be much more responsive to problems that come up before the closing than after the closing.
- If you’re paying a private home inspector to find problems, they’re going to come up with problems. Most of ’em won’t be real.
- A private home inspection is a waste of money.
- The builder won’t fix anything the home inspector comes up with because the house already meets code.
Instead of arguing the rest of these points individually, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. These are all issues we’ve found during new construction inspections over the past year. Some of these photos are from pre-drywall inspections, and some are from one-year warranty inspections. The point of sharing these photos isn’t to make home builders look bad; the point is that everyone is human, everyone can make mistakes, and the home inspector can help to make sure that many of these mistakes are addressed. We identify problems with houses long before they become expensive to fix.
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