Home Inspections

I coordinate with the listing agent or seller to access the exterior of the property approximately 30 minutes before your inspection. This gives me the opportunity to get the lay of the land, and start to gather answers to some inevitable questions.

Once I finish the exterior of the home, my next stop is at the buildings utilities, usually the basement/utility room. During this portion of the inspection I will be looking at the buildings mechanicals and any accessible portion of the foundation and underlying frame/structure.

My next stop is the attic and or any unfinished, unheated spaces. From here I will work to finer details through living spaces in the home, concluding in the kitchen to run appliances and discuss our findings. To get a good sense of my inspections and reports, I encourage you to peruse a sample report.

The inspection is the clients time and they should feel free to be as involved or uninvolved in the process as they like; that said I find the best outcome is when I am allowed the space to inspect the property and clients join me at the end for a discussion and walk through. With that in mind, should you choose to join for the inspection, arriving an hour after the scheduled start is our preference.

The inspection and report is designed to serve two primary purposes; the first is to act as an owners manual for the property. The report will go over the location of water sources, fuel sources, how these systems can be shut down, the different integrated systems on the property and how they should be maintained. Even as we are finding items in good condition you will find notes throughout your report about how to keep them that way. The second part of this process is where I report to you anything considered a defect or deficieency by current standards. The report will break these items down into three sub categories based on their priority. Each defect note will include a write up of the conditions found, pictures, and a recommendation for correction.

The services we provide are not equivalent to a code enforcement inspection. There is some overlap to building codes but no one is required to correct anything discussed in my reports and the reports are not shared with anyone other than my client.