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Buying a home is one of the most exciting purchases that you’ll ever make in your life. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of finally moving out of your rented home and into a space that you can truly call your own.
However, buying a home is also one of the biggest purchases you’ll ever make, if not the biggest. Thus, in order to ensure that you make a financially responsible decision, you really have to take your time with this process.
One of the steps in the home buying process is the home inspection contingency. Whenever you make an offer on a home that looks like it’s right for you, you need to ensure that the offer has a home inspection contingency attached to it, or you could easily find yourself on the wrong end of a terrible decision.
In This Post:
What is Home Inspection Contingency?
In a nutshell, a home inspection contingency is an addendum to the offer you make on a house that allows you a period of time to do a complete inspection of the house in order to assess its strong and weak points. This period of time is typically no longer than seven days.
If you find anything in the inspection that is significantly out of the ordinary and was not appropriately disclosed before you made the offer, then the contingency gives you the legal flexibility to retract the offer that you made on the house.
What Does a Home Inspection Look Like?
A home inspection has a lot of different elements to it. After all, remember that all houses are incredibly complex structures. There’s a lot that you will want to check before committing to paying a thirty-year mortgage on the building.
First up is the electrical system. Are there any issues with the electrical system? Are the electrical bills for the location consistent with the averages in the market? Are there any weak points that need to be shored up to prevent electrical fires or short circuits?
The next thing to inspect is the plumbing system. A plumbing failure can have a tremendous negative impact on your home. After all, if a pipe bursts, then you are easily looking at tens of thousands of dollars in water damage.
Last but not least, you can also do a pest and building inspection. The last thing that you want to do is move into a home that has a rodent and roach infestation. These things can be easily hidden in the earlier process of open houses and home visitations, so by getting a professional service to come in and inspect the home, you can rest assured that pests will be kept far away from your new home.
Home Buying is Hard
There’s no doubt that home buying is a hard process. All the different things to consider, whether it’s attending open houses, interacting with real estate agencies, or setting up a home inspection contingency, are time-consuming and arduous tasks.
But just remember that in the end, the feeling of having your own home will make it all worth it.
For more home buying advice, check out the rest of the articles on the website!
