If you’re looking to list your house on the market, one of the first things you should consider before doing so is a home inspection.
Firstly, an inspection lets you know the present condition of your home, revealing potential problems you might want to repair before selling. Secondly, the inspection’s results can help you set a fair price for your home right from the start, making it easier to be transparent and negotiate with a buyer.
And if you happen to have a home with any of the following issues listed below, you’ll thank yourself for getting a home inspection sooner than later. Here are 4 issues you should hope your home inspector doesn’t find in your house.
1. Foundational Problems
Foundation issues often mean one thing: lots of money spent on repairs. If your home inspector places a golf ball on one side of the house and it rolls to the other, you may have a serious problem.
Given time, most houses tend to ‘settle down’ in some way or the other. This usually manifests itself in hairline cracks, particularly in the basement foundation. If you’re lucky, these cracks are harmless, but if your inspector finds them out to be a deeper structural problem, you may need a foundation engineer to assess your home’s safety.
2. Black Mold
For the most part, mold is a problem you just can’t avoid, particularly in stuffy bathrooms with poor ventilation. But if you have a black mold infestation in your crawl space or basement, you may have a serious health hazard in your home. When left alone, black mold can cause recurring health problems like asthma, allergies, and even death.
Black mold can be an especially annoying problem because you need to deal with removal and ensure the mold doesn’t come back. And that’s just the start of your problems, because mold is usually just a symptom of an even larger issue, which could involve foundational cracks where water has seeped through, or plumbing issues that have been left unfixed for years.
3. Anything to Do with Asbestos
Asbestos is a cheap fire-resistant material popular in many homes build between the 40s and 60s. It was commonly used as insulation for attics, heating pipes, siding, and roofing. When material made of asbestos is damaged, it releases fibers that can damage the lungs when inhaled, so much so that it’s been associated with lung cancer.
If the asbestos is still encapsulated in the building material, it shouldn’t cause any health problems, which also means that not all old houses are bad. However, remodeling or renovating any part of the house with asbestos can be a major inconvenience, requiring builders to wear appropriate protective gear before doing any work.
It’s for this reason that any home with asbestos, safe or not, is usually a red flag for any homebuyer—it’s simply too much trouble to deal with.
4. Furnace Problems
If your HVAC depends on a furnace and that furnace conks out, your best course of action might be to get a new unit, which can easily cost upwards of $5,000. A buyer might not be keen on taking on that added cost, so consider lowering your selling price to compensate. And even if the furnace seems to be in working condition, getting a home inspection should eliminate any doubts on how many years your furnace has left before needing a replacement, which again, should help you price your home fairly.
If your home inspector finds a number of issues with your home that you think might make it hard to sell, you can still sell it as is to Blue Hen Homebuyers. We buy all kinds of houses, regardless of their condition and age. Call our offices today at 910-802-2222 to learn more about how our services can help you.