Realtor Sander Scott shows how to find home inspectors through your local Realtors Association affiliate directory. He explains the range of services available, from whole-house inspections to specialized ones like radon or septic, and says the best inspectors have a "deal-killer" reputation for being thorough. Sellers in hot markets can use early inspections to attract higher offers without inspection contingencies.
own, then how do you find a local inspector in your area who's going to be well respected? Well, let me show you.
So what I— what you do is just go to Google, Google Realtor Association near, and insert your city.
In my case, Traverse City, Michigan. This will come up.
You typically want to look for the Realtors Association and not necessarily the MLS.
So I'm going to skip through down here to Aspire North Realtors. That's the realtor association in my area. And then you're going to look for the member section and then the, in this case, the affiliate directory.
So affiliates are members that provide real estate services.
So here's a list, right? Advertising, aerial photography, appraisers, attorneys, et cetera, et cetera. And down here is home inspectors.
So if we click here, It's gonna give us a list of home inspectors. So some of these provide the umbrella.
They'll do a home inspection, they'll arrange for water testing, they'll arrange for radon testing, they'll arrange for a lot of different things.
Some of them are more narrowly focused. In this case, for example, Butch Straight is a septic inspector.
He's not going to do the whole house inspection, whereas Traverse City Home Inspections, is the inspector that I recommend most often in my area. They'll do, they'll climb up in the attic, look for roof leaks. They'll check out the mechanicals. They're looking in the basement for any evidence of water intrusion, et cetera. They'll also coordinate radon testing. They'll coordinate, they'll coordinate a septic inspection. If so, they, they work with Butch Strait and others to, to do that.
So there's a whole menu of different things that you can inspect.
And that's where, in my opinion, you should really get the guidance of a good buyer's agent, because a lot of what to inspect and why to inspect is dependent on the property itself and what concerns you may have as a buyer.
The one thing to really understand, and I'm going to pull back the curtain a little bit as it relates to the real estate industry, is that in some of my conversations other area realtors, they have referred to certain inspectors as deal killers.
In other words, they're sort of saying that the, these inspectors almost do too good of a job and they scare away a potential buyer because they give them so much about what's wrong with the property.
The, the thing you want from a home inspector is a thorough home inspection.
You want to know it's their job to find everything that's wrong with the property.
And it's important to know as a potential home buyer that no home is perfect, even if it's brand new and it's just gotten the occupancy permit because it's new construction.
There's still going to be issues with it. To me, if I hear from another realtor that a home inspector was a quote unquote deal killer, then that's the home inspector I want, whether I'm representing the buyer or the seller, because I want to know everything that's wrong with the property.
So if I'm working with a seller, the reason I would be engaging a home inspector in that case is that typically it's, it's really good, especially in a hot seller's market, to get ahead of a bidding war type situation. And so I want to pick the most thorough, well-respected, quote unquote, deal-killing reputation for a, for a home inspection, because when I show that home inspection, in the case of a bidding war, what I'll do is I'll show—
there's multiple parties involved, we've gotten multiple offers. I'll go back to those buyers and say, here's the home inspection, now come back with your highest and best offer that is not contingent upon a home inspection. And so having the quote-unquote most thorough deal-killing type reputation of a home inspector is really important because it just gives so much credibility to that to that home inspection. So the buyer's agents that are representing can, can rest assured they've gotten all the information from a well-respected home inspector.
So, so anyway, this is how you find home inspectors. And this is not all-inclusive.
This is not all the home inspectors in the area, but they're probably the most— they're doing the most business, and they are affiliated with the local Realtors Association. And that's provides you a little bit of a layer of protection as a consumer. So that's the recommended route that I would go if you're not going to use a buyer's agent. But the most recommended is use a buyer's agent, use a buyer's agent. They— especially one that's doing a lot of deals and is working full-time, they're going to provide you with a lot of expertise that you need in one of the biggest financial decisions that you're going to make in your life. All right, Sander Scott, full-service realtor, signing off.
