When a house changes hands, both buyers and sellers are finding out that there are advantages to calling in. . . : The INSPECTOR
After months of house hunting, you’ve finally found it: the perfect home. The seller accepts your offer, the bank approves your loan, escrow is going smoothly.
But if yours is like a large and growing number of Southland deals, there is another crucial step: the home inspection.
Although they are not required by law, the number of home inspections performed on California homes has grown over the last 10 years to more than 60% of all home sales statewide, said Mike Casey, an El Cajon home inspector and president of the California Real Estate Inspection Assn.
Just a few years ago, a home inspection was a minor part of California real estate transactions. Today, however, as a result of the state real estate disclosure law that took effect in 1987, more and more existing houses--and even some new homes--are inspected at the time of sale.
The disclosure law requires that a seller inform the buyer in writing of any known material facts about the house that might affect its desirability, habitability or value.
“However, most sellers are not construction experts,” Casey said. “They may live with defects in their home for years and not know there are defects. That’s the reason for a good home inspection--it can save you [from a lawsuit] down the line.”
Most inspections are ordered by buyers or their agents, and with good reason: Inspections give buyers a big advantage.
After the inspection is completed and depending on what type of problems are found, the buyer can go back to the seller and ask for those items to be repaired, negotiate the price down or back out of the purchase entirely, if the purchase contract contains an inspection contingency clause.
The sellers may choose to repair the items either totally or partly or they may choose not to repair anything and take their chances with the buyer. That’s why some realty experts advise sellers to have their homes inspected before putting them on the market.
Basically, a home inspection--a visual examination of the systems that make up a house, from the foundation to the roof--should give the buyer a good overall picture of the condition of the home.
“It’s not a cure-all. An inspector cannot see inside walls,” said home inspector Ted Knowles. “But with a trained eye, we can make a good examination of the property, know whether something is built to code or not built to code.”
Knowles has been a building inspector with the city of Burbank for 15 years. About nine years ago, observing the increased number of people requesting referrals for home inspectors, he decided the time was ripe to enter the industry himself. He opened his own side business, Inspections Unlimited, in 1988 and now performs 10 inspections a week.
“I like the investigative part of this work, following a trail of clues to where the problems exist,” he said. “And I get joy out of helping people purchase a home and taking some of the worry out of it.”
The average inspection, Knowles said, takes two to three hours to perform, costs $200 to $400 and includes a detailed written report. Knowles said he asks the buyer to be present at the house during the inspection. “If they don’t understand something I’ve said, I can show them what I mean,” he said.
Here then, for home shoppers, buyers and sellers, is a primer on home inspection, told through Knowles’ examination of a one-story home in West Hills. Located on busy Vanowen Street, the attractive 1,800-square-foot, 37-year-old house recently sold for $190,000.
Knowles said he typically performs five circuits around the house, looking for a different problem each time. He began his tour of the exterior by examining the outer walls for stucco damage and dry rot. On his first circuit around the house, he discovered that the brick wall between the house and its western neighbor had several cracks, most likely resulting from the Northridge earthquake. This was noted in the report.
After completing his tour of the grounds, Knowles checked around the chimney and looked for worn spots among the shingles. He noted wood damage on one side of the roof, information that will be helpful for whoever performs the termite inspection, which is required by most lenders before the close of escrow and which is done by inspectors with specific certification.
Although most areas of the average home are accessible to the home inspector, a thorough check of the roof is not always possible. If the roof is tile, the likelihood of its being damaged by an inspector walking on it is too great. In those cases, Knowles said, the inspector should do a visual inspection.
Knowles checked the gutters and downspouts, making sure they were clear, then moved on to the garage. He immediately noticed a storage loft built just below the original ceiling. He said many people install these, not realizing they must get permits from the city because the loft involves structural alterations. In this case, the loft was well built and should not prove a safety hazard.
Knowles also checked the garage door to ensure that it stops when it encounters an object--say, a car or a child’s bike. The door has a sensor that will stop it from coming down once it hits an object. Knowles said he prefers a different door, one with an “electric eye” that stops if anything breaks the electric beam, such as a toddler or a pet running under the door as it is closing.
The home inspection also included an examination of that Southern California staple, the swimming pool. There, Knowles saw that the drain cover was off-center. Suction from the drain could potentially pull a small child’s hand or foot under the cover, causing the child to become stuck beneath the water.
Because of the pool, the wooden gates to the back yard were also called into question.
“The gates to this backyard should be self-closing and self-latching,” Knowles said. “These wooden gates are too easy to shove open. That’s a real liability for homeowners when it comes to kids using the pool.”
Knowles’ survey of the exterior of the home ended with a look at the meter box, the fuse box, the air-conditioning unit and the water heater. He found that the air-conditioning unit was too close to the fuse box, making it almost impossible for the homeowner to change fuses quickly if need be.
The water heater, in a closet on the side of the house, was fastened to the wall with plumber’s tape, which Knowles said the city of Los Angeles deems too weak to hold a heater in case of an earthquake. He noted this and added that the heater’s pressure release valve was at face level--another potential danger that should be fixed.
Next, Knowles moved inside the house, where his “inspection intuition” told him that the enclosed patio was built without a permit. The real estate agent confirmed this, and it was noted in the report. Without permits, additions cannot be included in the livable square footage of the house.
The inside examination of the house moved quickly and started with what Knowles called the cosmetic walk-through, looking at doors and windows.
“You’d be surprised how many people are interested in whether the windows lock [and] how secure they are . . . “ Knowles said.
The inspector should check for tempered glass in any sliding glass doors to the outside of the house, a code requirement. The state building code also requires smoke alarms in all hallways, besides the smoke alarms in bedrooms required by the Los Angeles City Municipal Code. The West Hills house complied with both requirements.
Besides an inspector’s primary tools--a sturdy ladder and a good eye for detail--Knowles used a few specialized gadgets, such as a carbon monoxide detector to scan for gases escaping from the home’s heater.
A separate inspection or test could be performed for radon--a much more common request by buyers in the East than on the West Coast, Knowles said. “Maybe one in 100 [buyers] request a radon test. So far, it hasn’t cropped up as being a serious problem out here,” Knowles said.
Even more than radon or gas leaks, the one word that strikes terror into the hearts of home sellers and buyers alike is asbestos. In the attic of this house, Knowles discovered old insulation from the original air-conditioning and heating ducts that he believes contained asbestos.
“It looks like when the air-conditioning and heating contractors put in the new units, they had replaced most of the ducting and left the old stuff up there,” he said. “Or it could have been an honest mistake. But now it’s a disposal problem and will need to be removed.”
At this point, the home had been examined from the roof to the yard, leaving only one more area to check: the foundation.
Crawling under houses is no big deal to Knowles, who is used to dealing with cobwebs, spiders and the occasional rodent. Still, he took the time to don a pair of well-worn coveralls before he disappeared into the dirt beneath the floorboards, “or else my wife won’t let me in the house,” he joked.
Finding no major support problems, such as broken floor joists or earthquake damage to the foundation walls, Knowles emerged from under the house and met with the buyers to discuss his report. The presentation, which takes about 45 minutes, is what the buyer is paying for with a good home inspector: a thorough outline of all the flaws and potential risks of a house.
The buyers are a married couple in their 30s, looking to move from a condominium into their first home. They were pleased to hear how well the house has held up over the years. However, the mention of the asbestos brings a look of dismay to their faces.
“The AQMD [Air Quality Management District] advises that if the asbestos is in a place where it’s in use and intact, to leave it alone because you’ll cause more problems by removing it,” Knowles told the buyers. “But this is not in use and not intact, so it has to be removed. What you’ve got to do is decide whether the cost of removing it is worth it for you to do or whether you want to make [its removal] a condition of your moving in.”
The buyers eventually decided to ask the seller for a $500 credit toward removing the asbestos-laced material, according to their agent, Debbie Neumann at Todd C. Olson Estate Brokerage Inc. in Northridge.
Neumann said she also recommended having the seller make the wooden gates self-latching and closing and make arrangements to have the water heater earthquake-strapped, to comply with Los Angeles’ city code. Negotiations were quickly accomplished, allowing the buyers to move into their new home at the close of escrow.
