Benefits of a Home Pre-Inspection

Join Sarah Logue, RE/MAX Escarpment Team Logue Realty and Tim Latimer, Home Inspector as they walk you through what to check when inspecting a home. The benefits of a pre-inspection prior to putting your home on the market, or in order to purchase firm during a seller’s market. Pitfalls to watch out for.

(Video Transcription)

hi everyone Sarah Logue here on behalf of Team logue and I’m joined by one of our fabulous resources GTA property inspectors Tim Latimer.
How you doing?

He’s an amazing home inspector that we’ve had the pleasure of working with for years and right now I feel like I’m not seeing you enough.

that’s true the market is a little crazy and we’re getting a lot of stress buyers that are concerned that they’re having to make these bids without a home inspection without knowing what they’re walking into so we’ve attacked this twofold thanks to you:

one we’re doing pre-inspections like this where we can tell our clients if there is anything to be cautious or we can tell our sellers what to repair prior to actually putting their house on the market.

so what would a pre-inspection look like for a seller right now?

For the seller essentially we go in it is a little difficult in winter but we do what we can we essentially go through the whole house and try to find issues that a potential buyer may have. We want to find out the age of the furnace the age of the AC, age of the roof if we can see it of course and as we go through the house we’re looking for potential problems if we see something we flag it and we let people know that there’s HVAC specialists, there’s electricians, there’s people that are going to come and actually give you a hand with the other part of that specialist.

Absolutely. Right and you have such a great resource list I mean there’s many times we’ve been standing somewhere and you’re like this is a forced water heated floor and I’m like what and you’re like don’t worry we have somebody so it’s so we always yeah we always have somebody we worked these guys over a thousand times now to the point where you just even if I had a question for them I just call ask and get you a rough idea of what’s going on with the actual issue and then we can get them in here to fix it.
It’s just it’s getting a lot easier but at the same time it is difficult with covid to come in and try to get you guys set up to buy and purchase it is nice though with the pre-inspection for our sellers we vacate the house you come in do a regular inspection and then we have that available in print PDF from you to give to any purchaser correct so it’s a great advantage for me as a listing agent the person with the sign on the lawn to say don’t worry agents don’t worry MR/MRS buyer we can tell you exactly how old the furnace is we can tell you exactly how old the roof is so they know when they’re bidding on the property.

Exactly and what I’d like to tell a lot of my clients is I’m trying to mitigate those surprises that you may have we are limited in what we can do but even just going and poking your head in the attic space and telling if you do have a potential problem with mold or a potential problem with a bathroom vent fan that comes loose that maybe hasn’t caused a problem yet but will in the future.

Right it’s one of those things where you just want to move in and be like okay I’m confident enough to know that I’m moving into this place and there’s not going to be a surprise the first day that I move in yeah and as agents we don’t want that surprise either on a revisit that’s not that’s not what we want to deal with right so taking care of that client making sure they just know what they’re getting right.

And that’s the other piece that you do great for us so I’ll call you in a panic sometimes because I know offer presentations three days from now and I can’t have a home inspection but I sneak you in yes probably the wrong word yeah we get you in for an inspection for our buyers on anything they’re looking at

Yes essentially what it is is it’s very tough in this market so we tried to pivot to a point where you guys can give us a shout and if we do have a half an hour to an hour we can answer those big questions that you may have what what age is the furnace what age is the ac how is the roof is there any mold or a potential issue in the attic and it gives me that just at least the broad spectrum of what’s going on in the house or the specific questions that your clients may have.

That’s amazing I love both products thank you pre-inspection and my buyer inspection we use it regularly and it just gives us a great feeling of comfort overall. So if you’re questioning how to buy um without an inspection you really don’t have to yeah right

I’m even doing uh facetime now just for specific questions that my clients may have.

Oh that’s fabulous.

Yeah they’re just they’re face timing I know it’s difficult and it’s just one of those things where we do what we can to keep people relatively safe in these crazy markets and people can check out your credentials and your business structure at [email protected] you can email me or it’s on gpiguys.com or ca I have both.

Perfect.