Home Inspections RSS Feed

When selling a house, the key is to attract attention. These days, with online listings as a major market for house hunters, an essential part of every seller’s marketing strategy is to include photographs in the listing. Experience has shown that online listings which do not include any pictures are often dismissed without a second glance. Potential buyers want the chance to see the interior of a house to familiarize themselves somewhat with the space before they make a visit in person. Some real estate agents will take the photos themselves, and some choose to hire a professional photographer, but in many cases, the homeowner takes his or her own pictures and submits them to the agency to be used with the listing. As with other fields of…

You’ve spent weeks, maybe even months, searching for the perfect home in Idaho. Your local real estate agent has been great. It took some time, but you found the house. Now, it’s time to get ready to put in an offer. Before you buy the house, you’re going to first need to hire a home inspector in order to make sure that your dream house really is the perfect home.

The market has long since moved away from a buyer beware mentality, and now it has become seller beware. Today’s buyers are more informed, and they are going to do more research and find more information before making a decision. The home inspection is an extension of this, as it allows you to find out if they are any big problems present in the house that will need to be…

You know the importance of having a home inspection done once you’ve made an offer on a house. You want to be aware if there are any major issues in the house that will need to be addressed. If it’s something major, like replacing the roof, or a sinking foundation, you might just want to be able to back out on your offer. Or, you’ll want to have the seller fix the issues first, or come down on their asking price so that you can afford to repair the problems.

Before you even make an offer, though, you should do your own brief home inspection. This will not replace the professional home inspection, but it will give you a rough idea of any issues that might arise after you place an offer and have a legitimate home inspection performed. Fortunately, the…

Buying a home can already be a massive undertaking. It takes a lot of time, a lot of research, and a lot of money. It’s a big decision to buy a house. It can be confusing. Especially when you start hearing terms like “bank-owned” and “REOs.” What do those even mean? And are they really as good of a deal as they sound like? Bank-owned homes and REOs, or real estate owned homes, are basically the same thing. A house becomes bank-owned after it has been foreclosed on. Essentially, in pre-foreclosure, the homeowner has defaulted on the mortgage by missing payments. At this point, they can still stay in the house, but they have to pay and get their mortgage payments caught up. If they don’t, the house is foreclosed on and turned over to the bank. At this…

Many people believe that house staging is a long, complicated process and can only be understood by professionals. This isn't true. You already have most of the knowledge and skills that you need. Though your main focus is selling the home, you also understand the buyer’s perspective. You've been there before so trust your instincts. Try to remember what you were looking for as a buyer. You bought your house. Why? What was it about the house that you live in that stuck out to you? Don’t underestimate your knowledge. You know your house better than anyone else. When getting ready for a buyer, simply learn to accentuate the positives of your home. Think big picture but don’t forget about the little details. Every little detail of your home should…

Chaos, stress, excitement- these feelings come with selling a house. How do you enhance the excitement part of it and lower the chaos and stress? There are so many things to do and seemingly never enough time to accomplish them. One item on the “to do list” is to get your house appraised. You need to know how much your house is worth in the house market of this year. You can not control the housing market but you can get as prepared as possible for your appraisal to help make sense of the chaos that can come with moving.

House Renovations

Many people believe that spending thousands of dollars on upgrades will increase their home value significantly. That is not always true. For example, many people believe that spending lots of money…