Home inspection
A home inspection is a professional, visual, non-invasive examination of a property's condition — structure, roof, exterior, plumbing, electrical, heating and cooling, insulation, and interior components.
The buyer commissions it, the buyer pays for it, and it exists to inform a decision that must be made inside the inspection contingency period.
What it is not#
It is not an appraisal. An appraisal estimates value for the lender's benefit. An inspection assesses condition for the buyer's.
Confusing the two is common and costly. A property can appraise perfectly well and have a furnace at the end of its life, a roof with three years left, and a sewer line full of roots.
The limits of visual#
The word non-invasive does real work.
Inspectors do not open walls, lift flooring, dig up sewer lines or dismantle equipment. They report what is visible and accessible, and they recommend further evaluation where something visible suggests a problem they cannot see the extent of.
Those recommendations are the most important lines in the report. "Recommend evaluation by a licensed structural engineer" is not boilerplate — it means the inspector saw something they are not qualified to size, and the buyer now has a decision to make within a closing window.
The specialist follow-ups worth knowing about#
Sewer scope, a camera run through the lateral line to the street. On older housing stock this regularly finds root intrusion or collapse costing thousands to remedy, and nothing about it is visible from inside the house.
Radon testing. Minnesota has high radon levels relative to much of the country, and testing takes days rather than minutes.
Septic compliance, on any property not on municipal sewer.
Chimney and fireplace evaluation, which requires equipment a general inspector does not carry.
Each takes time to schedule, which is the argument for an inspection period long enough to accommodate a second visit.
Attending#
Worth doing wherever possible.
The report records findings; the walkthrough is where the inspector tells you which of them keeps them up at night and which are ordinary for a house of this age. That distinction rarely survives into written language, which is necessarily cautious and even-handed.
It is also where you learn where the water shutoff, the main panel and the gas valve are, which is knowledge worth having before you need it.
On distressed property#
Inspections matter more here than anywhere, and are harder to get.
Vacant properties may have utilities off, which means the furnace, water heater and plumbing cannot be tested at all. An inspection of a house with no power and no water is a partial inspection, and the report will say so.
Arranging for utilities to be turned on for the inspection is worth negotiating into the contract. Without it, the buyer is inspecting the parts that cannot fail and guessing at the parts that can.