I was a sucker. I paid too much for my home, in the late 1990's. Like $340K for a broken down house built cheaply in 1962. 1,200 square feet.
Banks will not risk millions of dollars on properties because of bad appraisals. Appraisals around here tend to be on the conservative side.
Single family houses are being built like crazy in my area. You can smell plywood in the air.
Laws vary from state to state. In MA, home inspectors weren't required to be licensed by the state so anyone could call themselves a home inspector but now you need a license to be a home inspector. May be the old way in other states where no license is required. They're also not required for conventional loans, the bank never asks and never sees the inspection report. Even FHA loans just have the appraiser pointing out obvious stuff like peeling paint or missing hand rails, but they don't really do a real home inspection like inspect the heating system/plumbing. For MA, the limits on the home inspection is that if they miss something, you just get your money back from the home inspection which is a few hundreds, you don't get thousands back because they miss something big.
I didn't think the selling price was negotiated at the closing.
If it's a confirming loan, they just get resold by Fannie/Freddie. It's the homeowner that gets stuck with the bad home. They only get stuck if it gets foreclosed on and that's a low likeihood when there's a decent down payment. They always require an appraisal though but lately they've always been "hitting the numbers".
Brian is correct. Conventional loans do not require inspections. It is very common for inspections to be waived.
You can renegotiate the selling price after the home inspection. Usually there's a contingency for a satisfactory home inspection so if you don't like one thing, you can walk away from the deal but you lose your home inspection money. Of course the seller can always say no and then it's time to fish or cut bait.
I worded it wrong, they wanted a concession because of the damage that they could see and that was declined.
There is an appraisal and a home inspection. Appraisal is required, inspection isn’t. All a home inspector does beyond a visual is check water pressure. Pretty much just suckering people out of money that could have just read a book and done it themselves. Building inspector is again completely different. Nothing to do with a home sale. Termite / wood rot inspection is again separate and usually required as part of the appraisal.
Real estate broker here. Probably been on over 100+ home inspections. The lender requires an appraisal. Depending on the state and property, they might require a termite inspection. For instance they're not going to do a termite inspection for a condo that's on the 20th floor. Some home inspectors are also qualified to do the termite inspection, depends on the home inspectors. The home inspectors I like are former construction supervisors so they have previous construction/contracting experience. The inspector I know says he got out of it because he got tired of workers that would either show up drunk or not show up so it was a hard business. The appraisers are the only thing the bank requires, the home inspection is basically for the buyer's info.
You'd have to read a lot of books to be able to do a good one and you'd need experience to know what you're looking at. Usually on a home inspection I know most of what is seen, but still run into new items all the time. Although to be fair, the last couple of properties I bought, I skipped the home inspection. They were rental properties so I didn't really care that much. Usually there's always 5-10k worth of issues and I figured if there was much beyond that, I'd just fix it.
