I hate home inspectors! (long vent)

[QueenTrident]

I'm so tired of the home buying/selling game.

We had the house we are selling inspected last week. The inspector came up with all sorts of bogus items, like "air conditioner is at the end of its life cycle and needs to be replaced." Huh? It's 10 years old and when he tested it, it worked fine!

Or, how about "Sliding glass door difficult to close. Needs to be replaced." I have no problem opening or shutting it. I don't know what he's talking about.

We also have some wood studs in our basement that are stained. He's claiming that stain is mold and we need to have an entire mold remediation/inspection done.

For some reason, the electrical boxes of other units run through our basement. The inspector said the box installation was of "questionable quality." JCP&L (our electric utility) installed them!

Then there were about 15 items related to caulking and door gliders that the buyer wants fixed, in addition to re-paving the driveway and replacing the entire patio!

Our realtor said to give them $5000 to go away. That's more than 2% our selling price! We already gave them a price break and the refrigerator when we were negotiating. I can't afford to give them anything near that.

And, the icing on the cake is that now the buyers need two more weeks to get their mortgage commitment.

I'm ready to give up homeownership and become a hermit. I can't deal with this anymore.

Sorry for venting. I'm just feeling blue and angry.

 

[ripleysmom]

I know it's frustrating but the Engineer is just doing their job. If you were a buyer wouldn't you want all possible problems noted?

When we were buying our house our inspection report was unbelievable. What our broker told us is that anything that prevents the item in question from being usable should be fixed or replaced and that is it.

As far as repaving the driveway and replacing the patio, you may need to repair them depending on what the banks says. Some banks will not give a mortgage on a house if the property has some problem that could cause injury. If the driveway or patio has a crack that could cause someone to trip and fall that might prevent them from giving a mortgage.

 

[bballmom56]

I don't blame you! Some of those things sound like just normal stuff on a house. They're not buying a NEW house! Can you tell them it's "as is" - "take it or leave it"? If you already gave them an applicance and a reduction in price, I think you've been fair. Do you have enough interest that you'll get another offer quickly?

 

[QueenTrident]

I know the inspectors are doing their job, but this one seemed to be a bit incompetent. He had three or four things wrong, completely.

The driveway we had sealed two years ago. It would never cause a trip and fall. The patio is fine, just made of two different things. One part is cement slab, the rest is pavers. Where the cement slab and pavers meet, there is a 3/4 inch height differential. Other than that, both pieces of the patio are in pristine shape. Should not be cause for concern.

I just don't know if our buyer's are having second thoughts and figure an unreasonable inspection report would cause us to kill the deal. The delay in mortgage commitment also worries me.