Who is to Blame When a House does not Pass the Inspection?

There are good Home Inspector’s that are getting a bad rap when an inspection discloses major issues and the clients decide they do not want to deal with the problems found so the contract falls through.

At one of Rob’s resent speaking engagements, Rob encountered two realtors who made it clear to him that they hated home inspectors. Why is there so much animosity between home inspectors and realtors?

I believe one of the reasons is when a home is inspected and major issues are found that can place the deal into a situation where the clients may not want to negotiate over the problems and deal ends up falling.

Instead of the realtor excepting this as being a part of their business the inspector gets accused of “Failing a House.” This kind of news spreads through out the realtors and the inspector’s reputation gets hurt all because he or she did their job for who is support to be “mutual” client.

Inspectors DO NOT fail a house, it is the house that fails the inspection on its own merits and the buyer has the right to back out of a deal if they have a contingency based on the findings in their Inspection Report. We have experienced this type of mindset more then once in our buying process.

We had set up an appointment to check out a house we were considering. During the first walk through we saw some issues the house had and Rob suspected there was asbestos. Our realtor tried to smooth every thing over and then assure us that there was no asbestos in the house.

We kept getting this uncomfortable feeling our realtor was hiding some thing by the way he was acting. We were concerned that he knew more then he was saying pertaining to the condition of the house.

The residence was owned by a Company that bought homes put a little money into them for resale. We were hesitant about moving forward, but we also realized we had a week to find a home and it was slim pickings, so we decided to write up the contract and get an inspection done.

Our realtor gave us a couple names of home inspector’s but we were unable to make an appointment with any of them for the day we needed so we found our own inspector. We contacted our realtor to let him know who would be doing the inspection; much to our surprise our realtor became very irritated and extremely aggressive about us not using that particular inspector.

Our realtor accused this Home Inspector of “Failing a House” that caused a large deal of his to fall. We were deeply distressed by the whole conversation and the manipulation that took place. Then to top it off our realtor made it clear he would not be in the same house with that inspector.

The inspection was to be the next day and we were very troubled by our predicament. We did not know what to think concerning what our realtor said concerning this Home Inspector.

There was no time to delay the inspection on the house and now we were also concerned about our realtor’s integrity. We did ended up following through with the inspection and hoped for the best.

Everyone showed up for the inspection. Much to our displeasure our realtor refused to get out of his van and he sat there peering at the inspector which made for a very uncomfortable situation for everyone. Our realtor’s behavior was very unprofessional.

The inspection went well. The Inspector was very pleasant and very meticulous. There were things revealed to us that were costly issues and one of those issues was asbestos. The Company who owned the house was not willing to work with us, so needless to say the deal fall.

The deal fall not because the inspector was incompetent, but because the house failed on its own merits and we the potential buyers did not want to sink ten thousand dollars into repairs.

But there was another “hidden” reason why the deal fall. It turned out our realtor was aware of what problems that house had and he also knew our situation of needing to have a contract as soon as possible so he tried to use that to his advantage.

Jo-Ann M. Falace