A reader writes:
I want to say something that I think a lot of people are too embarrassed to say, so I will go first. When I bought my house four years ago, I did not get it inspected. Not because I did not know such a thing existed. I knew. I just decided it was for other people: people with more money, people buying big places up in the hills, people who did not trust the Lord to take care of them. I told myself I had a good eye. I worked twenty-two years fixing trucks. I can tell when something is wrong.
The house is a three-bedroom concrete bungalow, about thirty years old, on a corner lot. The owner was an older lady moving to live with her son in Florida. She was sweet and she was in a hurry, and I was in a hurry too, because my wife and I had been renting for eleven years and we were tired. The bank sent a valuer. He walked around with a clipboard for maybe forty minutes, took his pictures and told us the price was fair. In my head, that was the inspection. The bank had checked it. If the bank was lending money on it, it must be all right.
I know now that the valuer was doing a job for the bank, not for me. His question was “is this house worth what they are borrowing?” Nobody was asking my question, which was “what is going to go wrong with this house, and when, and how much will it cost me?”
Here is what I found out in the first eighteen months, one piece at a time.
The first rainy season, water came in along the back bedroom wall. Not a lot. A dark line along the floor that I thought was mopping water until it came back every time it rained. The roof slab had a crack that someone had painted over with a silver coating, probably more than once. From the ground you could not see it. From the roof you could see it clear as day. I had never climbed up there before we bought. Why would I? The lady said the roof was fine, and I believe she thought it was.
Then the kitchen sink. The cabinet under it had a new board in the bottom, nicely painted. I actually remember thinking “nice, they took care of it.” What they took care of was the look. The pipe behind it had been leaking into the wall for years, and when the plumber opened it up the blocks were soft and the steel inside was rusting. That was the job that hurt.
Then the electrics. Two of the bedroom sockets were not earthed at all. The electrician who came to put in an extra circuit for the new fridge showed me, and then showed me the board, and said a word I will not write in a Christian publication.
None of this was a disaster. The house is standing. We love it. My wife has her hibiscus along the front and I have my workbench in the carport. But all together, the repairs took most of what we had saved for furniture and a good chunk of what we had put aside for our daughter’s school fees. And the worst part is that I believe most of it would have been spotted by a decent inspector in one morning. I would still have bought the house, I think. But I would have gone back to the lady and asked for something off the price, or at least I would have known what I was walking into and planned for it instead of lying awake every time the sky got dark.
So this is my point, and I say it with respect to everybody in the business. A home inspection should not be something a buyer has to know to ask for. It should be something everybody expects, the way everybody expects a title search and a valuation. When you go to buy a used car, even a cheap one, any sensible person tells you to get a mechanic to look at it first. We tell each other that all the time. But for the biggest purchase most of us will ever make, we are shy about paying someone to spend a morning looking at the roof and under the sinks.
I have heard all the reasons against it. It costs money when you are already stretched. The seller might get vexed and sell to somebody else. There are not always enough good inspectors in every parish. Some sellers are family or church people and it feels like an insult to check behind them. I understand all of that. I felt all of that. But I have come to think that most of those reasons are really about feelings, not about sense. A seller who is honest has nothing to fear from an inspection. And a buyer who is serious should not be made to feel like a troublemaker for wanting to know what he is buying.
There is also a church side to this that I want to mention, because I think it matters. I used to believe that checking up on things was a kind of doubt. That if I really had faith, I would just sign and trust God. My pastor put me right on that, a little late. He reminded me that trusting God and using your head are not enemies. Nehemiah went out at night and inspected the walls before he started rebuilding (Nehemiah 2:13-15). He did not just pray and start laying stone. He looked first. I wish somebody had pointed me to that passage four years ago.
I am not writing to blame the lady who sold to us. I do not think she lied. I think she lived with those problems so long she did not see them any more, the way you stop hearing the neighbour’s dog. I am not writing to blame the bank either. The valuer did what the bank paid him for. I am writing because I was a grown man with a good job and a lot of practical experience, and I still got this wrong. If I got it wrong, a young couple buying their first place, or somebody sending money from abroad to buy a house they have only seen in photos, can get it wrong much worse.
So I would like to see agents mention inspections to every buyer as a normal thing, not an extra. I would like to see churches that run first-time buyer talks put it on the list. And I would like fathers like me to stop acting like we can see through concrete. We cannot. I could not.
My daughter is twenty-three now and saving for her own place. I have already told her: I will help with the inspection fee. That is my contribution, and it is not up for discussion.
— Garfield, Mandeville
Editor’s note
Garfield puts his finger on a common mix-up: a lender’s valuation and a buyer’s inspection answer different questions. One asks whether the house supports the loan; the other asks what condition it is in and what it may need. If you are buying, it is worth asking your agent or attorney-at-law how and when an independent inspection can fit into your timeline, and asking any inspector what they will and will not check, since a roof or a septic system may need a specialist. And as he says, looking carefully before you commit is not a lack of faith. It is part of caring well for what you are being trusted with.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
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