Common Mistakes People Make When Buying a Home

Buying a home is both a financial and emotional investment made by an individual. Unfortunately, sometimes, buyers get carried away with emotions and end up making a bad investment. Moreover, they overlook the importance of a home inspection and the value it adds to the house being purchased and fail to find the flaws associated with it.

To help you steer clear of errors like these that can fill you with regret after a purchase, Lanron Inspections has put together a list of the most common mistakes people make when buying a home and how you should avoid them.

1. Buying a home beyond their maintenance capacity.

The most common mistake people make when purchasing a home for the first time is buying a home that is beyond their capacity to repair and maintain. Often enough, when a buyer has set their mind upon a property, they refuse to let the findings of a home inspection or the advice from the realtor dissuade them from going ahead with the purchase. Your realtor and home inspector have more experience in the real estate market, and sometimes you need to listen to them and walk away from a purchase.

2. Buying character homes without getting a home inspection.

Buyers are often attracted to the beauty and grandeur of character homes, as they are built in the early 1900s and reflect the architectural designs of the time. However, they lack a full understanding of the structural issues that they’ll have to face in the future.

In the Canadian winters, the freeze-thaw cycle deteriorates concrete at an accelerated rate, and with time, the full concrete foundation that these homes are built on becomes weak and porous. The wiring is usually an issue unless it has been correctly updated in the past by a qualified electrician. The plumbing may need replacing as well. The chances of finding asbestos are also high.

We suggest that you must only purchase a character home if you have the budget to renovate it and have already consulted a home inspector regarding your plans. It would be wise if you prepare for the renovation expenses to be double your real expectations so that you don’t end up with a poorly renovated home.

3. Lacking the patience to wait and find a suitable house.

Sometimes buyers are in a hurry to purchase a house, and when they receive non-conditional offers during economy boosts, they grab them. And in their hurry, they sometimes even skip getting a home inspection. However, once the market is corrected and the value of the house decreases, they are finally confronted with the downfall of such a purchase. They are then stuck with the ownership of a property that they overpaid for and are probably still spending money on for repairs.

When it comes to investing in real estate, it’s best if you take some time to plan ahead and watch the market. The amount of cash you can lose paying rent for a small time may be much less painful than what you can lose on the wrong home purchase. Remember, “Patience is a virtue.”

4. Dismissing the findings of home inspection.

As home inspectors, we take great pride in educating our clients about their home and the maintenance that is recommended to keep it in excellent condition. However, one common problem that we face is that our clients often dismiss the findings of a home inspection report instead of fixing the problem areas. When these clients later face issues and call me, the first thing we do is look at the report, and more often than not, it is a defect that was in the report but had been left untreated.

For example, we once inspected a house with three leaking wax seals under three toilets. These were not bad leaks but problematic enough that the moisture meter picked up wetness in the sub-flooring. Six months after the purchase, we received a call from the buyers to come to look at the stained ceilings. When we visited them, we saw that these stains weren’t small stains but rather spread in an area of five feet in diameter, all because of not replacing a $5.00 wax seal. If you hired a home inspector to inspect your house for defects, then you must rectify the problems that are communicated in the inspection report. If you don’t fix the problems, then you’re just biding your time till the small issues become big problems.

To avoid these and other mistakes, reach out to the experts at Lanron Inspections.

We are a company of professional home inspectors in Calgary, Alberta, and have been in the home inspection business since 2007. We have conducted over 6000 inspections to date and serve clients across Calgary, Airdrie, Okotoks, Strathmore, and Cochrane, Alberta. Other than inspecting a client’s house and finding hidden issues, we also try to educate them about the maintenance and upkeep of their house.

For a complete list of our services, please click here. If you have any questions about home inspections, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact us here.