The Pre-Listing Home Inspection is becoming more and more popular among home sellers and real estate agents as a way to quickly facilitate a home sale, eliminate surprises from ruining a deal and accurately pricing the home for a quick, high dollar sale.
Sellers generally work hard to get their house ready, cleaning, painting and completing repairs necessary to make the sale. Then the sale process begins; finding a real estate agent, listing the home, scheduling open houses and vacating the home while buyers walk through it looking things over, hoping to get a purchase offer.
Finally, the purchase offer comes in; pending a Home Inspection by the buyers, of course.
And the buyer’s Home Inspector will find numerous deficiencies with the home. Maybe the buyers will overlook most of them. They probably will. But what if there’s something that the seller truly doesn’t know about? Something serious. Serious enough that the buyer is willing to walk away.
Now what?
The whole process starts over again. All the work to secure the deal, the excitement that the house has finally sold, it’s all gone. Time to start over, try to secure another buyer and possibly be forced to lower the asking price.
What is a Pre-Listing Home Inspection?
A Pre-Listing Home Inspection is exactly the same thing that your buyer is going to get; a full and complete Home Inspection, with a report delivered to the seller instead of any buyer, prior to listing the home on the market. Now the seller already knows in advance what the problems are beforehand and can have them repaired to avoid the deal “going south” during the buyer’s Home Inspection. Click here for a Sample Home Inspection Report (PDF Download).
Many real estate agents are recommending Pre-Sale Home Inspections to sellers for this very reason. It saves everyone the time, money and heartache of a deal gone bad.
Get an Offer Faster and Higher Price
Here’s the “win-win” aspect; a Pre-Listing Home Inspection can help sellers to get a faster purchase offer and at a higher price. This is because the seller and the real estate agent can use the information from the Pre-Sale Inspection report to accurately set the price of the home right away. Accurate pricing in the market generally leads to a purchase offer quicker, avoiding the home becoming stale to buyers or the necessity to reduce the price to try and drum up interest.
An accurate Pre-Listing Home Inspection can also show buyers that the seller is trying to be up front about the deal and not hide deficiencies in the home. Sellers can gain the trust of the buyer and often get higher initial offers. Following the offer and the buyer’s own Home Inspection, it’s much less likely that a surprise finding will result in the buyer asking for price concessions afterwards.
The Bottom Line
Pre-Listing Home Inspections promote open, honest and speedy real estate transactions at higher prices for sellers, with less time, stress and no disappointment of a deal gone bad. It’s an all around winning situation!