Yes, many of the homes are old, many in my neighborhood are over 100 years old, my parents’ house that I sold and ended up spending a lot due to the inspection was 150+ years old. Unless I was planning a tear down (since there is nowhere to build something new this is somewhat common) I’d need an inspection.
I could never buy a home without an inspection, however it is definitely still a seller’s market here - I’m not sure what buyers are doing.
We bought this fall in a seller’s market. Upon the advice of our agent, we required an inspection, but set a minimum below which we would not negotiate and carved out obvious issues (garage needed a new roof). We also committed to having the inspection within 5 days of offer being accepted and had a maximum of 7 days after offer accepted to back out. It worked for us but a lot to coordinate in a short period of time.
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How do you know the inspection was the reason for the lost bid? Did the seller ask you to skip the inspection and you refused? Or did the seller say they were favoring a different bid over yours because the other one didn’t request an inspection?
Skipping an inspection obviously has value to the seller, particularly if the home has significant issues that would be flagged in an inspection. Whether it is desirable for the buyer to skip the inspection depends on whether the benefits the buyer is getting in exchange for skipping the inspection is worth the increased risk the buyer is taking on. One such benefit is having a bid prioritized. It’s also common for the seller to accept lower bids if they are “as is”, without inspection.
I personally would not skip an inspection for any house with a significant risk of serious issues and would be wary of a seller encouraging me to do so. The house I currently own was the 2nd home for which my bid was accepted. I withdrew my offer on the 1st home for which my bid was accepted after seeing the troubling inspection report, which included 3 investigate furthers, 7 safety concerns, 20 minor repairs, and 5 major repairs, including needing to replace the roof + inadequately handled previous roof leak (effects of past water damage).
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I’ve sold two houses without inspections and it has nothing to do with the houses being in bad shape. As a seller, my interest is simply getting the deal done as quickly as possible for as much money as possible. Inspections slow down the process and always bring up a risk of some tedious repair. I’m always going to pick the offer without an inspection contingency as long as the price isn’t very much lower.
Now as a buyer, my preference would always be to have an inspection but in a hot market, to get the house you want, you’re just not always going to have that option.
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The post said, “particularly if the home has a significant issues that would be identified in an inspection,” not that this was the only possible contributing factor. Of course a seller would prefer no inspection to inspection, if everything else is equal (including offer size), regardless of home condition. However, the seller benefits of no inspection are greater when there are significant issues, and many homes are listed with significant issues present.
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The way to do this in a very hot market is to have an inspector on a speed dial, have them do an inspection before the offer acceptance date, then decide whether to put in an offer with inspection waiver or to walk away. We inspected 3 houses this way back in 2017 and walked away from one without making an offer.
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How would that work? As a seller I wouldn’t allow a prospective buyer to have an inspection before an offer.
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If the offer is not contingent on the results of this inspection, and the inspection is done before the offer review date… why not? The “review date” is usually set up 2-3 days after the open house weekend, so only a handful of very serious buyers would have an inspector on a speed dial and able to do what is called “pre-inspection.”
Even houses sold “as is” let buyers poke around.
Plus, if the seller states that no inspection is allowed, the seller is risking getting zero offers. Because that would signal to prospective buyers that the seller is trying to hide something.
“As is” here in my neck of the woods means “we don’t accept offers with any contingency.” Not “buyer do not inspect at your own risk.”
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I guess I’ve lived in white hot markets for too long but the last two houses I’ve had contracts in a day with 13 offers and 8 offers each. I wouldn’t have bothered wanting someone in my house for a day, getting my dogs and kids out, when I could either be at home or showing it to someone who might buy it. I’ve never said an inspection isn’t allowed, we just chose the offers that waived it.
It’s interesting idea though, obviously it works in some situations!
You were lucky that the people who made the offer you accepted didn’t just get cold feet and forfeited their earnest money and by that tainting the house as “what is wrong with it” in the process. Happens. More often than people assume.
Pre-inspection is usually given an hour max.
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Oh wow, that is not my son’s market. The offer window was usually 48 hrs , often no Open House, often open houses cancelled when upon listing, some developer offered ask +20% in cash. They offered 11 houses, looked at 20+.
They landed their house bc they could close immediately, not bc their offer was better. And they had a no-obligation inspection.
Some of the houses had more than 20 offers. Several had obvious condition issues; one house on the market in their area was listed at $300k and was missing a foundation wall. It was washed out in a flood. We saw houses that had been abandoned mid flip.
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What can they find in an hour? They must concentrate on the big money issues (roof, foundation).
My husband builds new houses and sometimes buyers who are already under contract will hire an inspector. My DH LOVES to argue those building codes - makes his day!
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I’m glad he follows the building codes. Usually builders argue with us because they don’t want to follow them. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I never did THAT!” Well, too bad. It’s in the code.
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Yeah - the codes are in writing (at least where we live) and there’s usually not many grey areas.
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We sold my parents’ 59 year old house last year. They were the original owners. Dad was an engineer and everything was done correctly, beautifully, and was high quality. They had all the paperwork. We accepted an offer that waived the inspection…it was a 59 years old after all.
I would never buy a house without an inspection.
I’m sure my house was built to code - and it’s been a good house. But then you find out when certain things need replacing like my back patio - it was built to code but not built well.
I don’t just want code. I want solid.
We were inspected but they don’t tell you about good quality or not.
I think many builders, especially the volume folks, take shortcuts - things look nice and meet code but aren’t built to hold up forever.
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I would NEVER forego a home inspection. It might not stop you from buying a house, but at least you will know if there is a potential huge expense coming up.
We bought a new home last August. The house looked well maintained with a newish roof, etc… Of course, the inspection found a couple of potentially very expensive problems, but the market was such that the seller made clear they wouldn’t fix anything and it was take it or leave it.
We had an inspection done by the same person before we then put our house on the market so that we could address any potential deal breakers beforehand.
$1200 for both inspections was totally worth it, given that we might have otherwise lost our buyer and/or decided not to buy our current house. People can still back out after the inspection, btw, even if the homeowner is still selling as is. Then the inspection is for informational purposes only.
We also had a bidding war on our former house, which we sold as is (barring legal issues, see below). One of the bidders was so desperate that they said they would forego the inspection. We both thought that was, frankly, quite reckless. At the very least, you will know the roof needs replacing in the next couple of years, instead of getting a nasty surprise when damage occurs.
EDIT: Hire a good company. I’d go for one that uses all the bells and whistles. Our old-school home inspector did miss a couple of things. Our buyers had a very modern company that picked up on those things and we did have to remedy the items before closing because they related to environmental concerns.
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Interesting point. It doesn’t need to be so absolute. If the price is good, say $100,000 lower than a fair value, one can address many issues discovered during inspection with that amount of money, depending on where one is. In many cases, it’s what @Izzy74 said; sellers want to be done with the negotiation, not to hide something.