<p>My parents had settlement on their 37 year old, one owner home yesterday. The buyers scheduled a walk through to occur a few hours before settlement. My only experience with a walk through was when I built a home. A walk through before settlement was for the purpose of insuring everything was completed. And it was as the term implied, a process whereby I walked through the home to determine it had been finished.</p>
<p>So imagine my surprise when the buyers and their realtor showed up and immediately engaged in a full out inspection of the house. Keep in mind that the house had been inspected by the buyers already, and they had received a full report. But they were running appliances, flushing toilets, and heating and cooling the place.</p>
<p>In all of the homes we have sold or purchased, we never had a walk through, except for new construction. Is this a new trend? For those of you who have sold a home recently, did your buyers schedule a walk through/full inspection just hours before the settlement?</p>
<p>Practices may vary by region, but I have always heard of buyers doing a walk through prior to closing (settlement). I’m in NY. We did a walk-through the day before closing, and discovered the immaculate, perfectly cared for house we had agreed to buy had some major cracks in the ceiling. We were concerned they meant water damage; the crafty seller said it was just some bad paint. We negotiated an adjustment at closing ($600). Guess what? Major roof leaks once we’d moved in. Buckets of water.</p>
<p>If your area normally hasn’t experienced walk throughs before, it may be a new trend. Perhaps buyers have heard stories of sellers who are so tapped out they have deferred many routine maintenance chores and the house may look nice and pass inspection, but on a second look, there are issues.</p>
<p>We’ve always done a walk through before settlement (over 3 decades & a dozen houses.) Usually it’s the day before, but sometimes it’s been the day of closing. That may depend on when the sellers move out and other considerations. It’s a way to verify that the sellers are turning over the house to us in the same condition it was when we signed the purchase contract, and no damage has been done or anything that’s supposed to convey has been removed. You might be surprised at some of the things we’ve discovered on a walk through. In a couple of cases, closing was delayed until an agreement could be reached about recent damage and missing or changed light fixtures, appliances, etc. (I learned early on to take lots of photos before making an offer.)</p>
<p>When we bought out first home in 1985, we had a preclosing inspection the day of the closing. When we sold our previous house in 1994, there was a preclosing inspection the morning of the closing. This is what they called it. It was basically to see that the house was in the same condition, and to see that any items that were supposed to be left for the new owners were indeed left.</p>
<p>I think it’s pretty normal to do a walk-thru within a day or so of closing. It’s to make sure nothing changed according to the terms - i.e. that the window coverings are still there, included appliances are still there, no new stains on the carpet, no new holes in the walls, broken windows, etc. </p>
<p>It’s not in my experience for the purpose of a secondary full-on inspection which should have already been done weeks before closing.</p>
<p>IMO it makes a lot of sense to do a walk-thru just before the closing - especially for a house that’s not new and therefore owners are moving out. If I was buying I’d insist on it.</p>
<p>I do a final ‘walk-about’ of a car I’m buying as well and have rejected one before due to damage their dufus car wash prep guy did because he didn’t know how to wash a car properly (as if it’s real hard)!</p>
<p>When we bought our house, the sellers were at the preclosing walk through. When we sold our house, we sellers were at the preclosing walk through too. And all of the realtors were there too.</p>
<p>We have always done walkthroughs with our purchases and sells. They always made me a little nervouse, but on the ohter hand, I was always glad I had the oppourtunity to do it. I can’t imagine not doing one.</p>
<p>Thanks for the memories. When we sold our house there was a walk through right before closing. We had just moved out, with professional movers, and the basement doors and garage doors were open all day (a squirrel got into the basement, and the movers captured it, but that’s a different story). With those doors open all day the breeze/wind had blown out the furnace pilot light in the basement, so when the buyers tested the furnace on that late Spring day it didn’t go on. Fortunately, I figured out what had happened, relit the pilot, and we all lived happily ever after. So yes, they tested appliances.</p>
<p>The one time we didn’t do one as buyers, we discovered that between the inspection and our move-in that the hot water heater had died (15 year old house in Oklahoma, not a shock but not something we had planned for). Plus the inspector had evidently not gone up on the roof (one story, low slope, shake shingles) because there was no spark arrester/screen inside the pretty stone chimney and there was a birds nest on the damper. Fortunately mrs mockingbird showed up behind the glass doors long before we lit our first fire.<br>
So yeah, we do a pretty thorough walk-through now.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine not doing a walk through either–for all you know, a tree could have fallen through the roof the night before, or the whole place could have burned down. Since the property is vacant, there’s no way to know what’s going on without being on the premises and checking. It’s just a way to assure that the house is in the same condition as it was when the price was negotiated, and that you’re getting what you paid for. I don’t know of a real estate broker who wouldn’t insist upon it. We did it with our first home, a condo, 34 years ago, so it’s definitely not a new trend!</p>
<p>We have bought and sold many houses. Never done a walk through right before closing. I can understand looking for the big things, major damage and fixtures still there. But what about the little things? What if there were items that were not noticed nor discussed in a homeowners inspection in the early stages? What if you hadn’t had an inspection done? The seller has already moved his things out, and now you discover something else you want fixed that was never addressed in the first place. How the heck do you negotiate that one? What if you decide there are several items, because God knows, no older house is going to be perfect, and maybe the seller wouldn’t have sold for a great price if there were demands for many things to be fixed. Houses are complicated.</p>
<p>^ If that happens, you renegotiate the price so that the difference pays for the stuff that cropped up during the walk-through.</p>
<p>You fully inspect a house when negotiating, and and you agree on a price. But three days before closing, the owner’s teenage son got rejected by MIT, and angrily punched a hole in every wall. But he did it behind the hanging pictures so nobody noticed. You do the walk-through (pictures and furniture are gone) and exclaim “yikes, there’s a hole where every picture hung! That’s going to cost me $4,000 to fix!”</p>
<p>If your attorney is good, and other parties agree to it, the settlement papers will reflect $4,000 owed to buyers.</p>
<p>It’s actually pretty straightforward.</p>
<p>The walk-through is for things that occurred <em>after</em> the price was agreed upon; you can’t decide willy-nilly at settlement that you want to renegotiate because you forgot to do the initial inspection.</p>
<p>And that is ONE reason the real estate agents were with us on the walk throughs…they had also seen the houses. </p>
<p>Luckily we have never had an issue…but we know folks who did. One family bought a house including all the appliances (it was in their contract which they bought with them to the walk thru). Imagine their surprise when they got into the kitchen and there was a built in dishwasher…but NO stove, NO fridge. Sellers had SOLD THEM at a tag sale. Guess what…the sellers had to pony up at closing for money for this…or the deal would have been OFF.</p>
<p>Walk-throughs are actually the norm in NJ. But then so are inspections ahead of time, Busdriver. Who would buy a house without an inspection? As stated, the walk-through is to make sure everything is as has been agreed upon, post-inspection. As an example, if something has been stipulated as being repaired because of the inspection, the walk-through assures it has been done. And, also as mentioned here, that no new damage has happened. It’s not to find every tiny thing imperfect in the house. It’s too make sure that the contract is honored accurately.</p>
<p>It is standard practice here. Since the home buying process can take a while, an appliance may stop working, etc. in that time. We had an issue with one house we bought where the sewer line was blocked-not something we caught or noticed on the inspection or walkthrough because flushing toilets were fine but when I did a load of laundry right after closing, the line backed up into the basement. We called the real estate agent right away and had her come look at it. The sellers ended up having to pay for fixing that and the carpet that was damaged.</p>
<p>All of your arguments for a walk through make sense, but I live in a very conservative, behind the times, “we have always done this way” area of the country. I’m going to ask around to determine if this is now common in my area, which it could very well be. </p>
<p>Because my parents had an auction on the property a week before settlement, I assumed the buyers just wanted to be sure that no damage occurred to the house during the auction. I would be concerned too if hundreds of people were on the property, which is why we were instructed by the auctioneer service to keep the house locked during the sale, which was held outdoors.</p>
<p>But my parents’ realtor was not present for this walk through, and when it evolved into an inspection, I called their office to complain. Their solution was to say that the sellers were not to be present. We left immediately.</p>
<p>I suspect that they were just too lazy to be present, and thought that I would do their job for them.</p>
<p>It really isn’t something that has ever been offered to us. I guess we’ve been lucky. Home inspectors we’ve hired have always caught many things, but they certainly haven’t found everything. But I do wonder if people use this as an opportunity to back out of a purchase. Look at that stain on the carpet that was under the furniture that was removed, hey I didn’t notice that crack in the ceiling (but it was there all the time). If you don’t have pictures of everything, how can you prove it wasn’t there before? Just because a realtor was there doesn’t mean they caught everything. A house looks far different without the furniture.</p>
<p>I can just see a real mess developing if the seller has already moved all of his belongings, and the buyer tries to use it as an opportunity to get a price reduction or pull out. In a perfect world everyone wants the deal to go through, but that’s not always happening.</p>
<p>MY DH is a real estate atty in a major metro area. He always advises clients to do a walk-through on the day of the closing or within 24 hours of the closing. Yes, flush toilets, run the water, check that appliances are working in addition to checking for general damage. It’s often weeks (months?) between contract signing and the closing, and much can change which needs to be renegotiated.</p>