Let’s talk about when you might need to walk away from a possible home that you might be thinking about buying; and I’m talking about after a home inspection. I’ve been doing a series of different parts of the actual home buying process to help answer questions that I typically get from buyers. Now, some of these are not super fun to think about or talk about, but here are a couple of those videos: How Much to Save for a House and An Explanation of Closing Costs.
So hi, I’m Marcie Billen with Keller Williams Mulinix and Ruya Team Realty here in Norman, Oklahoma. Let’s address this question of when you should walk away after you get a home inspection on the house and you find something that maybe you’re not comfortable with.
First of all, there are some myths about home inspections. We often get the question, “Well, what if the home doesn’t pass inspection”? Well, your home inspection is not a pass/fail test, actually. There may be other inspections, from maybe like a city or something, that could be pass/fail, but for the home inspection itself, it’s definitely not pass/fail. A home inspection is purely for a buyer’s knowledge. It basically breaks down the house and the home inspector will show you what may need work like in terms of maintenance, or maybe replacement, or safety issues. The home inspection is really designed to expose different parts of the house and show you these things.
Buyers have a specific number of days to get the home inspection done, as per the Oklahoma Real Estate Contract. And there’s actually a blank there to put in the number of days that you want. And typically, your realtor will pick that out for you. It all depends on how long your transaction is actually going to be. If it’s going to be 28 days until closing, then it’s going to be a little bit shorter. If it’s going to be 60 days, it’s going to be a little bit longer. Usually the timeframe that we’re looking at is 10-14 days. The longest I’ve ever seen is twenty one days.
Types of Inspections
During this time, you can get a number of inspections on the house; it’s not just a home inspection. You can also get the HVAC checked out, or maybe you wanna check out the plumbing, or the electrical, or the roof. It’s really up to you, what type of home inspections you want to get. On our Oklahoma Real Estate Contract, there is a list of different types of home inspections you can do, but it does not cover all of them. But I did copy that list below for you.
- Disclosure Statement or Exemption
- Flood, water history, storm runoff water
- Psychologically Impacted property and Megan’s Law
- Hazard Insurance
- Environmental Risks
- Roof
- Home Inspection
- Structural Inspection
- Fixtures, Equipment, and Systems
- Termites
- Use of Property
- Square Footage
5 Reasons to Walk Away
So to the original question: when do you walk away? Well, I’ve seen buyers walk away for usually one of these 5 things.
1. Cold Feet
Is it possible for you, as the buyer, to walk away from the house after a home inspection, or during it because you’re getting cold feet about the house? Yeah! It is possible. You will still need to pay for all the inspections and everything that you’ve ordered that have been performed so far, like the home inspection and possibly even the appraisal, if they were really quick about it. And yes, you can break the contract if you get cold feet.
Whenever you break a contract, you don’t actually have to let the seller know why you’re breaking the contract. However, this is really bad form. I really, really suggest that if you are serious about a house, you put in a contract. If you’re not serious about a house, then maybe you should wait and go over your options a little bit more. And sellers know that you can back out of a contract. They are informed by their agent, or they should be.
2. Foundation Issues
Another reason I’ve seen buyers walk away from a house after their home inspection are foundation issues. Foundation issues can be so many different things. It can be issues with water pooling around the house, it can be actual foundation issues where the house is not level and it needs to have work done, and sometimes it’s even termite problems. It totally just depends. If you’re worried about foundation issues, you can have a structural engineer come out and give you a report on the house.
Another option would be to have a foundation company come out and give you kind of an idea may need to be done to the house, if anything. Are sellers usually willing to fix foundation issues? In my experience, they’re willing to negotiate these foundation issues. A lot of houses in Oklahoma do have them. And it’s not really as expensive as you think for most houses to get a little bit of work done on the foundation. So, yes. A lot of sellers are interested in getting their house sold and they know, if you’ve seen a foundation issue, then other buyers are going to as well.
3. Sewer Issues
Okay, I often see people walk away from homes because of sewer issues and this is the third reason on my list. So what does that mean? Sewers can sometimes be an issue for older homes because maybe the line has never been replaced or the house was built was in 1950’s and the house is you know, around 70, maybe even 80 years old. It could have something happening with the line, like in the back yard. Meaning that it’s collapsed, or maybe there’s tree roots in it, or something like that. And this can be a really costly and really labor heavy fix.
For this reason, I typically have my buyers who are buying older homes especially, to have the home inspector scope their sewer line during the home inspection. That just means that they’re sticking a camera down the line and they’re going to actually record it and make sure that they don’t see any issues. And they’re going to give the film of your own sewer line. These things are of course, totally fixable and we want to make sure that you know about them before you actually go through with the purchase of the house and see if you’re comfortable with it.
4. Bad Flips
Okay number four are flips that maybe are not so great. What’s a flip? A flip is like someone buys a house that’s in really not good shape, or maybe it’s in decent shape and they just put some uh, some lipstick on it, right? Some lipstick on their pig. So flipping homes is all the rage and it’s because of HGTV and it’s also because people can make a lot of money doing this. There are some excellent quality flips that I see.
However, if someone were to buy a house and flip it, and maybe they didn’t make sure that maintenance issues were taken care of, then went ahead and put fresh paint on it, maybe new floors, new countertops in the kitchen and called it a day, that may be a big problem for you later. You’d have this like beautiful, esthetically pleasing house, and a lot of money that you’re going to need to spend on maintenance issues. I’ve seen many-a-purchase contract break because of things this. It’s really hard to deal with some of these issues once everything looks so beautiful on the outside.
5. Roofs
Having an insurable roof should be very important to you, as a buyer. Now, when I say insurable, actually most roofs are insurable if they even have um, some damage or anything on them; nail pops, maybe some hail spots, or things like that. And just because one insurance company won’t insure the roof, doesn’t mean that another one won’t. You’ll just have to ask yourself will it be at the price of the premium that you’re willing to pay? For every single house, I really urge buyers to have their roof inspected. And this usually just by a roof contractor. The roofer can usually go out the same time as the home inspection or find another time to look at the roof too.
If there is damage, then you can present maybe those damages and what those repairs might be to the seller during your repair lists and you may be able to negotiate those out. Hopefully you can. I usually see the sellers are okay fixing some issues with the roof, or you maybe need it replaced. That’s definitely you want to negotiate out in the repair list during the home inspection period. If the seller doesn’t want to do anything to the roof at all and it may need replacement or it needs repairs, you need to think long and hard about whether you want to do that as soon as you move into the house, and if you need to. You just need to figure out if you’re comfortable with having a house that the roof is maybe not so great.
So nearly all of these things are fully negotiable, but these are really the top reasons that I see people walk away from a house they may want to purchase once their home inspection is complete.
Please text, call or email with any questions you have about the home inspection period during a real estate contract. I would be happy to connect with you to see how I can be of assistance!
