Q: We had a home inspection done on a place we wanted to buy.

It was really scary! There were some plumbing leaks and reverse electric plugs and rot in the decks. The crawl space had been infested with rats at some point, and all the insulation was pulled down. We decided not to buy that house. 

We are new to this and want to know how we can tell ahead of time when a house is such a fixer. We can just afford the bottom price range. Is that why the house was in poor shape?


A:  You may not realize it but those items you listed are really minor. They are common to most homes that have been lived in and all of it is easy to repair or fix. Almost all homes, particularly in the Northwest, have some rodents in their crawl space or attic. There are effective ways to deal with that.

Mot homes have plumbing leaks that the owners overlook and they are easily repaired.Wood will rot over time if not kept up very carefully  but a few rotted boards are easily replaced. The reverse electrical plugs refer to reverse polarity and even brand new homes can have these and they are very simple to correct.

Perhaps you need to educate your selves more about home ownership and just learn more about the systems of a house and their care.The list of repairs you brought me from your inspection would probably amount to less than a day of work for a contractor or handy person and the cost would be low.

You'll find these same  problems in most of the houses you are looking at. But there are such issues even in very high end homes. While it's easy to say that less expensive homes receive less care, I've seen real deal breaking problems in expensive houses too.

There are serious defects in many houses, of course, and finding those is the mail reason for having a home inspection. Deferred maintenance or small, easy to fix problems shouldn't keep you from home ownership.