I used to think home inspections were a total scam, but then I saw mine save me $8,000

When my realtor pushed for a home inspection on a 1980s house in Phoenix, I figured it was just another fee to line someone's pockets. The inspector found a cracked heat exchanger in the furnace that was leaking carbon monoxide. I never would have caught that on my own. The sellers ended up covering a full replacement through their insurance. Has anyone else had a hard-to-believe inspection find that actually paid off?

2 comments

2 Comments

richard11013d ago

Hold up, I'm going to play the other side here for a second. I've had three home inspections in my life and each one basically just pointed out stuff I could see with my own eyes, like a loose faucet or a cracked window seal. @cameronwest, that roof thing sounds like a lucky break, but I'm not convinced most inspectors would catch a tiny gap in flashing unless they were crawling around for an hour. In my experience, they rush through the job in 45 minutes and hand you a generic checklist that doesn't save you a dime, mostly just makes you scared to buy anything.

cameronwest13d ago

That cracked heat exchanger is no joke. Carbon monoxide is the silent killer, and you could have been dead in a week. I had a similar thing happen with a house from the 70s. The inspector noticed a tiny gap in the roof flashing that looked like nothing. Turned out water had been slowly rotting the entire roof deck underneath for years. The sellers had to rip off the whole roof and replace it, which was a $12,000 fix I never would have seen. So yeah, home inspectors earn their money in my book. Did your seller fight the replacement at all, or did they just roll over?