Home Inspections: When New Stuff Comes to Light

Home Inspectors are integral to the real estate industry. Some Buyers are choosing to waive their right to a home inspection to get their offers accepted in our competitive market. This is always within the rights of any Buyer. However, when Buyers do this, they are also waiving the opportunity to get to know more about the house they are buying and may be opting out of an important history lesson about their house. Inspectors will often point out evidence of past repairs, make recommendations about how best to care for the home in the future, and may point out additional positive features of the home missed during an initial visit. In other words, inspections are about more than simply inspecting the current condition of the structure.

Recommended inspections include a home inspection, a radon test, a sewer lateral scope inspection, and, if the purchase involves an older home in certain areas of Portland, an underground storage tank location and/or underground fuel tank inspection and soil test may need to be performed. The latter are very important as it is the law, in the State of Oregon, if there is a contaminated site (contaminated by a leaking underground fuel storage tank) the testing is the Buyers’ responsibility, but the clean-up is the Sellers’ sole financial responsibility. 

Buyers who purchase homes with known underground fuel storage tanks, who choose not to inspect those tanks or hire professionals to perform soil tests around those tanks, assume all future financial liability for the clean-up of those sites, should the area need remediation in the future. It is your Broker’s responsibility to inform you of the importance of inspections and to provide you with the Oregon Buyer Advisory that is full of great resources for Buyers to utilize, especially if they have questions regarding the necessity or non-necessity of inspections.

Wildwood Realty Brokers have backgrounds in construction, construction engineering, electrical engineering, and architecture. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have. One caveat: you may get a more complete answer than you anticipated!

Think Joule