Home Inspection Articles | House Inspection News

You can lower your monthly energy bill by hiring an Energy Star-certified house inspector to conduct your home inspection.

Energy Star, a program jointly run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, aims to help families save money on their energy bills and at the same time protect the environment by using energy efficient materials and products and applying energy efficient practices.

Energy Star claims that households can save about one-third on their energy bills without sacrificing comfort if they practice Energy Star recommendations.

By applying energy efficient practices, homeowners will not only help themselves, they will also help cut down greenhouse gas emissions which are destroying the environment.

Home inspection professionals who are trained and certified by Energy Star are sometimes called energy raters or energy auditors.

They are trained to evaluate existing energy efficiency devices, check the energy efficiency of appliances and find ways by which the homeowner can save some more on energy bills without sacrificing comfort.

The cost of hiring a home inspection professional with Energy Star certification ranges from $500 to 800, but this cost will easily be covered by thousands of dollars in utility savings in the long term.

Inspectors conducting energy efficiency home inspection will check the insulation in walls and in the attic, the seals of windows and the energy efficiency performance of appliances and mechanical systems in the house.

One of the modern ways used by inspectors to conduct energy efficiency home inspection is the use of thermography or thermal imaging. A thermal imaging equipment is a customized digital camera that detects and measures heat present on a surface or inside a material. The equipment represents the detected heat through digital images.

A home inspector trained in thermography will be able to interpret the digital images and will be able to follow up on the findings and confirm them. The thermograph is handy for checking insulation and moisture penetration, although it can be used also for other home inspection activities.

Areas or parts of the house not easily accessible during home inspection can be evaluated or checked through the use of the thermal imaging camera.

However, there are a lot of Energy Star-certified house inspectors who can conduct energy efficiency home inspection using conventional inspection devices. What is important is the ability of the home inspector to identify energy efficiency strategies that you can improve or install to lower your energy bills.

Home Inspection

Some prospective homebuyers forego professional house inspection when buying as-is properties for sale because the sellers are not obliged to make repairs anyway, so prospective buyers would just depend on their own home inspection.

But the as-is sales condition should all the more prod prospective homebuyers to conduct professional house inspection. There could be serious conditions in the homes that are not immediately visible and are not noticed by the homebuyers because of their inexperience or their excitement in finally buying a home.

In a typical as-is home purchase contract, the buyer accepts the current condition of the house as of contract date, home inspection date or settlement date. The seller does not make any guarantee concerning the physical condition of the house, the appliances in the house and other systems inside and outside of the house.

The contract also specifies that the seller has no obligation to repair any defect in the electrical, mechanical, plumbing, air conditioning or heating systems of the house.

The only thing required in as-is properties for sale is the good working condition of smoke detectors. This requirement also depends on current regulations in states where the as-is property is located.

Based on real estate data, most distressed homes available in the market are being sold under the as-is sales condition. Even banks are selling many of their real estate-owned properties or bank-owned foreclosure homes under the as-is condition.

Also, because many banks do not have property maintenance departments, they turn off the utilities of their distressed properties to winterize them, putting prospective home buyers in a dilemma of whether to take the time and effort to de-winterize the properties to conduct a more thorough home inspection or just leave the matter to chance.

In the conventional as-is sales contract, the seller is not obliged to have the utilities turned on so that a complete house inspection could be carried out.

On the other hand, a home purchase sales contract with a house inspection contingency means that the completion of the home sale will depend on the result of the professional house inspection, which includes radon contingency inspection in many contracts.

The contract states the deadline of the house inspection and also specifies that the utilities are turned on during home inspection.

After the house inspection is carried out, the seller and the buyer or their agents negotiate about defects detected during inspection. Both buyer and seller have the right to cancel the contract if they cannot agree on what is to be done after the house inspection.

Home Inspection

The housing boom pressured builders to construct a lot of homes in short time frames, causing construction defects that oftentimes only professional house inspectors can immediately see.

So, prospective home buyers really need to hire professional house inspectors licensed to conduct home inspection in the state where the houses are located.

In a 250-unit subdivision in Sacramento Valley, more than 50 percent of residents have reported at least one major defect in their homes. The residents have filed a lawsuit against the builder, seeking money to repair their homes, but while waiting for the case to proceed, they have to suffer leaks, cracks, fissures, shifting floors and other defects possibly for a longer time.

If these residents hired professional house inspectors, they would have avoided their current housing problems.

Housing analysts said that the fast pace of home construction from the 1990s to 2000 to satisfy the soaring demand for homes contributed to significant numbers of construction defects, compared to building defects in houses built in normal times.

During the construction boom, builders had to continue the work despite the shortage of high-quality building materials and skilled construction workers.

Many local government agencies also failed to inspect adequately housing projects because their house inspectors could not cope with large numbers of projects.

Based on data from the National Association of Home Builders, over 2 million homes were constructed across the country during the construction boom in 2005. A national association of home inspectors estimates that about 17 percent of new homes constructed in 2006 had more than two significant defects.

In 2003, the percentage of new homes with at least 2 major defects was 15 percent.

Nevertheless, according to a large insurance firm covering home construction defects, the number of homeowners filing for residential defects is declining, partly because of the increasing awareness among prospective home buyers about the importance of hiring professional and licensed house inspectors.

The firm also added that the number of insurance claims for construction defects in some states is still increasing because of attempts by some homeowners to turn insignificant defects into cash.

Still, many construction defects are real. A homeowner in Minnesota bought an eight-year-old house that now needs to be overhauled at a cost of $228,000. The homeowner said it does not make sense making the repairs as the value of the house has gone down to only $190,000.

With these defects and home value deterioration, prospective home buyers should have been persuaded by now about the value of hiring licensed professional house inspectors.

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Home Inspection