Real NE Ohio Story as Told by One of Our Customers:
A Note From Jay: I was talking to a local family recently in NE Ohio and they were telling me about their first home buying experience and process, and from what they told me, it explains why a home inspector is so important for each potential home you are interesting in buying.
As told by one of our customers:
We were searching NE Ohio for our first home some years ago and money was tight at that time. We came upon an acquaintance who was starting out in real estate and she wanted to help us find the right home for us. Well, after a few months, we narrowed our choices down, and one home in particular really felt perfect for us. Well, with her by our side, we met the homeowner, a man, selling that house one day. Well, not knowing anything about him at all, we fell in love with that house, it was within our budget and in a good safe town and area. Well, we couldn’t afford the total down payment, so this homeowner told us he would lend us $1000 in a personal check and we could use that for the remainder of our down payment and pay him back later with a promissory note. We also had no additional funding for a home inspector either. Well this homeowner told us, “No worries, I already paid for the home inspection myself and here is their report. See for yourself.” Well, in the end, we bought the house shortly after that, and a month later, a series of bad summer thunderstorms all week led to our finished basement carpeting and walls to flood continuously, almost daily, about a foot high. We couldn’t get all the water out and in the end, we had to rip all our carpeting out, tear down the walls and tear down the bar and remove all the bar stools. Half of our basement was destroyed. A month after moving into the house, with the heavy storms, we had to take out another mortgage and hire a local waterproofing company to come waterproof the inside and outside of our home, a whooping $9000. A year after that, we discovered nothing in our home was grounded. So several thousand dollars later, a local electrical company had to upgrade our electrical panel and re-ground every outlet, and make all 2-prongs into 3-prongs as well. A year later, with winter storms and winter hail, our roof was leaking and it only got worse and worse. So we had to hire a local roofing company to come and do a total roof and flashing replacement for $14,000. We noticed our toilets kept clogging too over the years and we had to keep hiring the local city sewer company to come hose out our sewers going into the street. We kept getting massive headaches for years too. Finally, after some years go by, a city contractor tells us we likely have sewage leaking into our home in the basement floors and that is what has been causing our headaches. So we had to hire a local sewer repair company and a local plumbing company who worked together for one week tearing out our entire sewer piping from our home to the street and then install new trenchless sewer piping under our yard, while the plumbers broke open parts of our basement concrete flooring only to find sewage HAD been slowly leaking under there for years. So they also replaced that piping too and replaced the concrete flooring as well. This issue cost us another $12,000 between the two companies. Since then, over the years, we have had some other minor home issues as well, we have had to hire home contractors for as well. Today, we still have a $16,000 concrete driveway to replace too yet, and we are currently working on that as well. Years later, we learned that the homeowner was in good with the home inspector and they were in cahoots with each other. Huge lesson learned, we should have hired our own independent home inspector. So… long story short, it is vital you hire a non-partisan, certified, trusted and experienced home inspector in northeast Ohio no matter what your budget and timeframe is at the time. Don’t go through what we went through.