Who Should Pay for a Home Inspection? Well… every situation is different. Every deal is different. Ever real estate transaction is different. What is most common? Who should pay for a home inspection in a standard scenario? The buyer of the home.
Why? The buyer of the home will be provided an opportunity to hire a neutral, 3rd party inspector. The common types of inspections you will perform during the buying process (depending on the systems of the home):
- General Home Inspection
- Wood Destroying Insect Inspection (Termite)
- Radon Test
- Septic Inspection
- Well Inspection
- Oil Tank Sweeps
- Lead Based Paint Testing
- Environmental Testing needed
The buyer is essentially purchasing that independent, neutral 3rd partys time to go through the home and report on their findings. They will then issue the buyer a report, which is used thereafter.
Some people wait and do 1 inspection at a time. For example, they will do the general home inspection a day or so before the septic inspection and vice versa. They know that if one of them has too many issues, they may not continue on with the home. When we are hired for all of our services, for example, the oil tank sweep, that is done at the end. That way, if you know that the home is not ideal for what you want and you may not continue with the purchase, we can save you the money (yes even if you booked it!). Why? Because we care AND we can!
When using a VA loan for example, VA loans require that the seller pay for the termite (wood destroying insect) inspection. So what we do in that case, is we provide an itemized invoice. Clients generally hand that to their closing team of professionals and get a refund check at closing. In the event that the closing team sends us a check (it does happen), we will send that to the buyer. So in that case, who should pay for a home inspection is also determined by the type of loan chosen. You may have a unique situation due to a non conventional loan. You may also have a clause stating the seller pays.
For your convenience, we do accept cash & check. We can accept credit cards, but due to being a small business to keep our prices low and offer bundles and savings, we unfortunately due to high processing fees, need to pass that convenience charge along that our processor charges us. When you are unable to be present due to being in a different state when the inspection is performed (every real estate deal is different), we also have paypal set up!