re: Attending home inspection as a buyer…do or don’t?

Home inspectors suck.

They know just enough to make lay people worry and piss true tradesmen off.

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Some are serious and worth addressing, but many are just nuisance. "Code" is constantly changing, and what was OK 20, 40, or 75 years ago is no longer best practice, but that does not mean there is anything "wrong" with the house.

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100% this. I had one buyer who wanted me to replace the entire electrical service bc they were planning to do some renovations down the line, all based on the inspector noting some stuff about the panel and how it was code back then but not now. I said, no, you are buying the house as it met the code when it was built, and I am not funding your renovations.

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I want to see a very thorough inspection.

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That's all well and good, but don't expect sellers to concede thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars for the sale of a house that is in normal/safe operation. If you want to update your house to code, improve old insulation, replace windows etc then bust out your own checkbook. Rational buyers know this, but I will not acquiesce to the paranoia of any buyer. You want a cracked outlet fixed, no problem, I'll fix it myself for you but I'm not paying your realtors electrician to do it.

*Most* inspection reports are improperly used as leverage on houses that have no serious defects.

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if I see lots of details, lots of the standard small items, I can be relatively assured the inspection was thorough enough to catch the big stuff, like rotting beams, overloaded breakers, rotten windowsills.

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you might be giving too much credit to inspectors. In some of my experiences, they seem to LIKE to the find only small stuff to pack out a full report. And the realtor that referred him likes that nothing major was found so sale is more likely.


With the amount of exclusions/exceptions the inspector has in his contract, its almost impossible to hold them liable for missing something. I don't really blame them for that either. Their insurance and thus services would very expensive if they were held responsible for repairs on things missed.

My home inspection guy saved me from buying a house with termites that the homeowner fibbed on the Disclosure form about until confronted. Money well spent. And I always followed him around.