Things your inspector may miss in a home inspection!

Things you don’t want to miss

We bought a new manufactured home in an over 55 active adult community in 2005. Because it was a brand new home and almost everything about it carried a one year or longer warranty, we did not feel the need to hire a professional home inspector. I feel that may have been a slight mistake, though I do want to stress that all warranty items we discovered later were taken care of to our satisfaction. Having a professional check the place over before we moved in may not have made any difference at all.

Oops

However, there were things we missed. Unfortunately, most of these were cosmetic issues that the builders would not honor claims against for obvious reasons — we could have caused the damage ourselves when moving in or after the fact. We had an opportunity to address these items at a walk through with the owners of the community, but we failed to notice most of them and also failed to get written assurances of promised remediation on others.

I’m not sure that a professional inspector would have helped us with these kinds of issue. Most of what they look for is gross structural or mechanical problems, not small cosmetic issues. They don’t look for the minor cosmetic issues. That’s your job.