The Importance of Home Inspections

Question:  Should a buyer rely on a seller's disclosure statement, or should he/she always request a professional home inspector?   

Recently, we bought a very charming Craftsman house in a great neighborhood. The seller and realty agent provided us with a written seller disclosure statement, which didn't reveal any serious problems. But our professional home inspector found several undisclosed serious defects of which the seller must have been aware.

The inspector discovered attic rafters showed water stains, indicating a leaky roof, and the inspector noticed fresh landscaping on a hillside. Neighbors later told us the soil was unstable and had slid about 10 months earlier.

When confronted with our professional inspector's report, the sellers readily agreed to a $30,000 repair credit. We got a beautiful, new top-quality roof installed for only $14,000 and a soils engineer assured us that a few French drains will solve the drainage problem for about $5,000. What shocked us was that this information wasn't disclosed by the seller.  Is this common?

Answer: Most real estate agents, especially buyer's agents, encourage their buyers to make their purchase offers contingent on a satisfactory professional inspection. Their primary motivation is they want to avoid after-sale lawsuits for undisclosed defects.

Out of fairness to your home seller, perhaps the attic roof leaks had not yet become obvious to the seller if there was no water evidence within the living area. But the seller should have disclosed the hill slide and any corrective action which was taken. Covering up a hill slide with new landscaping won't solve a drainage problem.