Every week, the detail-oriented folks at Green Scene Home Inspections will give Daltxrealestate.com readers an education in inspection. Want to see what they see? Tune in for “Upon Closer Inspection.”
If you’re buying a home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area this year, you do need a fair amount of luck to find the right house in the right neighborhood with all the features you’re looking for. The real estate market is extremely competitive right now, and housing inventory is low. Demand is high for housing, and, depending on what you’re looking for, you may have to compete against other buyers and/or move more quickly on making an offer than you might have expected.
As with any stressful situation, we like to meet it with a little humor. So in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, here are some things that made us say, “Good luck with that.”
If, for example, you find “El Diablo” in the crawl space, you might need a little extra luck with that house.
If your roof is covered with bullets holes, and some actual bullets … well, maybe stay inside on holidays? And good luck with that.
(But seriously, like hail damage, enough of these would warrant a new roof.)
If your electrical panel is this old, first, we wish you good luck, second, call an electrician, and do not try to change a fuse yourself. This is a pre-circuit breaker-style fuse panel. They are often ungrounded, which means it’s easy to electrocute yourself, and we find that sometimes they’ve been “modified” to suit more modern needs which can be pretty dangerous
A design flaw this careless would warrant an extra careful inspection of the rest of the house, because WOW. Nice try on the plastic cover, but how about we just not put electrical outlets directly under a water source?
In the current fast-moving, competitive market, buyers have fewer options and may have to compete with multiple offers to get the home they want. Under these circumstances, a home inspection is less useful as a negotiation tool — because someone else is going to take the house “as is” — and more useful for planning: knowing that you will have to replace a water heater, HVAC, or foundation will factor into your decision to go forward or not.
In any case, we wish you good luck in your home search! May the home of your dreams be the pot of gold at the end of a double rainbow!
