With an engineering degree from Purdue University and a background in custom home building, John Hagan spent years developing his expertise in the residential construction industry before branding out on his own as a home inspector. Now as the owner of Hagan Home Inspections in North Carolina, Hagan works with homebuyers and home sellers and lets them know the true condition of their residential properties. In this article, he explains the biggest benefits to having a warranty inspection done during the first year of home ownership.
For anyone who hasn’t bought a new home in a while, it is important to know about new home warranties. A new home warranty is something that is offered by many residential construction companies as a way to instill confidence in homebuyers to ensure them that if something goes wrong with a newly-built home, the construction company will fix it.
These warranties cover almost any problems and defects that pop up, which is great. Unfortunately, most of these new home warranties expire after 12 months, which is why getting a home construction warranty inspection can be so beneficial to new homeowners.
When a homeowner has been in his house for about 11 months, what I will do with the new home warranty inspection is I will go into the home and do a full-blown inspection just like I did when the person first bought the house. I am doing this right before the new home warranty expires so that any issues that have come up will be caught before the warranty runs out.
As I go along, I look for any defects in the home. With that list, the homeowner can ask his builder to repair all those defects while the home is still under warranty. That way, he does not have to pay for the repairs himself.
I don’t know if every home inspector offers this service, but I do know that it is something that homeowners really appreciate. With my background in new home construction, this is a service that I promote especially because I am so good at finding builder defects.
Back when I worked as a custom home builder, you never wanted an inspector to come and look behind you. I say this because a home inspector is essentially just another set of eyes. And if the inspector was knowledgeable about home construction, then he would probably be able to find one or two defects every time. As a home builder, obviously you don’t necessarily want this.
But now that I am on the other side of the job, working as an inspector, I am working for the homebuyer and looking for problems caused by the builders. Of course, I don’t want to be the bad guy. But the issue is that even good builders will miss something every time. Or, it is possible that one of their people will forget to do something or make an error during the construction process. It could just be that someone wasn’t trained properly to do the work on the home, or that he specifically did something wrong.
A new home construction warranty inspection saves my clients money by helping them catch minor and major defects before their new-home warranty expires. And because the builder is obligated to fix those problems during that time period, getting the home into perfect shape will not cost the homeowner any extra money.
