Yes, sometimes buyers these days are making offers on houses without a home inspection contingency.
As Paige asked yesterday...
Is everyone else in the world significantly more handy, a better gambler, or just have that much cash laying around?
Good question, Paige! :-)
Here are some of the reasons why buyers are making offers without home inspection contingencies...
- FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out - They have missed out on buying several houses in a multiple offer situation when they included a home inspection contingency, so they are making an offer without that contingency to try to improve their odds of beating out the competition. This is probably the main reason why buyers decide not to include an inspection contingency.
- Handy Buyers - Indeed, some buyers are handy, and wouldn't find many home maintenance issues that would be identified via a home inspection to be that big of a deal.
- Calculated Risks - If you can observe the interior foundation walls of a home, and if you know the age of the roof and the age of the heating/cooling system - and none of that information gives you pause, you have eliminated many of the largest issues that could be identified during a home inspection.
- Cash Reserves - Some buyers think of it as a question of how much it might cost to cure issues discovered during a home inspection. If it might cost $5,000 to cure the issues on a particular home some buyers conclude that they would rather not miss out on buying a home over that $5,000 so they make sure they have $5,000 set aside to cure any issues that they might discover later.
A few more thoughts and observations...
- I always recommend that a buyer conduct a home inspection as a part of the home purchase property to best protect themselves from future risk or harm -- but I do understand why some buyers choose not to do so.
- Whether you include a home inspection contingency in any particular offer should likely depend on how much you love that particular house and how risky that house seems based on its age and condition.
- If you do not include a home inspection contingency as a part of your offer, I would highly recommend that you consider conducting a home inspection after you close on your purchase of the house. That will give you the opportunity to identify any property deficiencies or safety issues that you should attend to in the first few days, weeks or months of owning the home.
Home buyers have some difficult decisions to make these days as they formulate a plan for pursuing a house in a housing market with very low supply levels. Deciding whether to include a home inspection contingency is just one of those difficult decisions.
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