What Fixes Are Mandatory After A Home Inspection?

You’ve made your earnest money deposit and signed the home contract. You are currently submitting paperwork with your lender and verifying your financial history and reliability as a borrower. Now, it’s time for the home inspection. It is important to always have your signed offer contingent upon the home inspection. When you make an offer on a home and sign the contract, you are legally obligated to follow through—unless you have a legal “out.” Contingencies create a way out of the contract if certain terms are not met—like a home inspection report the buyer is satisfied with. Home inspections are one of the last steps before the final closing on a house. The purpose of a home inspection is to help the buyer understand what they are getting into—knowing the good, bad, and fine details about the home they are purchasing. Not all home inspections find issues, many routine inspections do not uncover issues and the home sale continues without any delay. However, not all homes are perfect, and some issues may be uncovered.

A home inspector may have only found cosmetic issues or minor issues, like an aging air conditioner, if addressed immediately, can be resolved without further damage to the home. Other times, catastrophic issues are uncovered—like mold, a leaky roof that led to extensive water damage, termites, or lead contamination. What happens next depends on the buyer’s determination to own the home. A buyer can choose to walk away from the home purchase, purchase the home and absorb all responsibility for repairs, or negotiate repairs (or costs) into the sale contract.

Technically, or rather legally, none. A home inspection does not report mandatory repairs—it simply documents the state of the home as it is and may include recommendations for repair. Florida allows for “as-is” contracts, meaning the seller is not obligated to conduct any repairs, no matter how big the issue.  They are also not obligated to consider or accept negotiations on the sale price or repair requests. However, many sellers price the home accordingly, so if a home is below market value and is listed “as is”, then it likely comes with repair needs. Some issues may be necessary to make a home habitable—like mold, structural hazards, or code violations—but that does not mean the seller is obligated in any way to conduct those repairs. In some cases, discoveries made during a home inspection may be a surprise to the seller. In these cases, the seller may be more likely to negotiate on the home’s value or completing the repairs in order to sell the home.

Before finalizing your home purchase, be sure to schedule a home inspection with an inspector you can trust. AcuSystem Inspections has decades in the industry and strives to provide thorough inspections on one of the biggest purchases of a person’s life. Call us today to schedule your pre-purchase home inspection.