Season 4, EP. 2 – Podcast Transcript: How to Prepare Your Home for an Inspection

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[Brian]
Hi, and welcome to the House Fluent Inspections Podcast, where we provide helpful insights into the home inspection process and tips on how to maintain your home. I’m Brian.

[Tony]
And I’m Tony.

[Brian]
And we’re going to talk today about getting your home ready for a home inspection.

[Tony]
Great topic.

[Brian]
It is a good topic. So when you go to sell your home, typically, once you’re under contract, you’re going to have a home inspection. And that means you’re going to have strangers crawling through your house.

Oh, yeah. And that means they’re going to be on the roof. If you’ve got a parent beam foundation, they’re going to be under the house and kind of all over and everywhere in between.

That’s right. So when a home inspection happens, Tony, what are some of the things that we look at? And what are some of the things that you see that you need to look at, but are commonly maybe obstructed or some things maybe people can do to get their house ready?

[Tony]
Sure. Well, the garage is a really, really big point of emphasis. There’s a lot of usually a lot of components in the garage.

And from time to time, you’ll go to a house and it’s as if they’ve prepared to move and moved everything out of their home into the garage.

[Brian]
Yeah. And that makes sense, right? If I’m selling my house, my real estate agent says to declutter, I have a natural storage facility right there.

[Tony]
Oh, man. And that’s that’s that’s that’s difficult. You know, of course, we’ll crawl through things and or move things and do the best we can.

But yeah, that’s just you show up and you see that and you’re like, oh, boy.

[Brian]
Yeah.

[Tony]
And we go.

[Brian]
What happens if, for example, there’s a big giant pile of boxes that are just stacked in front of an electrical panel and you need to get to that panel? And it just there’s just no way to do it. Right.

And we’ve run into situations like that before where you just can’t move this stuff out of the way for whatever reason. Maybe they’ve got their, you know, antique car parked too close to it and a bunch of stuff stacked around it or or for whatever reason, we can’t get to it. Right.

So when that happens, what ends up on your report?

[Tony]
Well, first of all, while we document the fact that we were unable to completely inspect that panel, for sure.

[Brian]
Yeah.

[Tony]
And then we would recommend an electrician come and inspect the panel after we’ve left.

[Brian]
Yeah, exactly. And so if I’m selling my house, I just went through an inspection. Oh, yeah.

And now I’m about to have an electrician come and look at my electric.

[Tony]
Correct. Yes.

[Brian]
So, yeah. So it does definitely behoove you to make sure those things are available and accessible. So the most common things that are obstructed are the electrical panel, the water heater, access to the attic.

Attic. Exactly. You would be shocked probably at how many times people will leave their house and the home is empty and they’re gone.

And we don’t have any way to contact them because we don’t get the seller’s information. And there’s a car right underneath the attic access hatch.

[Tony]
Absolutely.

[Brian]
And so sometimes we can work around that every once in a while. We can put a ladder. I actually had a real estate agent one time that I don’t know if he was a gymnast or what in a former life, but he somehow climbed on top of stuff and made this flying leap and grabbed the attic access hatch and pulled himself up and then wanted to give me a hand up into the attic.

That’s funny. I just was like, not so sure about this.

[Tony]
I don’t think that’s a safe or you could damage something doing that.

[Brian]
So that’s not a good idea. I was more worried about damaging me.

[Tony]
But yeah, absolutely. That’s number one for sure.

[Brian]
But so yeah, definitely don’t be thinking about those things that we need access to. The sprinkler controller is another big one that people like to cover. And people don’t think about it, right?

Because it’s just automatic. It runs on its own. And you never go over there unless you need to be over there.

[Tony]
Sure.

[Brian]
But unfortunately, we need to be there for the inspection.

[Tony]
Absolutely want to run those sprinklers.

[Brian]
So something else that I would bring up is there is a very good chance, especially if you’re in Texas, that your inspector is going to be asked to do something called a sewer camera inspection. You want to describe what that is, Tony?

[Tony]
Well, that’s where we go through the clean outs that are usually located, hopefully in the front yard flower bed, usually to the left or the right. There’s two of them. One goes under the house.

The other one goes towards the sewer. We’ll access the main laterals through those openings. And we’ll put a camera through that and just get a good video and or pictures and a good look at those lateral pipes.

[Brian]
So what is a common problem with that when it comes to access to it?

[Tony]
Well, they’re buried under mulch behind bushes, under bushes. Yeah. And so sometimes they’re just difficult to locate.

Not that we can’t. I mean, there’s a certain amount of, you know, I guess, logic based on, you know, where the water meter’s located, where are the vents, the roof vents for the plumbing located and somewhere in between those two probabilities where they’re going to be located. Yeah.

[Brian]
So if you’re selling your house, something to consider is when the inspection, when you get notified that the inspection’s been scheduled, if you know where those clean outs are, either leaving a note, identifying where they are, or preferably going out and uncovering them so that they’re really obvious where they are, because you’re right. The vast, vast majority of the time they’re covered up. And if somebody really wants a sewer camera inspection and we can’t find the clean outs, they’re probably going to have a plumber come out during their option period to do it.

Oh, yeah. And if the plumber can’t find the clean outs, they’re going to be pulling toilets off of your floor and it can just become really intrusive.

[Tony]
Intrusive. A bit more intrusive for sure.

[Brian]
Yeah. So, you know, if you’re selling your house, I just really would encourage you when you find out, yeah, hey, we’re going to have this inspection, go find those things, uncover them. You know, you probably know where they are as a homeowner.

We don’t always know where they are and they’re not always marked.

[Tony]
Just the other day, I had a seller, when I went back to do the sewer camera, had already dug, because it was buried in the yard, dug up a couple of inches of dirt and said, there it is right there. I was ready to start my search, you know, and I thought this is amazing. And so that was kind of like one in a million, it seems like to me, but that was great.

[Brian]
Yes, that is true. And that brings up another point I would make too, is if you know you’re having a home inspection, it’s not the worst thing in the world to be there for the first five or 10 minutes. I know you’re encouraged to leave and there are a lot of reasons why you may want to do that, right?

You may not want to be there for the inspection, you know, not the least of which is the buyers are going to show up at the end and things like that. But if you’re there for the first five or 10 minutes, if we have a question for you, like, hey, where are your cleanups? Yeah, or something along those lines.

Or we can tell you, hey, we’re going to be looking for these things, you know, as far as like, hey, we need to look at your water heater. We need to look at your electrical panel, things like that. You can point out where those things are for us.

It doesn’t just make our job easier, but it makes the whole process go smoother for you.

[Tony]
Sure. We can get out of their house quicker.

[Brian]
Yeah, without a doubt. We can, um, you know, there are times too, when you’re hunting for an electrical panel, because it’s an older house and it’s, it’s buried in a closet. Or I actually had one, one time that was in a bathroom of all places.

And because it was in this weird, ugly spot, they just hung a picture over it.

[Tony]
Right.

[Brian]
And it took a long, long time to find that.

[Tony]
Oh, I love resetting the GFCIs. Yeah. In older homes, trying to go around and search for them.

[Brian]
Right. And so, yeah, that’s another thing that, you know, we could ask, or you could just leave a list and say, Hey, you know, the bathroom GFCIs reset in the garage, the kitchen GFCIs reset, you know, in the, uh, I don’t know the outside left rear receptacle.

[Tony]
That would be amazing. Another good thing is if you have a door that you don’t want to be locked when I leave. Oh yeah.

That is true.

[Brian]
Cause we do lock them all.

[Tony]
That’s always a good idea because we typically lock up and I’ve had that call before and had to drive back to, to let somebody into their home.

[Brian]
Into their own home. Yeah. That’s not fun.

No, it’s definitely not. When it comes to access to something else to be thinking about is we do access the things in your yard, like your water meter, uh, will access your, uh, backflow prevention valve. If you’ve got a sprinkler system, uh, your water shutoff valve, things like that.

And many times people will cover, especially that water shutoff valve, because it’s usually in a flower bed. They will cover that with something as a stone, a rock, a 12 foot bush. So make, just make sure those things are accessible.

Those are things that you don’t think about. You don’t see in, and you probably don’t even in your conscious know that they’re there every day and you shouldn’t, right? Like, I hope you’re not turning your water off every day.

But they are things that when you’re going to have somebody come and inspect your house and look at your house that they’re going to need access to. The other thing I would say, and would really encourage people to do to get ready for a inspection, something simple that you can do, make sure that if you’ve got, uh, rooms that they’re unlocked, if you’ve got pets that they’re either created or that they’re off the property or that you’re home so that when we’re outside, you can bring the pets in and vice versa. Not that, I mean, I’m not, you know, we’re pretty good with pets.

It’s not so much that as it just is, it’s a much smoother thing. If we don’t have to worry about shutting gates behind us while we’re outside and we can just make sure they’re shut before we leave.

[Tony]
Sure. Don’t want to let the cat out.

[Brian]
Don’t want to let the cat out.

[Tony]
I love dogs, but one that’s barking constantly makes it a bit of a challenge for concentration.

[Brian]
Oh, for sure. And you, you know, when they’re, when they’re like that too, you just never quite, you always have that thing in the back of your head. That’s like, Hey, it’s a friendly dog.

Why is he still barking at me and looking at me like I’m a hambone? Right.

[Tony]
He loves me. No, he wants to eat me.

[Brian]
Um, anything else you can think of when it comes to preparing your home for an inspection? I mean, obviously access is a big one.

[Tony]
Um, sure. You know, I would have them move all their furniture out. That’d be great.

You know, um, I would say that’s it for me.

[Brian]
What else is there? Yeah. I mean, I, I can’t think of anything huge off the top of my head.

I would say that, um, you know, something that does make an inspection go smoother is dealing with the little things in your house. Right. So, uh, you don’t realize probably, but we have to document all sorts of things that may seem small, right?

So if you, I don’t know, took a cover plate off of an electrical receptacle for whatever reason, just never replaced it. Um, going through and dealing with those little things helps cut down on the amount of things we have to document. And when you cut down on the amount of things we have to document, it makes the process not only go smoother because we don’t have to stop and, you know, focus on that little thing, but it makes the process go faster, right?

We don’t, we don’t have to stop and take pictures and document these minor little things. Then, um, you know, we’re out of your house a lot faster. Yeah.

[Tony]
And I mean, it’s, it’s going to make the home inspection look a little bit better if you don’t have all those little things on there, which there’s always a lot of little things.

[Brian]
Oh yeah.

[Tony]
There always is, you know? So yeah.

[Brian]
Yeah. And it, and I mean, that doesn’t mean you have to go around and, you know, paint your whole house and fix all your siding. And, but, but there’s always those little things that you’ve just done to your house over time that you don’t even think about.

[Tony]
Just living there.

[Brian]
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So if you were going to wrap this up, what would you say to people?

[Tony]
Um, do what you can move, clean your garage out, um, and make sure I have access to the attic and know, well, you know, know where your main water shutoff valve is. That’s always a good idea. Even if I’m not coming to inspect your house to know where you can turn off your water, uh, in case of a catastrophic event inside the home, it’s a good thing.

It’s, it’s a real good thing for sure. For sure.

[Brian]
Yeah. I would also say, you know, if you can’t be there for the first five or 10 minutes or, or whatever, then, um, definitely leave a note for the inspector. It’s, it’s very much appreciated.

Some people do that. Others don’t, but I will tell you every time I see it, I appreciate it a lot. And, um, it, a lot of times it’s just, you know, Hey, here’s, here’s five things you need to know about, or, or here’s three things that we fixed, um, which are helpful.

But what’s more helpful are things like, Hey, the, the clean outs are in front of the, you know, dining room window. And, um, you know, the, uh, water shutoff valve is under the frog in the flower bed on the right, things help a lot.

[Tony]
So basically communication, communication, communication is key. Awesome.

[Brian]
All right. Well, thank you guys for listening. Uh, we’d appreciate it very much.

If you’re getting any value out of this, that you, uh, go ahead and subscribe or better yet, share it and, uh, let other people know about it. All right. Good deal.

Remember you can always reach us, uh, at house fluent.com or on any of our social channels. Uh, we’re on pretty much all of them, Facebook, YouTube, the whole nine yards.

[Tony]
Instagram.

[Brian]
Instagram. So Tony, what do you, what do you, uh, what are you going to do after this?

[Tony]
Oh, me? Um, yeah, I’m going to try to stay dry.

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