For your convenience, here is a transcript of the video:

Hi my name is Jeff Kropp. I run a company called the Home Buyer Agents and I have a lot of questions that my clients ask me when I first sit down. One of those common questions is:

“Do I really need a home inspector? Do I really need a home inspection? Once I go under contract for a property?”

And the answer is yes you do absolutely need a home inspector. Basically this right is negotiated in your contract. Typically you’re going to negotiate for the right to do an inspection and typically you’ll have about a week or so after you go under contract to hire your home inspector, get inside the property, and do a home inspection. Typically a home inspection is maybe two to three hours, around that time. Usually your buyer agent will attend. The idea is to generate a summary of things that might need to be repaired by the seller, or sometimes you can ask for repair credit depending on what the issue is.

So basically you’re going to get a recommendation from your buyer agent or maybe your friends who have bought a home with regard to witch home inspector to hire. They have certifications and that sort of thing. It tells you that they are professionals.

So yes you definitely must have a home inspection and when you follow the home inspector around during the inspection, they’re probably going to point out things that need to be fixed immediately, defects in the property, and they are also going to point out items that are past their useful life. Things like the roof might have five or ten years left, the water heater might only have a few years left. Typically, you’re not going to get a credit or repair for that, it just tells you hey, this is something that you should probably save up for; eventually it’s going to go, let’s have some money set aside for when you need to put the new roof on.

Of course your home inspector will educate you. They are going to tell you how the mechanicals work. How to change the filter in your furnace and how the thermostat works. Maybe go over the appliances with you. So, it’s educational as well, we recommend that you do attend the home inspection with your home inspector and that’s about it.

My name is Jeff Kropp. Hire an inspector.