Hi everyone! I'm very happy today. I have a friend here that I would like to introduce to you.
This is Steve
and Steve is an amazing Home Inspector!
Thank you.
My name is Steve Sandhu, home inspector.
I've been doing it for about 7 years or so.
I was an electrician for 10 years before that
I really enjoy it and enjoy meeting good people like Andreia...
It's a fun job, I mean, not many people like their job,
but actually I love my job.
What exactly you do? So, I got in a house contract
I want to buy this house and I call you: Steve I need you to do inspection on this house
so from there, what will happen?
Basically, I go in and do the inspection. I look at the condition of the exterior of the home,
I look at the roof, the plumbing, the electrical. I open up the electrical panel
I open up the heating system to have a look and to see
how everything is performing and to see if there's any issues,
A lot of times we were looking for safety issues,
safety issues affects the client,
we're here to protect them
and you don't want something happening to the clients so safety issues are important
So we're also looking for things that are gonna cost the client money in the future
so a lot of people are buying with emotion so they may go into a home for five ten minutes
and they may really like it they may really like the area and they just set on the home
but it's our job to go in and say: you're maxed out this is what you're allowed
but the client doesn't know that, this house, another year, needs a new roof
so they're gonna have to spend
10 to 15 thousand dollars on a new roof
and the roof is mandatory, because if it starts leaking, more problems.
so things like that, we make the buyer aware of, what's going on and what's gonna happen in the future
if you need a new roof, need a new furnace, or what's happening,
because just like anything in life, nothing is gonna last forever, so like a hot water tank,
it's gonna last between 10 to 14 years or 10 to 15 years, things like that, so we advised them:
you're a hot water tank is 7 years old or 10 years old or whatever it is
and let them know: you've gonna lot of life in it
or it needs to be changed in the next few years
or it's leaking you should change it right now so things like that.
It's more of giving the information to the buyers,
to the buyer has no surprises and they know what they're up against.
So one interesting thing is: Steve is an electrician, that it's very handy,
when it becomes a inspection of the house
So, you go through the house, is the buyer allow to be with you during the inspection?
Yes, they are. The home inspection Association actually recommends that
that the buyer be around the inspector
and during the inspection and we don't mind that
but a lot of times, we're in there for 2 or 3 hours
and the buyer doesn't want to be there that longer,
or the buyer is not gonna want to go up with a roof
or go up in the attic, things like that and this is fine,
because most buyers just want to know, what's up,
even though in the end, when we do the walkthrough,
we show them everything where all the moving parts are in the home,
where the electrical panel is, where your heating system is,
where your main water shut-off is, we show everything in the walkthrough
but some people, they're just curious and they want to know what's going on
and that's fine, there's actually it makes it more interesting
How about the appliances?
I have clients that, even with the home inspection, they did everything,
they moved in, and then, on the third or fourth day leaving the house, things start stopped working
so is this very common? Because I know you cannot test the dish wash and say: this has another ten years, you're not gonna say that but....
Well, it's just like any mechanical, like
someone buys a car you can't guarantee
that something's gonna happen in the car in a few months
and the same thing with the dishwasher or a washing machine.
I personally do test all the appliances and to make sure everything's working at the time of the inspection
but anything could just stop working, nobody can guarantee that.
Now the only things that we can do is, we have a program called, it's a recall program
so I can take all the model numbers of the appliances, send to a website and
it checks at every couple of weeks to see if there is no recalls on the appliances.
When you first started this, I thought:
this is a waste of money, but it turns out probably every 5 or 6 dishwasher
that I put it into the website. It tells them: well this dishwasher has a recall on it,
and if it's a really brand company like Maytag,
Maytag will actually come in and replace it.
That is cool! I don't think everybody does that?
I know, not all home inspectors do that.
This is really interesting!
I know there is a specific professional to do the inspection on the foundation,
but are you, as a home inspector, do you also cover the foundation as well?
If there is any crack in the foundation, is something they said: no, you have to hire a different professional for this...
No, we do a general visual inspection. If there's cracks in it, cracks always depend on, how many cracks,
what kind of cracks, where are the cracks, type of thing, if it looks like, there's movement in the foundation,
then we say: okay we recommend an engineer or someone else, to take a look at it
but generally speaking, depends on what you can see
because in the foundation, it's really hard to see the foundation,
but from what we can see, we can give a good idea of if the foundation is ok.
I wanted to sell my house and it's falling apart and my realtor said:
just make up the house and painting here and I have some leaking problems
but my guy did a good job the house looks beautiful
so it's the open house and I got an offer
so you come in into this house that was brand new renovated.
Are you able to catch problems even if it's well painted, the floors look nice,
so what happened if I'm buying something that was renovated and it's an old house?
Actually we hear that all the time. The house just got renovated , the house was renovated a couple years ago,
it's a 60 year old house but just got renovated, so we hear all that,
if there's leaks, we have a few tools that can detect that
if there were past leaks or if the leak is active.
Can you show it?
This is an infrared camera, what this does it actually
It will measure the temperatures in the walls and in the ceilings
so it gives you an idea so if I point it out up to the ceiling
so there's temperature differences It can tell me
it might have been a leak there
This is a moisture meter so what this does is, this detects any moisture
so this tell me it might have a leak there,
and this is gonna confirmed
if there is moisture there, so the leaks is active.
So like my hands got moisture....
it's a basic tool but it's very valuable
And with the infrared camera, as you can see,
if I put my hand up there, I'm 31 degrees
I wish, you guys could see this, it's kind of cool!
You can actually see him standing there..
I can see that.....
It is very handy...
So, cost.... I know in different areas the cost of an inspection can be different
but what is the lowest and the highest cost?
I just wanted to give a range, what we can expect in terms of how much is gonna cost a home inspection?
The cost always depends on size of the home and how old the home is....
Those two factors determine how long the home inspection is going to take
so it is like a 7,000 square foot home compared to a 700 square foot condo
so it's quite a bit of difference so you're looking at a couple hours compared to one hour
so that's one factor and also the age of the home
because the older the home is, the more liability a home inspector has,
because especially homes that are very old
they have asbestos in them, they've used vermiculite in the attic,
so there's lots of issues if a home inspector was to miss any of those issues it can be his responsibility
so I generally speaking, it's a $100 per thousand square feet so that's the lowest
so it is like a 3,000 or 4,000 square foot home and between it's $300 to $400
So that's one factor so if the home is 2,000 square feet but the home was built in 1965 ,
then you may want to add an extra $150 because it's gonna take the inspector more time
I always say: don't try to save on inspection. Do the inspection
at the end you are receiving a report telling the whole house
the story of the house and I just think it's so important to have this report in our hands
even later on, because sometimes when you're buying your house
all your savings went through the down payment
and you don't have any money to fix the house but at least if you have this report
and you know that those things you need to fix in the future
you can plan and work your budget a little bit
so I always tell my clients: do the home inspection
I really appreciate you guys watching this video
We are going to have this on our website
Every client I will ask them to watch this video
because it is important for people to go through the process
to have a guidance and I always tell my clients you are not buying your shoe,
you're buying a house so you should be proactive,
it's the biggest investment so you should do your homework!
Steve, thank you so much for this help
You're very welcome
I really appreciate that! Thank you!
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