One of the most common myths related to new home construction is that new homes don’t need to be inspected. I personally know several people that have purchased new homes and didn’t have them inspected because they were ‘new’. I’ve seen far too many problems on new construction homes to think that they’re not worth first inspecting, regardless of the builder.

One common myth that builders will sometimes tell buyers is that the home has already been inspected many times by the city as part of the permit process, so the buyer is wasting their money hiring a private inspector. While there may have been many brief inspections performed by the city along the way, things still get missed every day. Did you know that unless a ladder is provided at the site for the city inspector, they won’t even get up on the roof to inspect it? It’s actually common practice for roofers to leave a few photos for the building inspector to look at to sign off on the roof.

Another myth is that because a home is new, there won’t be problems. While new homes don’t have the same types of problems as old homes (such as components reaching the end of their life expectancy), they can still have serious issues, typically related to improper building and installation methods. These are the types of issues that an average homeowner will know much less about; it’s easy to look at cracks in a foundation or rust in a furnace and know there’s an issue, but it’s impossible to identify installation defects without knowledge of building, mechanical, plumbing, and electrical codes. While a private inspection is certainly not a code compliance inspection, an excellent home inspector will be aware of code requirements, and will be looking for any problems. Our inspections are beyond the minimal inspections set forth national and local codes. We are you partner and therefore are looking out for your bets interest.