Home Buyers

As Your Building Consultant for Life, We're Your Advocate!

To schedule a Resale Home Inspection
To schedule a New House Inspection

Why Inspect? Home InSight specializes in the Solving the Case of the Mysterious Home Condition! Every house is a unique blend of 7 engineering systems people spend entire careers to understand how they work individually and together. These systems include structure, plumbing, electric, HVAC (heating. ventilation, and air conditioning), fuel gas, storm water drainage, and heat flow. These systems are supposed to work together to provide you with a healthy, durable, comfortable, and energy efficient house.

A lot of decisions were made when the house was built and previous owners took varying degrees of care--leading to the house standing before you today. The quality of those decisions and care determine the condition of the house. Sherlock Homes can tell more about a house by spending 45-60 minutes outside than most homeowners can by living in their house for an entire lifetime! Usually, within 3-5 hours, Sherlock Homes interprets what the house is saying to you! We speak house!

Purpose. Home inspections help home buyers make informed purchasing decisions. Everyone is anxious to some degree when buying a house. A inspection reduces anxiety and increase confidence that the right purchase decision has been made.

Loyalty. Home InSight's loyalty is to the house--the mute member of this new relationship about to be forged with you. Home inspectors have no financial interest in whether a house is purchased or not. It's to everyone's benefit to determine what the facts are: agents, sellers, buyers, mortage brokers, appraisers--everyone related to your deal. We all work together to help you with this house. Home InSight makes every effort to support everyone's needs in the deal and respects everyone.

The Unspoken Question. The most important question a home inspector can't answer is whether you should buy the house. Home inspectors don't have your goals, family, finances, health, or a variety of other factors that need to be considered to purchase a house. Your sales agent is responsibile for helping you make the decision. Home InSight does not kill deals. Circumstances that don't fit together based on facts do. Your sales agent is uniquely qualified to help you. Better members of your entire professional team will put your needs above their own, even when it hurts.

Multiple Inspections. Home InSight offers are variety of inspections and assessments that can be done together or by themselves, such as mold, stucco, and home performance. The most important one during a basic home inspection is a "termite" inspection, which looks for termites, beetles, and wood decaying fungus: wood destroying organisms. Home InSight is not in the habit of upselling services during an inspection. Home InSight prefers the need for other inspections to be discussed with your Realtor. However, we're ready when you are--even while we're at the inspection, when the additional inspection fees are less.

Inspection Participation. You're invited, rather encouraged, to accompany your home inspector during the entire inspection. Using all of your senses helps you better understand the house. Your home inspector is better able to communicate with you the longer you're there.

However, we live in the real world. Spending 3-5 hours at a home inspection is quite an investment in time. Expect 1 hour per 1000 sqft + 1 hour. Home InSight is prepared to work with you at whatever level of participation you'd like, ranging from complete trust to full-time presence. Usually, appointments are arranged to meet you near the end of your inspection, during lunch or after work--to limit the impact to your work schedule.

Reports. Whether you're able to participate in the inspection or not, a through, detailed report is written using a lot of pictures. About 200 pictures are taken during and inspection of an average size house. The full report is relatively huge! However, it's the closest thing you'll get to a user manual for the house. Do we expect you to read it all? No! However, we don't know what you're interested in for the same reasons we can't tell you whether to purchase the house or not. Consider it as a reference document.

Three or four reports are directly derived from the full report for various purposes.
1. Key Considerations. This summary is the one your Realtor needs to accompany the Ammendment to Remove Inspection Contingency. These are the items where careful consideration and consulation are needed with your Realtor.
2. All Comments. Home Insight is unable to accurately guess what is most important for a particular buyer. This summary is meant to be scanned for the small number of important extra considerations. Most comments (~95%) are usually minor or routine maintenance. No house is is expected to be perfect.
3. Controls, Cleanouts, and Filters. Homeowners need to adopt the Boy Scout motto when it comes to their house. Knowing where to shutoff the power, turn off the gas, and stop the water are critical in an emergency. Plumbers, electricians, and water damage restoration professionals will wait on the phone while you turn them off in an emergency. Please keep a copy this summary in a kitchen drawer for instant access in an emergency!
4. Punch List. If the house is being purchased from a builder or is less than 1-year old, a puch list for the builder is created, citing the building code referenced. Code inspections are not prepared for existing homes.

All of these summaries have lots of pictures. However, faxed color pictures are awefull--mostly black. To help your sales agent, the Key Considerations and All Comments summaries are provided without pictures so they can be faxed. Ideally, all these reports are distributed electronically, via email to support maximum communication. You can forward any or all of them to anyone you'd like for at least 5 years.

Report Delivery. All reports are delivered electronically. The inspection report and summaries are sent to you from HomeGauge. These are meant to be shared among your team members. Other documents, including contracts, receipts, weather reports, plot plans, and inspection profiles are delivered from The Schedule Center. These are intended for your use only. If you don't find your report, first look in your spam folder, then call us. Home InSight publishes printed reports on request and for a nominal fee and sent by Priority Mail. This is in keeping with Home InSight's desire to help protect the environment. Every attempt is to deliver the reports electronically by 8 AM the next morning.

Scheduling. Scheduling is convenient to you, at all hours of the day. Home InSight schedules one major inspection a day. Other inspections are fit around them. The appointment can be scheduled on-line at any time. During business hours, 9 AM - 5 PM, appointments are made by phone with our call center 925-385-5289. Sherlock Homes will answer phones at all other times, as he is available, usually between 8 AM - 9 PM Pacific Time.

Post-Purchase Support. As your building consultant for life, Home InSight will answer questions about your report and house as long you you own it. Home maintenance tips will be sent to you by email for at least a year after the inspection. You can elect to opt out at any time or continue for as long as you'd like afterward. The Millionaire Inspection Community, a marketing association of the best home inspectors in North America, works hard to make any communication interesting and relevant.

To schedule a Resale Home Inspection
To schedule a New House Inspection