Even though there can be many surprises, a hot housing market is often causing buyers to forgo a home inspection prior to purchasing a property, something experts say puts them at risk.
"The housing market has changed since I started my business in 2008, especially in the last two and a half years," said Bruce Jacobs, a registered home inspector who operates Jacobs Property Inspections in Waterloo Region, Canada.
"The inspections I do most often today are those after the home buyer gets the key to the house and they have possession."
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Leigh Gate, president of the Ontario Association of Home Inspectors, estimates that only 15 percent of sales in the area include a home inspection.
"If we look at 2019-2020, probably about 85 percent of homes were being inspected during a real estate transaction, and that has really fallen significantly," Gate said.
"And the reason for that is the imbalance in the market."
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"It's been a hot market for years. But it's the imbalance that is the issue. And that's supply and demand," Gate highlighted.
"[There are far fewer] homes for sale right now than there is a demand for buyers. So, if you are going into a competitive bidding situation, because in Ontario we typically use the blind bidding system, for someone to stand a chance at buying a home, they would have to go in with their very best purchase price offer and they would have to remove as many conditions as possible."
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Jacobs said that people shouldn't fully trust a house just because it looks beautiful. It's just the lipstick. What's behind the walls, though?
"You get a used car, it has to be safety inspected and it has to be certified, but you buy a house, it takes nothing," the home inspector said.
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"What I find, is now you have people going in with their best financial offer on a house which means quite often, they are exhausting things like a potential repair budget," Gate added.
"I've come in afterward when a client finds out their roof or furnace is shot. These are not small fixes. This is when you get into tens of thousands of dollars in repairs."
Val Brooks, president of the Cambridge Association of Realtors, said some clients tell him that they have tried many times to get a home, but their parents insist that they have to get a home inspection. According to him, buyers want to take their parents' advice but the market is different than when mom and dad bought a house.
Still, Brooks thinks "it is absolutely imperative to have a home inspection."
"It does make it challenging, however, being that we are in a market where there are multiple offers. If you do put a home inspection in an offer, in all likelihood, you will never get it."
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"More often, we see pre-listing inspections. I’ve certainly done that with some of my clients, which is to have an inspection done before a house is listed and then make that inspection available for potential buyers. Some people can say that it is weighted in the favour of the seller, however, if you have a viable and respectable inspector, he is not doing it in anybody’s favour. He's doing it on the condition of the house, not in the favour of anyone else."
As a realtor, Brooks said the advice for potential new homeowners is not to have a home inspection.
"I want to advise them to have a home inspection but I’m also going to tell them that if they put in an offer with a home inspection, they will not get the house," Brooks explained.