Do You Need an Inspection If You’re Building a New Home?
Realtor Rob Zanicchi shares his perspective on the importance of inspection.
Rob Zanicchi is a Charlotte-based realtor with The Mac Group.
Is it important to get a third party inspection on new construction?
I deal with a lot of new construction, whether it’s the name brand production builders, or custom homes.
It's brand new, so a lot of people find comfort in the fact they’ll be the first owners. But a brand new home won’t necessarily be perfect because of the human element. The people building these homes are very busy, and there are always a lot of subcontractors involved, which means there can easily be some oversight on really important stuff.
My advice to folks is: this home is an investment for however many years you decide to stay there, so you might as well spend a few extra bucks getting an independent set of eyes.
People are relatively surprised at what comes back. If you do this on the front end—while it's being constructed—you alleviate those problems for the future. You can save thousands of dollars in the future - and headaches - by putting in a few hundred dollars worth of inspection up front.
It's just peace of mind, but I know of a lot of people that forego it anyway.
Ok I’m on board. When should I get my new home inspected?
With new construction, it's a lot easier to correct issues you find in inspection, because when you get that inspection report back, nine times out of ten, you hand it to the builder and the builder goes, “Okay, no problem. Let me get the subcontractors back in and we'll make these changes.” So it's a pretty smooth corrective process.
With inspections on new construction, you have the unique opportunity to have it inspected in phases. First, during the foundation phase. Second, the pre-drywall phase. Before the walls are put up, you can see what's going on behind there and make those corrections before the sheetrock and insulation are put in. Because after the walls are up, it becomes infinitely more difficult to address those problems.
Lastly is an inspection done at the end—when everything's near completion. They can do final touch ups if they need to, and all the appliances and the cabinets are installed.
The most advantageous way to do it is to get that inspector in there at those three steps, just to get the most bang for your buck. A lot of folks will wait until the end, and if there's something going on behind the wall, the inspector can't see that at that last stage. So there's a unique advantage to having that new build because the inspector can see every step of the process and know that there's nothing wrong, or have it fixed if there is.
What are some of the issues you’ve seen come up on inspection of new construction?
I've seen quite a bit. I've seen windows installed upside down—which turns out to be one of the more expensive mistakes. I’ve also seen broken roof trusses, because a lot of times when these roof trusses get delivered in packages, they get dropped on the ground. I’ve seen plumbing lines swapped. There have been crawl spaces with insulation incorrectly installed, causing a lot of moisture in the crawl space - and no one looks in the crawl space on their walkthroughs so really, this could only be caught by home inspectors.
All these examples are thousands of dollars of fixing that could be avoided—why would you give that up? It’s also important to know the distinction between county inspection and an independent inspection. Often, the county inspectors are just looking at the bigger ticket items like the roof mentioned above. The independent inspector is going to look through all the nuances and try to find everything that is incorrect.
If there is something that needs to be amended, it's important to notify the builder so they can get the proper correction done, and make sure there’s an engineered letter stapled to it. So if you go to sell the house in the future, and an inspector finds anything broken, there is proof of the original remedy.
How much does a new construction inspection generally cost?
It's not terribly expensive, for most houses a new construction inspection would cost maybe $500-$600.
I’d also suggest a radon test. Sometimes you have to order it separately and it might cost another $150. Radon is a naturally-occurring gas caused by the natural breakdown in uranium, and it’s in the atmosphere in trace amounts. It can enter homes through the ground via cracks in the foundation, and rises up through the air. When it becomes trapped inside a home, the amount of radon in the house can rise to levels that can cause lung cancer. It’s scary stuff, and a lot of people don’t want to think about it. It’s invisible, it’s odorless, but it’s very dangerous as the second leading cause of lung cancer.
To me, it's money well spent. Most people are thankful they had it done.
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