Home Inspection: Complete!

Yesterday we had our home inspection done. One more step down!

Overall, everything looks good. There are some minor fixes that might need to be addressed before the FHA inspector comes in and gives the all-clear, but that's in. For example, the upstairs bedrooms don't have light switches, but pull chains. That's not a problem for us, but according to the inspector the FHA people might not like it and most likely wouldn't approve it, so we need to come up with a fix and put in light switches. Also, at least half of the electrical outlets in the house aren't grounded, so they'd need to be replaced. The caveat is that we're buying the home "as is" because it's an estate sale so the seller probably won't be willing to fix some of those things for us. We might be able to negotiate the price or get a credit or something in return, but we're not sure. Maybe they'll even let us get in there and take care of that stuff on our own so there won't be any problems with the FHA inspection.

The biggest issue that arose during the inspection was in the attic/crawl space. I had noticed that it was chillier upstairs than downstairs, but I figured it was an older home and it was just taking a while for the heat to get upstairs. When the inspector opened the attic access panel, he saw that all the insulation had been ripped up by an animal, most likely a small rodent. All the insulation had been pulled to one end of the attic or the other. Very weird. Most likely it was done by mice or something--there were small droppings in the attic, but there was no evidence of rodents anywhere else in the house and espectially with mice, you'd know if there were critters around.

What we think happened was that a few mice squirrels or whatever got into the attic and created a little mice commune for themselves, and after the people moved out, so did they. No people = no food and no warmth! Whatever it was hasn't been there in quite some time.

So really....we're looking at a little money to replace some attic insulation, get some new outlets, and get some light switches put in. Not a terrible inspection at all! I'm going to do some research on the FHA regulations and see what I can find, if anything. Also, we're going to talk to our agent and see if he can negotiate anything with the seller's agent. We're already going to lose the washer and dryer (not staying in the home) so if they can work something out to get us a credit or will take care of those small fixes, it'd really help us out.

That's all for now. Don't look for any updates until Monday or Tuesday--we're going camping for the weekend! It's gonna be a good time.