Don't become the topic of a horror story

Imagine you buying a home only to find out several months later that there are problems with the electrical wiring or the wood has begun to rot in several places where your pipes are leaking, costing you thousands of dollars to fix. Having a home inspection performed prior to purchasing your home can eliminate costly repairs and even instances of extreme damage to your home like the examples below. 

These are some of the examples I have updated over the past few years.  There are comments with each - some sarcastic some serious.  Just take the time to look at them, it is worth it.  You just can't make this stuff up.  These pictures are from right here in our inspection coverage area.

 This furnace flue is in the attic of a just built and 2 year old home - what about carbon monoxide and safety issues here??

The floor joist look OK at 1st glance but those under the family room of this home were ALL hollowed out by termites

 This sellers told the buyers that they had recently done some resupporting under the kitchen due to a floor sag - no amount of jack posts in the world would help the termite destroyed wood that was the problem

These plates are holding the basement wall from falling in - they are anchored below the ground outside the home

The "weekend warrior" fix

 I thumped this tile shower wall and exposed this water damage behind wall as tile was falling off

 A collapsing foundation

Realtor nor buyer were aware of the previous fire in the home

The center beam in this house was just about to give out due to termite damage - this was in a very difficult to see spot behind a furnace

There were actually (8) flue pipes going into (1) 8" chimney in this multi-family unit

 This shows rotted wood behind yellow sprayed on foam insulation in a crawl space - the entire lower plate and 75% of the floor joists on this 25 year old home needed replaced - I believe ended up being about $25,000.  Problem was that the home was built in a depression causing water issues in the crawl space - Go ahead and try to sell this again.

 A "home made extension cord" behind a curtain valance.  At least they got the wires in the right prongs!

 Not for the squeamish - can you make out this feline behind a bladder tank in a basement?

If you can see the paper on  the insulation it is probably not installed right - this crawl space had wood rot throughout on the floor joists as moisture was bing trapped under the floor

This air freshener needs changed

A missing pressure relief valve on a hot water heater - a potential bomb in the home

Humorously dangerous

This is actually looking back about 8' under a garage floor that had been washed out - from a drainage problem

This TV tower actually fell within a 1/2 hour of taking this picture at an inspection

A foundation giving way

A new 100 Amp panel was installed but the feed wire was spliced to the old and only safe for 60 Amps

Do you see any problem?

The sellers forgot to mention there had been a termite problem (view from crawl space)

This temporary  fix is washing out the foundation of the chimney