Harris Craftsmen Home Inspections

Neil Harris is an ICBO Building and Home inspector who prides himself in providing the most thorough home inspections in the industry.

Harris Craftsmen, Inc. provides home inspections for buying and selling of homes, home warranty expiration inspections, and commercial and investment real estate purchases.

Harris Craftsmen, Inc. home inspection reports come in both paragraph and checklist format in an easy to use binder that will assist you in your real estate transaction process. Inspection reports are provided within 24 hours of inspection. Harris Craftsmen provides last minute emergency inspection services for those in a hurry.

Why Home Inspections Are Important

I recent encountered a client with quite the headache. She had recently purchased the fulfillment of one of her young life goals, her first home. With all good intentions of making good this business, she entered the home buying market and was hit with a whirlwind. She very quickly came to understand what the cliché "Sellers Market" really means. Her initial strategy was sound; find a home, talk to the agent, look at the home, sleep on it, and if the home meet all her desires then she would put in a bid. She found this system to be almost impossible as by the time her head hit the pillow for the sleep on it phase, someone else would beat her to the punch and place their bid first.

Frustrated, she accelerated this process. She decided she must place the bid the same day if she were ever to acquire the home of her dreams. She approached the real estate market with more aggression, and voila, she found a home. She placed her bid immediately and was counter offered with a reduction of the contingency clause period to 12 days. Normally this period of time is 17 days but the agent explained that the seller had had other bids fall out due to finance and or "other reasons" and was looking for some guarantee that her offer was serious. She was very serious and accepted the counter offer.

During this contingency period she had numerous tasks to accomplish. Time ticked away and she lost hair and sleep trying to get everything done. She did everything to the book and decided in the end that the purchase was meant to be. The termite report came back clean and she decided to forgo the home inspection. Instead she had a group of close friends come over and look for any issues. Unfortunately, they missed a few major issues.

The house appeared beautiful on first approach. It was a lovely three bedroom home which had been created from a one bedroom beach cottage. The home addition was recently added and contained the master bedroom with whirlpool bath, an extension of the kitchen and living space and a portion of the third bedroom. The home was remodeled after the addition was complete and the effect was breathtaking. Six months later San Diego earned a heavy rain storm after a lengthy dry spell. Two days after the storm I stood before her giving the news that caused tears to well in her eyes. She needed a general building contractor to repair a water leak coming in through the master bedroom and kitchen ceiling. I took a look at the roof and found that the home addition was not properly attached to the original home. No flashing was used to connect the roofs, a layer a roofing paper and asphalt shingles were the only protection from rain. After seeing this I volunteered to inspect the rest of the addition. I found many code violations and structural faults, that would accelerate the decay of the structure such as raw Douglas fir lumber placed directly on concrete for piers to support the addition.

I next asked her if she had the home inspected during the purchase and relayed the story of her house buying experience to me. Avoid situations like this in your buying experience by having a thorough home inspection done by Harris Craftsmen, Inc.

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