By having a home inspection done before you have an offer on your home, you can potentially save a lot of money. This is a lesson we learned the hard way. We received an offer on a home we were selling. Since we didn’t have the home pre-inspected, the buyer paid to have an inspection company go through the property and check everything out. Shortly after that, we received an addendum to the offer with a request to lower the price or fix a “laundry list” of things the buyer wanted done to the house. This is a common strategy that buyers and their agents use to re-negotiate the price or have things repaired. Sometimes it can get very expensive.

In an agent listed real estate transaction, it’s usually the buyer that pays for a home inspection after they have made an offer. When you are selling by owner, you must use different strategies than a real estate agent would. A home inspection done by the seller before receiving an offer benefits the seller in two important ways. First, it provides a report via a neutral third party as to the condition of the property and second, it removes potential negotiating opportunities for the buyer.

When you have the inspection done ahead of time by a professional home inspection company, it allows you time to decide how you want to handle any surprises that come up in the inspection without the pressure of a buyer and the deadlines in their offer. You can fix minor things and adjust your price accordingly for any major repairs you don’t want to tackle. If you share your complete inspection report with the buyer, most of the time they won’t pay to have another one done. You can explain that you’ve already repaired or adjusted the price for anything found in the report.

Use the pre-inspection strategy to remove one of the areas of leverage a buyer or their agent would use to renegotiate the price. In the end, the money you spend up front for the inspection can save you money in repairs or equity that you may have otherwise had to give to the buyer.

Jill McIntire has been active in Spokane Real Estate since 1998 and is an instructor with By Owner University, where you can learn more about pre-inspections and other fsbo sale strategies.