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How to get my home ready for inspection

10 Tips to Prepare for Your Home Inspection

When a seller and a buyer meet the minds, the result is a signed purchase offer. The contract is contingent on having a professional home inspection most of the time. The after-the-offer phase of a home sale is the step that can most likely sink the deal and create a great deal of anxiety for sellers and buyers alike.

Getting ahead of potential inspection items

As a seller, you want your home to pass inspection with as few callouts as possible. Hopefully, while preparing your home for sale, you looked at your house with a buyer’s critical eye and made repairs where necessary. Better yet, you had a pre-listing home inspection and took care of all the callouts on the list.

However, if you did neither of those, you should still make preparations to facilitate the inspection process. You should do so even if you had an evaluation previously, which will be evident as you read through my list.

1.  Keep up appearances in and around your home.

In other words, keep your home clean and neat. Although you don’t get points for that on the inspection, it leaves a positive impression. You want the inspector to see that your home has been cared for and maintained. So even after you have an offer in hand, don’t let things go. 

2. Make sure there is easy access to areas that will be inspected.

The inspector will check the basement, crawl space, and attic. She will look in the cabinets under the sinks to check for leaks. Remove any clutter that is in the way of getting to these areas. Is your attic access pull-down stairs in a closet?  Emptying it is probably a good idea. If a space is not accessible, that will throw up warning signs you don’t want.

3. Remove and replace blown-out light bulbs.

Replace any burned-out light bulbs both in and outside the house. A burned-out light bulb will require that the inspector check to...