home inspection advice

I’m having a two-family brownstone inspected and trying to decide between (in order, from most to least expensive) using Rich Perri, Accurate Building or John Gromkowski at Preciseinspector-ny.com.  Gromkowski uses photos in his report, the other two do not. Any thoughts, recommendations, experiences? How useful are photographs? Anyone? Thanks!

sd

in Inspection 13 years and 6 months ago

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dnk | 13 years and 6 months ago

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I used Matthew Barnett at Accurate Building Inspectors twice.  He saved us from buying a place that would have sunk us financially (that was the first inspection).  He later inspected the house that we ended up buying.  For both inspections, he spent a lot of time in the house (about 3 hours) and then took some time afterwards to discuss things.  He also made himself available for follow up questions.  His reports were comprehensive and were essential to our decision-making process.  I’d highly recommend.  As for images:  he took them, but I think he used them for his own background.  The only image that made it to the report itself was a shot of the front of the building

CMPXCHG | 13 years and 6 months ago

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I also recommend John. We used him for the place we bought.

HouseNut | 13 years and 6 months ago

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after inspecting it 3 times!

HouseNut | 13 years and 6 months ago

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If you go with Accurate Building use Matthew not the owner who is on NPR.  He missed over 70K in issues on our house!

jockdeboeraia | 13 years and 6 months ago

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I like John and he has a construction background.

callalily | 13 years and 6 months ago

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Oh — and our house has a LOT of problems. Our first inspection took three hours! (Not Heimer. Great guy though.)

callalily | 13 years and 6 months ago

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Our inspectors didn’t miss a thing. I recommend getting an inspector who is a licensed home inspector AND an engineer. That way if there is a structural problem, you don’t have to hire a second inspector who is also an engineer, as we had to do. Heimer is both, and they are good. If memory serves, they charge $900.

pigthree | 13 years and 6 months ago

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home inspectors always miss lots of things.  I would also claim ownership to the photos in a contract. some of these inspectors sell the photos to reaestate based websites.

hanssauerkraut | 13 years and 6 months ago

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I wish we could do the inspection for our house over… It’s one of the steps I regret the most in our first-home-buyers’ naivete. Our inspector did take photos but he missed some pretty major things that got brought up when we brought a contractor in a month later. (Luckily, we were able to negotiate a HUGE repair into our deal, even though it wasn’t on the inspection report.) We went with the inspector who was recommended by the bank, and he was VERY inexperienced. Boy, was that a mistake. If I could do it all over again, I would invest in a very good inspector and pay the extra couple hundred bucks.

BHS | 13 years and 6 months ago

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The most important thing is uncovering anything major, and secondly, what you learn when you accompany the inspector on the inspection. Photos you could take yourself if you thought they would be helpful in negotiations for price reductions, but the description of the problem is probably more relevant. Pick the person who will do the best job of explaining to you the context and severity of anything he finds.