Our home inspector emailed us copies of the inspection reports from the whole house and pest inspections earlier this week. The reports are pretty thorough and cover most everything we discussed when we were walking through the house, but we were a little disappointed that they didn’t include any more pictures of the property than they did. The inspector had a digital camera with him for the entire inspection and took a bunch of pictures all over the house. He made a comment about his flash not working right, so we’re guessing that the interior photos must not have turned out since they weren’t really included in the reports. It’s kind of a shame that that didn’t work out – it would have been nice to have those photos for our reference.

Based on the reports and what we saw during the inspection, we’re asking that the homeowner fix a few items before closing. Top on our list was a telephone/electrical pole on the property that looks as though it’s being held up by the power lines. There’s another cable running from the pole to the house that looks like it’s supposed to bolt into the house to help support the pole, but it’s come undone. The fix might be as easy as just re-attaching it, we’re not sure. We also asked that they fix the problem with the grounding cable not being attached to the grounding rod on the exterior of the home. We’re pretty sure this is going to be just a couple minute fix, so hopefully there won’t be any objections there. And the last thing we asked them to look at was the three exterior doors that wouldn’t open. There were two on the sun room that wouldn’t open because the carpet was a little tall and it looked like the doors were hung a little crooked too … hopefully tightening the hinges or maybe trimming the doors will fix this problem. The third door that wasn’t opening right was the main back door of the house. We couldn’t get the dead bolt to release on this door … there’s probably just a trick to it that we don’t know about, so hopefully they’ll share whatever that is.

Anyway, their real estate agent is out of town for a few days, so they probably won’t get our requests until the first part of next week. Since there shouldn’t be any major cash outlays to fix any of these things, we’re hoping they won’t have a problem with what we’re asking them for, but it’s hard to say. Up until now, they’ve been very reluctant when it comes to the home inspection … I think the whole idea made them really nervous. At first, we thought it was because they had something to hide, but now it seems like they just didn’t know what the inspection would focus on and they were afraid it would bring up all kinds of negatives that were out of their control. Between the time that our offer was accepted and when we scheduled the inspection (about a week apart), the homeowner had gone through the basement and pulled out all of the inactive knob and tube wiring so it wouldn’t show up on the report. He also said he’d removed some exterior lights that had been in the front trees (they probably weren’t to code). Given how concerned he’s obviously been about the results of the inspection, we’re hoping he’ll be relieved to see how minor the things on our list are and hopefully not challenge us.

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