Pros and Cons of Getting a Home Inspection Before Listing - Moving.com (2024)

If you’ve ever bought or sold a home before, then you’re probably quite familiar with the standard practice of a home inspection—an important part of the real estate process that allows buyers to get a home thoroughly checked out before proceeding with a purchase. But would getting a home inspection before listing make a sale easier—and potentially more profitable—for sellers?

The home inspection serves a couple of key purposes, including informing buyers of any major repair needs that may impact their desire to purchase the property. And in many cases, it results in a few back and forth negotiations between buyer and seller in terms of repair requests or price modifications. If you’re a seller, getting a home inspection in advance might be able to cut down on these types of negotiations, as well as help you close the deal at or above listing price.

Here’s what to know about the pros and cons of getting a pre-listing home inspection, including scenarios where it might make more sense to do it (or, alternately, to skip it and head right to market).

Pros and cons of doing a home inspection before listing

There’s a laundry list of to-dos that most sellers are encouraged to tackle before putting a home on the market, including things like decluttering and deep cleaning, staging, and finding a great agent. What’s often not on that list however is a pre-listing home inspection.

Whether or not getting a home inspection before listing makes sense for you depends on a number of factors. Keep these pros and cons in mind as you decide if it’s a good next step.

Pros

You can get ahead of repairs

No home is perfect, and chances are there are a number of things about your home that a buyer might want fixed before closing. Doing a home inspection in advance of listing gives you an opportunity to get ahead of those requests, especially anything major that could forestall—or even squash—a deal.

Another benefit to getting in front of repair requests: you might be able to save yourself a good deal of cash. Buyers who want repairs may ask for you to lower the sale price to accommodate, or they may put you in a position where you have a very limited amount of time to put in a fix and end up having to pay a premium. Do your repairs in advance and you’ll have more control over how things get fixed and how much you spend in doing so.

You might be able to close faster

Your buyer is almost certainly still going to want to do a thorough home inspection themselves, even if they know you had one performed already. So while you probably can’t skip that step altogether in order to move the sale along at a faster pace, you can get more assurance that they’re not going to stumble upon huge issues that seriously slow you down.

You could list your home for more

Any improvement that you make to your home has the potential to increase its value, even if that improvement is a necessary one based on your home inspector’s findings. This is especially true for big ticket repairs like new appliances, roofs, and furnaces, but it also applies to smaller things, like getting rid of mildew in the bathroom or fixing faulty blinds. You won’t always get a 100% return on what you spend, but you can make your home a lot more attractive to buyers, and thus a lot more likely to sell for what you want it to.

Cons

You’ll have to disclose any big problems

Laws vary by locality, but in general, once you know about a major issue with your home it becomes your obligation to disclose it to any would-be buyers. This includes serious structural issues like cracks in the home’s foundation or any water or termite damage. These items would have been discovered in the post-offer home inspection anyway, but by that point a buyer is more invested in the property and may be more willing to work with you on overcoming the issue instead of just backing out entirely.

You’ll also have to disclose what you’ve had repaired and why. If you opted for a quick fix on something in lieu of a more detailed repair, your buyer will be aware of it, and so will their own home inspector.

You’ll have to spend money to do it

You can expect to spend about $400 for a reputable inspection on a 2,000 square foot home, with the price going up the larger your home is and/or the more thorough the inspection needs to be. (For instance, older homes may require more extensive, and thus more costly, inspections.)

It’s not a huge amount of money in the world of real estate, but it is a cost factor that you might want to keep in mind. The cost of a home inspection usually begets other costs too once you learn about repair needs and undertake fixing them. If you skip doing a home inspection before listing, it’s the buyer that will pay for the inspection to be done—and there’s a chance they won’t ask for certain repairs that you would have wasted money on if you’d known about.

You might end up making more work for yourself

There are certain instances where doing a home inspection before listing definitely doesn’t make sense. For example, if you’re listing in a seller’s market, where buyers are facing stiff competition for properties and are less likely to pursue negotiations or repair requests. In a super hot seller’s market, buyers may even be willing to purchase homes “as is,” skipping the home inspection entirely.

There’s also the factor of who ultimately ends up paying for repairs. It’s hard to know in advance what a potential buyer will care about and request that you take care of versus just dealing with on their own. Your interpretation of what’s a crucial fix may differ from theirs, meaning that you could end up putting time, money, and effort into repairs your buyer was never going to ask for.

Key takeaways

So, should you get a home inspection before listing? The answer, perhaps frustratingly, is that sometimes it’s worth it and sometimes it’s not. Your best bet is to work with a qualified and experienced real estate agent who can guide you in the right direction based on the condition of your home and your local market.

What might make sense for one seller won’t make sense for another. By creating a personalized listing plan you give yourself a better chance of selling your home efficiently, both in terms of speed and in terms of cost. And that’s a good thing to strive for in any market scenario.

Home inspection FAQs

If you still have some lingering home inspection questions, we’ve got some quick answers to common questions that people ask on the topic.

How do you get your home ready for an inspection?

As a seller, you want your home inspection to go as smoothly as possible. To help make sure that happens, take some important steps to get your home ready prior to the inspector showing up—including providing open access to areas that are going to be checked out (think attic, basem*nt, areas under the sink, etc.), cleaning your house, and taking care of easily fixable problems that your inspector is going to point out (leaky toilets or sinks, faulty cabinets, and so on).

We’ve put together a complete list of how to prepare for a home inspection, so check that out to make sure that you cover all of your bases.

What fixes are mandatory after a home inspection?

Some things you just can’t unlearn, and that includes certain home inspection finds. If your inspector reports the presence of mold or water damage, termites or other pest infestations, toxic hazards, or major structural issues, you’ll either need to fix these prior to listing or disclose their presence to any potential buyers.

How do you schedule a home inspection?

Find a reputable home inspection company either by asking for referrals or doing some research online. Be sure to check out reviews and to call at least two or three companies to find out what their schedule and availability is like and how much they charge. Take all factors into account before you decide who to hire instead of just going with the cheapest option, since if you’re going to pay for an inspection anyway you may as well make sure that it’s done right.