How to prepare for a home inspection

You live in your house for many years. You like your place and do not even think about moving. But in life never say never. You may get better job offer, your family gets bigger or the price of the house skyrocketed so much, that you decided to cash in and retire. Whatever your situation is, before putting your nest for sale, you should make it shining again and be ready for a home inspection.


The most important step to make it ready for sale is to do the preliminary inspection. You should do the inspection of the windows, roofing, siding.


What the home inspector is looking at? He is gonna check the roof of the house and see if any roofing shingles are missing. If this is so, then you are gonna have to repair it. He looks at the siding and makes sure that all the siding panels are attached to the house and there are no damaged panels. Both roofing and siding usually is easy to repair, because all that material is available in store. The biggest problem is with the wood, vinyl or aluminum  windows of the house. 


Now is the question how the home inspector is gonna check the vinyl or wood windows of the house? Well first of all he is going to get to each window in a house and open it. He opens the window to make sure that both sashes of the window stay open and do not fall down. If the sash of the window does not stay open, it means that the balance system of the vinyl or wood window is broken.
    Many people call us and ask to repair their balance systems. The problem is, most of the time the windows of the house are very old and nobody knows who is the manufacturer of the window. It is not always possible to find the proper  balance system for the vinyl window. Then the only option is to replace the whole window. All the windows are custom made and usually it takes about 2 weeks to get them in from the date of order. Sometimes people have the closing sale in five days and cannot do it, because of the problems with the windows.  


 If you have old wood windows in the house and the inspector can’t open some of them, make sure that you cleaned the dry paint where the two window sashes meet each other. We always recommend to our customers to inspect each window personally before the inspection. 


The inspector is gonna go outside as well and check the wood frame of your windows. If there are any rotten spots, you are gonna have to take care about it.  All the rotten frame must be replaced and repainted or capped with aluminum casing.


   So when you are thinking about selling your house, make sure that your roof, siding and windows are in good condition. Do not procrastinate in replacing your old wood, vinyl, or aluminum windows. When you do that right now, you are gonna be able to enjoy them for several years and when you sell the house, still you can get the value back. ​

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