I always associated home inspections with the purchase of a home that has been lived in previously. Both of the homes we have purchased have been “new construction” homes and so we always just trusted the inspection that was done by the builder prior to purchasing the house. Our first experience with a home inspection was when we sold our previous home and we were less than impressed. The inspector arrived late, did not spend much time at the home, broke our fireplace vent, and then did not provide us with a copy of the report until the day that the new buyers were scheduled to close on the home which left us scrambling to make repairs at the last minute while trying to move out.
After we had lived in our current home for about six months, advertisements from various home inspection companies in the area began pouring in. I had never really considered getting a home inspection on a “new” home, but based on some experiences we had with our previous home, we decided to go ahead and at least consider it.
We called several different companies for quotes and the average quotes ranged from $400-450. We initially chose About The House because their quote was the lowest ($400). Often, the phrase “you get what you pay for” holds true, but this was definitely not the case with About The House!
Our inspector, Jim Davis, arrived promptly on the day of the inspection and explained the entire process to me. He was extremely thorough and spent almost two hours examining every nook and cranny of our home. When he was finished, he went through the results with me and made recommendations. We received a copy of the report, including photos of the “problem” areas, via e-mail within hours. This included a summary on the last page of the recommendations. This was great because we were easily able to pass this on to our builder so that the repairs could be made. No “major” issues were discovered which gave us peace of mind, but he did find some issues with our air conditioner. In Houston, you can’t afford to have problems with your air conditioner and we had suspected that it wasn’t working properly for a while. We had even had the company out to look at it previously. It was nice to have something “official” to pass on so that they would come out again and take the problem seriously.
I realize that $400 seems like a lot of money, especially if you are living in a new construction home, but for us it was worth it. The cost to repair our air conditioner alone would have cost more than that down the road! They also offer a money back guarantee where if you are not satisfied with your inspection, they will “make it right” or give you your money back.
Whether you’re buying a “new” home or a resale home, you’re looking for Houston home inspectors who are professional, thorough, quick, and reasonably priced, go with About the House, Inspection Services.
You can view a full listing of the services they offer and pricing information on their website at:
aboutthehouse.com/
Melissa, Houston Texas