30 Sep 9-30-16 Selling Your House?

Recently, I’ve had some phone calls that relate to issues people are having with their homes, primarily with work performed by other people or contractors. More and more often, these phone calls deal with people either buying or selling a home and having that sale potentially fall through because of a recent remodeling project. So how does a remodeling project make a house NOT sell you ask. Good question!
The North Carolina Home Builders Association pushed for an additional disclosure statement on the paperwork you fill out when you sell a home. It basically asks the current home owner if a remodeling project has been performed on the home, and, if so, was this work permitted and inspected by the local jurisdiction. As President of the North Carolina Home Builders Association, I saw the overall importance and industry acceptance of this effort. This disclosure statement was protecting future owners of the property by making sure every step was taken so the project was completed properly. Additionally, we hoped it would minimize the amount of work performed by unscrupulous contractors in our industry, because these companies do nothing but cause problems.
For example, over the years, I’ve seen load bearing walls removed and nothing put back to support the house. Major sags were occurring in the floors, ceilings, and roofs because of this. Correcting these problems after the fact is rather expensive. I’ve seen the wrong wiring used for outlets, incorrect drainage for plumbing lines, and very poorly designed HVAC systems that do more harm than good. All those issues get expensive to fix and, in the long run, would have been much less expensive to just do properly the first time.
So what’s happening is people are finding out remodeling projects have been performed on a house they want to buy, but the work wasn’t permitted or inspected. So these potential buyers may back out of that purchase. But that doesn’t always need to happen. To help people, we can come in to diagnose what the issues are and fix them, so all hope is not lost.
Taking the time to do a project correctly and spending the extra money to have it done properly is money well spent. You’ll have peace of mind knowing you don’t have to worry about any structural or mechanical issues, and you also won’t have to worry about a potential buyer backing out of the purchase of your home should you decide to sell your house in the future.
So my point this morning is to let you know that just because some company gives you a cheap price on a remodeling project, don’t get too excited, there’s probably a good reason it is cheap.
Remember what Ben Franklin said – “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of the low price is forgotten”.