Preliminary Home Inspections and Research

I have a client considering a home that doesn’t have any covered parking.  Nice house, but the owners had a big living room built instead of a carport.  They claim that a garage or carport could be built over to one side of the house, but there’s really no guarantee of that.

So if not being able to build covered parking is a deal-breaker, then how much do we investigate before deciding whether or not to make an offer?

We can look up the zoning and setback requirements, get deed restrictions and a current copy of the HOA restrictions.  But without a survey, we can’t measure distance from the house to the property line to see if a structure can be fit into the space.

So do you pay for the survey before you make an offer, or do you try to get one done in a limited inspection period?  Or make the whole deal contingent on an acceptable survey?  Will the owners even allow you to conduct preliminary inspections and surveys before going under contract?  What if you spend all this money researching and then you and the Seller can’t agree on price or terms?

And on the other side of this deal, if the owner is claiming covered parking can be built, shouldn’t they really have already done this kind of research and footwork?

Every decision when you buy a home is a trade-off.  Same goes for sellers.

If the owners had already done their research before they made the covered parking claim, they might have had an offer from us by now.  As it is, why should we go through all that trouble, when there are hundreds of other homes on the market that are just about as good?

Equal Housing Opportunity Realtor
Applied Real Estate Technology