Dear Home Seller,

Crawl spaces, attics, furnaces, electric panels... these are a few of the many places where a conscientious home inspector needs to venture, in order to perform a complete and accurate assessment of your house.

Please have your stairwell tidy and free of debris and obstructions, and leave plenty of clearance around the garage door, electrical panel and furnace. If your attic hatch is in a closet, we need to have clothing and other articles removed from the upper shelves, to afford access using a step ladder.

If you have a crawlspace under the house, and the hatch is not readily accessible, we ask that you move any furniture or other items away from this area, and if necessary, roll back the floor coverings to expose the hatch, just prior to the inspection.

No house is perfect, and a home inspection is not intended to identify every little blemish or minute imperfection - however, the conscientious home inspector tries to discover if there are major defects in a home that the purchaser, and perhaps no one else, is aware of - and should also point out the positive aspects of the house.

In the vast majority of cases, we find nothing remarkable, or nothing to criticize, in crawl spaces; however If there is no access to your crawl space, we may not be able to provide your Purchaser with any relevant information about important components, such as foundation walls, floor structure, electrical wiring and the main plumbing system.

Try to understand the purchasers point of view... "inaccessible" can mean "unassessable" and therefore may leave a big question mark in the purchasers mind.

How would you feel if you were about to make the greatest purchase of your life, and were not given the opportunity to view one of the largest, most important component parts of that purchase?

And remember, you ARE marketing your house - you probably wouldnt try to sell your car without letting prospective buyers look under the hood. It just makes good sense, to have all areas accessible, so that your purchaser can feel comfortable in the knowledge that there wont be any unwelcome surprises later on.

Sincerely,

The Home Inspector

To give your home a competitive edge when its time to sell, make sure it is in good physical condition. This not only makes your house more attractive and desirable, it also simplifies or eliminates the negotiation process when the time comes for the buyers pre-purchase inspection.

To identify which components are most in need of repair, many sellers now enlist the services of a professional home inspector before putting up the FOR SALE sign.