Pre-Sale Home Inspections when Selling Your Chicago Home

 If you’re selling your home in Chicago this summer, there’s one piece of pre-sale advice that will almost always pay off: the pre-sale home inspection.

You might be surprised to learn that many sellers elect not to take advantage of this service—but I can’t say I blame them. A home inspection costs money (usually a couple hundred dollars), and it seems counter-intuitive: “Why would you want to bring up your home’s flaws?”  Plus, it’s just one more thing to do when selling your Chicago home. “Why borrow trouble?”
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In fact, there are compelling reasons to take this extra step:

• Discovering hidden or otherwise unknown flaws in your home in advance allows you ample time to fix them before the home goes on the market
• If you discover and fix these issues, you’ll able to boast a “clean inspection” report in your marketing
• If you don’t discover and fix these flaws, your buyer will—and this discovery won’t surface until the home is already under contract, listed as “contingent” in the MLS, and consequently off the radar for all the other potential buyers. If you and the buyer then can’t come to an agreement about who will fix or pay for the problems, your home will fall out of contract. When it goes back on the market, ten to twenty (or more!) days will have been wasted, putting you back at square one with a higher DOM (Days on Market) count. That can ultimately lower your property’s appeal.

Even if you elect not to resolve the issues you discover, any buyer writing an offer for your home will already have knowledge of these issues, so the faults won’t need to be further negotiated. If your buyer tries to do so, I’ll be here to point out that this was already disclosed when they wrote the offer!
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Bottom line? If you’re selling a home in Chicago this summer, consider spending the couple extra hundred dollars. You’ll be entering your transaction with confidence!
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