Using Your Home Inspection Report After Moving In
Once you’ve received your home inspection report, there is a lot of information on it, and it can be overwhelming. However, a home inspection report is a super useful tool that can be used for a number of things.
Here is what you should do with the information from your home inspection once you move in.
Don’t Forget About the Report
Once you’ve gotten your home inspected, moved in, and are settled in your new home, it is easy to put all of the paper work away in a filing cabinet, and not look at it again. Since you’ve moved into the home, there probably wasn’t significant enough issues with the home, or you had the seller fix major issues before purchasing the home.
However, there are still likely some things that the inspector took note of in the report that weren’t major enough to have the seller fix. These things are still worth fixing after you move in!
It is a good idea to keep the report in the back of your mind, because these extra repairs are things that you will want to fix at some point, and if you forget about the report, they might go un-repaired for a while.
Make Repairs Based on the Report
If the inspection report has smaller defects listed on it, these are things that the inspector thought should be fixed, and for good reason.
When you first move into a home, you are the most motivated to do work on it and get it to where you want it to be. Although moving is a lot of work, and you probably will want to just relax and enjoy your new home – making these improvements early on is the best practice.
Once you’ve lived in the home for a while, you have furniture where you want, things are organized, etc, you will be less likely to want to move stuff to repaint, fix holes, or whatever may need to be fixed.
Therefore, doing these things before you’re completely settled in will seem like less of a hassle because you are still moving things around and organizing anyway!
Take Note of Maintenance
Inspection reports typically include information about maintenance done by the previous owners (if they provided this) and the condition of the systems in a home.
Taking note of how clean filters are, when the water heater & HVAC was last checked, etc, is important to help you stay on top of regular maintenance.
It is recommended that you have regular maintenance of your home’s systems, and if you know when it was last done, you can make reminders to yourself in the future that you need to check on these things!
This will help the overall health of your home stay just as good as it was when you moved in, and will help you stay accountable.
