Glenn Wharton's (gwharton) Blog

It happens during every inspection.  The buyer will ask me if the seller "has to" repair a particular item or they will ask which items they should ask the seller to repair.  Repair negotiations are, of course, the responsibility of the buyer's agent.  The agent, however, is not supposed to be ma...

The critical question is "when was the problem detectable?  The buyer must start with an honest assessment of this simple question. Unfortunately my own experience is that a certain population of clients expects the inspector to be clairvoyant.  They will not say it, but if you read between the l...

Let's face it, home inspections would be shorter and less painful for all parties if the seller was really ready for the inspector.  Home that are well prepared end up with fewer write ups, a shorter negotiation and buyers that are less worried about surprises.  I have been providing agent the fo...

One of the continual debates among inspectors, defense attorneys and other interested parties is not what to write, but how to write it.  The question is how much information does anyone need about any one issue noted.  In general most agree that there are three levels of comment on an issue: Sim...

Looking back over the more than fourteen years I have been inspecting, I know that some of the buyers and sellers that I encountered could have been better prepared for the home inspection phase of the real estate transaction. There would have been fewer surprises, fewer "write-ups" and negotiati...

Finding a home inspector is not really a problem anymore.  Economic and licencing environments during the last 10 years allowed a large increase in the the population of inspectors in most markets.  Unfortunately, current economic conditions have not burned through the bottom-dwellers and weekend...