Major? Minor?

Throughout the process of a home inspection, a quality experienced home inspector is looking for a variety of defects throughout the home.

I will start right off by saying most of the defects on my inspection reports are fairly minor. To me. But what is minor to me?

By definition for me, a minor defect is one that is repairable, not costly, and is usually part of normal home ownership.

So since I've defined minor to me, I should also define major defects to me. A major defect is one that could affect safety, security, useful life span of the home, or could be costly. All of these are relative terms of course, but we're not talking about that. For example by costly, I mean anything you could expect to spend more than $500 on correcting.

With all that being said, we're back to where we started.

Most of the defects on an inspection report are minor. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be repaired.

And, that doesn't mean we shouldn't expect the homes we are planning to purchase to not have those defects.

By the way, there is no such thing in the state of Texas as “grandfathered”. You may have heard that term in the news, on TV, or from your real estate agent. This term doesn't exist. There is no grandfathered defects in a home in Texas. There's only the condition of the home we have in front of us.

How do you navigate through all this information? For sure, you definitely want an experience home inspector. And you also want an experienced home inspector that is available after the inspection, in case you have questions. I would encourage you to ask any inspector you contact where they stand on this issue before you book the inspection with them.

You'll be glad you did.