Previously Posted on Tony's REO Blog

The Home Inspection has always been pivotal point when buying a home in Big Bear Lake, CA.  The importance of this fairly inexpensive inspection has become even more important with the influx of the bank owned, REO properties.  When you buy a home in the Big Bear valley from a home owner, you normally get a set of disclosures.  But, when you buy a bank owned, REO home in Big Bear, you get very few, if any disclosure regarding the property.  This makes it even more important for buyer to do his investigations and to get a home inspection.

So, what do you do when the buyer doesn’t want to spend the money for the home inspection?  Here in Big Bear, the home inspection is not a required inspection, so how do you encourage the buyer to spend the money and get the inspection?  Perhaps the story that I’m about to tell you will help.

I am currently involved in an escrow with a buyer who didn’t want to spend the money for the home inspection.  After explaining the importance of getting this inspection, especially as he was buying a bank owned, REO property, he still said no.  That was ok, but I told him that I would need him to sign something stating that I had advised him to get the home inspection and he refused.  The thought of having to sign this paper was more than he was willing to do, so he agreed to come back up to Big Bear and do the inspection.  He is now very happy that he took the day off and came to Big Bear!

While the buyer was working with the Home inspector, I took a look at the plot map.  The way that the manufactured home sat on the lot compared to the other homes didn’t look right to me so I started looking into it.  It wasn’t long before I discovered that half of the house sat on the next door neighbors land.  Had I not noticed this problem and the escrow had closed, the problems that this would have created would have been unimaginable.

Needless to say, the buyer is disappointed that this deal won’t go together.  But he is very happy that we found the problem while he still had time to back out of the deal without losing his deposit.

None of this would have happened had we not done a home inspection.