So we are selling our custom built house. The house was built by a licensed builder with union carpenters in 1999 to the IBC 1996 code and approved by the county building inspector. The buyers inspector said that the wrong shims were used under our steel beams. We called the county inspector and he said the material that was used at the time our house was built was standard practice. The buyer’s inspector responded that he is legally obligated to inspect to the current code and we would face severe liability issues if this “problem” is not taken care of immediately.
Are home inspectors legally required to inspect older houses for compliance with current code? If so how does any resale home get sold?
The current county building inspector says this is a non-issue.
Should we bail on this sale?
Also note that the realtor and the county building inspector who have had past experience with this home inspector think he’s a “maroon”
He is full of shit in my opinion. The buyers are trying to jack you on the price most likely. We recently had someone who wanted to buy our house based on the county assessor tax info and I told them to take a hike. Unless you are doing significant remodel work you don’t have to bring a home up to current codes and you certainly don’t need to in order to sell it in my opinion. A buyer and his representative can say and ask for anything. Just depends on how bad you want to sell it and if you are willing to do the work. Myself. I would tell him to pound sand
I agree.
I’m not sure what the licensing requirements for a housing inspector in your state are. In many states they aren’t even licensed. Often they are just hacks pretending to know what they are talking about. I wouldn’t trust a word they said if I was the seller.
Tell the buyer the house is as is and you have no intention of modifying it for sale. The country inspector has no issues with the sale and condition and he’s the only authority that really matters.
If the lending bank wants to make it an issue they could but I wouldn’t even expect that.
Just a commercial real estate agent, not a home inspector, but based on the tenor of what you have described I think you need to be prepared to walk away from the sale. Yes, really.
The inspector’s objections are nonsensical. You need to write a letter to the buyer indicating the shims are in full structural compliance, and that his inspectors objections and demand to re-shim the support beams are insane.
What the hell does this even mean? I’ve sold, and had inspected, commercial buildings that varied from 3 years sold to over 100 years sold. How can you logically inspect a 15 year old building to the current code? Building codes change over time. It’s a logically absurd statement.
If there are specific instances of materials or practices that have been proven to be dangerous or failure prone (ie lead paint, asbestos, mixed aluminum and copper wiring, etc) that’s one thing, but unless he’s claiming the existing shims are overtly hazardous his demand is cuckoo for cocoa puffs.
Former licensed Texas Home Inspector (1998-2002) here.
I was required to inform buyers of current code issues, however, they were not required to be brought up to current code unless they posed a danger.
I could tell you that the home contained knob & tube wiring or that the foundation was failing, but it certainly wasn’t within my authority to block a sale based on that info, nor to inform a seller that anything “must be” fixed.
That should be left to the discretion of the mortgage lender and negotiations between buyer and seller.
A Home Inspectors job is only to inform buyers of potential issues, not to get involved in the actual sale in any way. Contacting the seller to inform that something “must” be fixed would have placed my license in jeopardy.
This. 100% this. This is how the job of inspection is normally done. You have an egotistical loose cannon on your hands who is big dealing it for his client and making up claims out of thin air. If you do not nip this craziness in the bud your deal is doomed.
If they are still in due diligence the deposit would not normally be at risk unless the contract is somewhat unusual. Voiding a contract during the contingency period is normally trivially easy if the buyers are so inclined. It would be much easier to claim you were unable to get acceptable (to the buyer) financing than go through this rigamorale with a building inspector.
Has the building inspector recommended a “trusted” contractor who can bring it up to code at a “fair” price? That’s my guess - he’s trying to drum up some business for his brother-in-law and get himself a kickback. Especially with the nonsense about you being legally required to bring things up to the current building code.
He hasn’t brought up anyone to fix it. He’s mainly concentrating on trying to scare the buyers and us. He told the buyers that a 2 inch shim on a beam 60’ from the doors is a potential fire hazard egress situation in our unfinished basement. He warned us that if anything untoward should happen to anyone in the basement from now until eternity and we didn’t fix this “problem” we would be subject to unlimited liability actions.
I think he’s just a dick who took a how to be a “home inspector by mail class” who’s not used to people calling him on his nonsense.
Quit interacting with their home inspector. You’ve contacted the county inspection office. Just relay that information to the buyers, and that you do not intend to make any changes or change the price of the house. They are the ones that have to make a decision as to what they want to do.
We’re not interacting directly with the inspector. We send written responses to our real estate agent who forwards them to the buyers agent who forwards them to the buyer, etc. Everything is being done in writing. The over the top “danger danger danger” response came after we wrote we weren’t making changes based on what the county inspector told us.
When we sold my mothers house in Dearborn heights , the Heights inspector made us bring everything to code. That included lots of things that were not safety issues.
We had to change the basement sinks from concrete . Had to update the electric which was safe, but dated. There were lots of things they forced us to do. The house was safe and clean when she died.
There are good and bad professionals in every field. Is the guy your buyers picked okayed by your real estate agent and their office? Our agent (we’re the buyers) and the seller’s agent are out of the same office. The office has a sheet of maybe 25 names who are “okay” by them. If you pick off the sheet and your agents are both out of the same office, both parties are effectively* saying “Okay, we trust what this guy is saying, whatever he ends up saying.”
((We chose a guy who - while the most expensive - is a trained structural engineer. You basically don’t need second opinions with him, that’s his selling point.))
*I don’t know the law, just speaking in generalities
Curious about this. Are you saying a city inspector forced you to bring the entire house up to code, under threat of fines (or worse)? Why was a city inspector even involved?
Well, all’s well that ends well. The real estate agents have agreed to pick up the cost for what they are calling an “improvement” to the building structure in order to satisfy the buyer and his inspector. We will be writing a letter to the state licensing board about this inspector after the house closes. His behavior was unacceptable and many, many things he included in his report were completely wrong.
City/county inspectors will often get involved if there are renovations being done to a property, or the property is being offered for lease, or any scenario where a building permit is required. If there are obvious safety issues like obsolete electrical wiring, dangerous gas pipe layout, or serious structural issues they will require that these be corrected before an occupancy permit is approved.
Municipal inspectors do not normally (at least in my area) get involved in a real property sales unless code compliance or permit approval of some sort (per above) is required.