We put in a bid on a house last week and today we went through the home inspection. Seller said there was no attic access he knew of, but we found a little panel in one of the closets, just about big enough for a person of medium frame to get through. So the inspector peeked his head up there. Guess what he found the attic to be insulated with?
Wait for it!
Wait for it!
Wendy’s hamburger wrappers. (Not like used ones, but piles of unused Wendy’s wrappers.) That’s a new one for me and the inspectors, who have seen thousands more houses than me.
Anyone got any odd stories/surprises stemming from home inspections?
When we bought our house, there were holes scratched through the drywall by pets, especially in the garage. The garage holes opened into the crawl space under the house proper.
When the inspector and I went under the house for a look around, we found a huge pile of empty Muscatel bottles right near a hole in the drywall. Apparently, someone was sneaking drinks in the garage and throwing the bottles under the house to hide them.
I was bidding on a house. At the home inspection, it was just the inspector and me there. The house was already empty–no furniture, no odds and ends. Completely empty.
Almost.
While the inspector was elsewhere, I was walking through the place, making my own notes about what might need work, looking in every nook and cranny. The door to the hall closet was open, and as I walked by I noticed something on the shelf. Some kid’s toy. The closet was otherwise empty. I reached up and picked the toy up and realized this was no kid’s toy. It was an adult’s toy. A pink silicone masturbation sleeve. What the fuck? They moved out everything but this?
I decided to spare the inspector from making the same discovery I did, so I hid it in a box of junk I had seen in the garage.
About fifteen minutes later one of the owners bursts through the front door, clearly a bit stressed, and hurries past me with barely an acknowledgment of my presence. She goes down the hallway and I hear doors opening and closing, bathroom drawers rolling open and shut. Clearly she’s looking for something.
I went outside and was speaking with the inspector when she came out a few minutes later. We chatted briefly and pleasantly. I made no mention of finding anything and she didn’t ask. They never picked up the box of junk in the garage.
We had a flood call last month at work. Dishwasher on main floor of a bungalow leaked, flooding basement suite. When the guys pulled the drywall off the basement ceiling they found badly charred floor joists. The basement had experienced a major fire event and simply been covered over after quickly sistering a couple joists. This fire certainly required a visit front the fire department. We place it mid eighties. Plenty of evidence on closer inspection of charring and smoke damage in mech room, laundry room, under stairs. Basically everywhere you typically see framing and mech exposed.
In thirty years no inspector has ever caught this. Note that this has been a rental property for decades. Its probably changed hands several times since the fire.
There is melted copper pipe hanging between joists. I don’t know how people that pull this crap can sleep at night.
a few years after they bought it, I was helping my sister & brother-in-law work on their house. We were remodeling a semi-finished basement area that the previous owners’ then 16-year-old son had used as his bedroom.
Between the ceiling rafters we found a plaster molding of an intimate body part, obviously one he had made from life. But then, that was the time of the famous ‘Plaster Casters’ groupies.
As he was then in his mid-20s and soon to be engaged, I suggested they save it to give to him as a wedding present. But they didn’t do so.
A friend was having some work done requiring the removal of some ceiling tiles in the basement. The workman presented her with a bunch of porn magazines that he found in there. When she confronted her husband he claimed that they must have belonged to a previous owner. But the dates of the magazines proved otherwise!
We moved into an apartment years ago. The day after we moved in the previous occupant came to the door and asked if he could retrieve some personal belongings. He proceeded to remove the panel in the hall closet that was covering the bathroom plumbing and took out a package about the size of a paperback book. We didn’t ask but he volunteered the information that it contained pictures of his car. :dubious:
The guy who bought my house wanted to close AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!
He agreed to my asking price, and offered to forego inspection (and sign off on it) if I would close as soon as possible.
It didn’t make sense. My selling price was chosen to allow some leeway when minor issues showed up on a home inspection. But the guy was in a helluva hurry. His financing was ok with it and my lawyer told me my ass was covered. I still don’t know what the rush was about.
More of an appraiser story, he showed up and just asked the current owner how much he needed, then wrote down the $89,000 price and drove off. I can’t honestly say the appraiser looked at the house from the street.
I’ve had building inspectors sign off without even stopping their car, and then sign off the next inspection though we’d not started that part.
They certainly weren’t all wrapped. I didn’t dig too deep, but the ones I saw were all kind of crinkled. There may have been a layer of flat sheets below them, though. Quite odd, I must say. I hope the home inspectors took a photo of it (we’re supposed to get the full report later today.)
My husband stopped by the house we were having built some eons ago, and the builder and inspector were doing the final inspection… at a table… with beers on it.
The blueprints for that house were screwed up, and we didn’t catch it till too late. If you totaled the room dimensions across the back of the house, they were 1’ longer than the front of the house. But they poured the slab based on the dimensions in the front. And that’s how we ended up with a master bathroom that was a foot narrower than it was supposed to be. I was so glad when we sold that place and moved.
There was a house that had been rewired by the previous owner, an electrical engineer. Wires were neatly labeled and a big book was provided with copious notes and schematics of the house wiring (very helpful in troubleshooting!), but the actual physical wiring turned out to be rather flimsy and things started to fall apart rather quickly. There were marginal joints, awkward turns, wires coming up out of the floor in awkward locations, you name it.
Wow. Both times I’ve bought a house, the inspectors have gone through the house room by room with me, around the outside, and into attic and basement. 90 minutes at least in each case, and learned a great deal about the houses I was buying.
When we bought our house in 2005, we got a letter from our lender telling us based on the location and the price, they weren’t even going to require an appraisal. It was just, “Yeah, that price sounds about right. Here’s your money.” Ah, the housing boom! (ETA: we did have a thorough inspection, though.)
I don’t have a good inspection find myself. But a buddy of mine once rented an apartment in an old building. It had a non-functioning fireplace with a metal plate covering it. His cat kept finding a way to squeeze behind the plate, so he was trying to secure it one day, and he found a bag of crack behind it. I believe he just threw it out.
I think you’re talking about 2 different kinds of inspectors. watchwolf49 seems to be talking about city or town inspectors, who are supposed to come out during certain phases of construction to make sure the builders are following code. And sadly, yes sometimes the inspection consists of a driveby. The OP, RTFirefly and others in this thread are talking about a home inspection service hired by a homebuyer to inspect the house on the homebuyer’s behalf before the purchase goes through, looking for apparent or hidden damage or problems to be fixed or negotiated over.
When we bought our current house, our inspector missed something interesting. He did a pretty good inspection so we were surprised to make this find ourselves **months **later. Half of the basement was finished, DIY-style by the previous owner. It had too many electrical outlets and fixed lights in odd places so we don’t know what he had in mind, but otherwise it was fine. Until my husband was out in the yard and noticed that from the outside he could count four basement windows. On the inside there were only two… Yep, they’d drywalled right over two windows. :smack:
When we bought our house, the inspector started to check out the furnace in the basement and found it was an empty shell! Further inspection disclosed that what we had assumed to be the air conditioner outside was actually a heat pump that provided both heat and cooling. The original oil furnace casing had been gutted and used to hold the heat exchanger and fan for the heat pump.