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New Home Inspection ChecklistFree New home inspection checklists are necessary to assist home buyers. Buyers of new homes are frequently under the mistaken impression the municipality has performed all the necessary and required new home inspections. Simple home inspection checklists sometimes allow new home buyers to find defects they might otherwise miss. Read what read what our most recent home inspection clients thought of our NJ home inspections and our certified NJ home inspectors. Recent Client Comments For each 8 hour shift a municipal code inspector may have 5 hours on the road. The other three hours is spent on the phone, setting up schedules, reviewing plans, dealing with mountains of paper work and other administrative tasks. If the inspector is given a seven code inspections plus three new home inspections to perform in one day how much time does he or she have at each job site to go through his or her new home inspection checklist? Why don't municipalities perform more thorough inspections of new homes? Well there are many reasons. Budget cuts have cut back on the staffing at many municipal building departments. Where there was once a larger staff to inspect there is a smaller staff. Only a small segment of time is devoted to new home inspections Frequently after new home buyers move into the home they discover the reality - in the vast majority of cases municipalities only perform the minimal new home inspections they are required to perform. 10 inspections / 5 hours = 1/2 per inspection. If he or she can hit the hyper space button to move between inspections. New home inspections are more difficult because when town inspectors get there they may not have paved roads and or sidewalks. Subtract out time spent in traffic, filling out forms on jobs, waiting for people to answer door bells, cleaning off dirty shoes before entering the home, discussing problems with those on the job and walking to and from the car I think each municipal inspector is lucky they have any time at all left to actually fill out the new home inspection checklist. In many municipalities inspectors are assigned many more than ten inspections a day. Think of your town and how long it takes you to get from one place to another. Imagine how long it must take the inspectors to plot a route through town to each and every inspection and find ten different homes a day. New home inspections are sometimes on streets without signs and or house numbers. Now to toss a few monkey wrenches into the day such as fires and other disasters they are called on to provide expertise, plus a few crisis such as the mayor calling to find out why so and so failed an inspection and how come so and so passed (yes it happens). While many or most municipal inspectors try their best to inspect new homes and renovated homes to the best of their ability factors beyond their control make it difficult or impossible to provide the most thorough inspections they would like. While many realtors tell buyer not to worry because the town approved it, there is seldom the degree of inspection provided the buyer thinks. In New Jersey most municipalities do not check to determine if permits were obtained for all the work performed on the home since it last changed hands. Some towns will check for open permits but that is about it. If a buyer wants to know if permits and municipal approvals were obtained for all work performed on the home it is the buyers job to do that research on their own. Buyers are cautioned if work was recently performed on a home like new kitchens, new bathrooms or renovations they must check to determine if the real estate taxes were updated. A favorite trick is to completely renovate a home and put in on the market quickly, before the real estate tax increase hits the books. New home buyers are then surprised by the new tax bill when they can least afford it. Home buyers who hire independent home inspectors are much better off because they get the undivided attention of a qualified and experienced home inspector for a couple of hours. Free home inspection checklist for home buyers to avoid surprises when they move in. Few patients would think to purchase books on surgery and try it out on them self, why they buy a book or a home inspection checklist and try it out on the most expensive purchase they ever made is beyond me. New Home Inspection Checklist
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