Make sure your Virginia Beach home inspector follows the trails of issues in your house to ensure you know exactly what needs to be repaired or replaced to protect your home.

Are the lack of gutters on a home a defect or just a personal choice? There are many that feel gutters affect the aesthetic appeal of their homes. It doesn’t matter if they were never installed or removed on an older home due to renovations and not replaced there are issues to consider when deciding not to use a rain drainage system. Consider this, if you take a 1000 square foot roof as an example. Every inch of rain that falls on that roof means approximately 600 gallons of water has to find somewhere to go.

Now if your home does not have gutters to properly route the water to a safe location that you choose, then it has nowhere to go except down the side of your house to the foundation. This can cause premature wear of the siding and allow water to cause damage to your foundation or enter your crawlspace.

Here are some pictures from a crawlspace during a recent Virginia Beach home inspection where there were gutters on the front of the house, but not at the rear. There was water pooling against the crawlspace walls at the back of the crawl, but not at the front. The efflorescence on the wall are evidence of a chronic issue of moisture intrusion. Having this much moisture in the crawlspace is the highway to a host of different problems.

Moisture management is important for every house and a proper drainage system is a crucial part of managing where rain water ends up at your house.

 Schedule your Virginia Beach home inspection NOW!

There is something that new homeowners in Virginia Beach need to remember, and that is things can and will eventually go wrong with their house. All homes will break down, wear out, leak, and deteriorate over time. You get a home inspection to get a snapshot of the condition of the home prior to your purchase.  You and your Realtor address the important issues that are of a concern to you before you agree to buy. 

After moving in the responsibility every homeowner assumes is the home maintenance. You will have questions like. “What do I need to look for?”, “What do real concerns or problems look like?”, and “How do I take care of that issue?” 

Make sure you home inspector provides you with a copy of “Now That You’ve Had a Home Inspection” It will inform you about the different systems in your house, how they work, and the maintenance they require. A typical home has over 10,000 different parts, and having these parts work together is what you as a homeowner desire.

                                                                                                                                                             LEARN how your home works…KEEP it maintained….SAVE energy

 “Now That You’ve Had a Home Inspection” is provided to every Virginia Beach home inspection client that uses Safe House Property Inspections.

Are you looking to buy a home in Virginia Beach, and want to get the best deal available. Maybe you have started to look at the Virginia Beach foreclosure market. Considering the over-abundance of these properties and just how little many of them are going for, it’s tempting to jump right in and buy. It is possible that it could pay off as a long-term investment, but remember just like any other major purchase, you should know as much as you can about a property before you buy it.   

Do not settle for any advice that a home inspection is not advantageous because they cannot be used as a bargaining tool, since banks don’t negotiate on “as is” properties. Remember that banks selling properties “as is” may have no legal responsibility for any defects. Would you even consider purchasing a car without knowing whether it had a motor? Well the same holds true for a house, regardless of whether you intend to live in it, or fix it and flip it. Is it really a deal if in the end you are stuck living in a money pit?

It is prudent to remember that long before the previous owners stopped making mortgage payments, they deferred required maintenance tasks. Moisture intrusion leading to leaks and mold are just a few of the major problems commonly found by inspectors in foreclosed properties.  There are plenty of stories of the horrendous condition that some of these homes are left in. Former owners have been known to ransack their own properties, taking with them anything they can pry up or unscrew, and leave behind trash and junk that you have to pay for to have removed.

You should always get a home inspection in Virginia Beach before buying a property, especially when you’re buying a bank-owned foreclosure.  In such cases, it may be impossible to find out how well the home was cared for, or whether major damage was done right before the past owners left the property. Ask the bank how much time you have after your initial offer to have an inspection performed, and schedule one immediately. If it goes well, you’ll enter into the deal with peace of mind and a better idea of what repairs you’ll have to deal with. That alone is worth the price of an inspection. If the inspection reveals a costly disaster, you can back out of the deal and save tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Don’t get burned on your foreclosure purchase. Make sure your Virginia Beach foreclosure is a safe house by scheduling a home inspection with

Safe House Property Inspections

Here a some interesting roof repairs found while taking a stroll on a roof during a Virginia Beach home inspection.