Do I really need a pest inspection?
Do you really need a pest inspection on your house? What's a pest inspection anyway?
Pest Inspection
Well, it is kind of what it sounds like. A pest inspection is when somebody comes over to your house and looks for pests and it's termites and other things like wood boarding needles and all that other stuff.
Termites
There's actually a couple different types of termites. There's wood boring termites that are actually in the structure that's not good. And then there's subterranean termites, which are in the soil below your house. Not great, but not as bad as the first time. Pest inspectors will also go underneath the house and check out the foundation. In most cases, they're going to go around and check out all the eaves underneath the roof because a lot of times it gets water in it and they're damaged and they're going to say, “Oh, this is damaged here.”
How much is a pest inspection?
It's a hundred bucks here, it's 150 bucks there, it's 400 bucks there. They can look at decks, they can do all this other stuff. But the reason why you want a pest inspection done if you're a seller is because you want to know upfront what your problems are, if any. You don't have to do the work necessarily, but you can be able to say to a buyer, “Here, Mr. And Mrs. Buyer is the pest inspection. It's $3,000 to fix it, and I don't want to do it. So it's on you.” So the buyer can ask to have it fixed. The buyer can say, “No problem. We'll do it ourselves down the road, whatever.”
As a buyer, you really want a pest inspection. It is something that you are going to pay a couple hundred bucks for, but it is a great peace of mind even if there's no work needed.
Sellers do it, but so are buyers
Sometimes the sellers will do one in advance, and that's great. You can always get your own anyway just to confirm. Or if the sellers haven't done one, you really, really should pay to have one done, and the reason why is because there's plenty of stuff that you can't see. You're not going to probably crawl underneath the house yourself. You're not checking for subterranean termites, so you should know what you're buying. It's just that simple.
