Home inspection: my personal experience

By B. Cohen

"What even is a home inspection? Do I need a building inspection too? Is it worth paying extra to check the apartment? Can't I spot construction defects myself? Why spend more money on my own apartment?"

After what I went through, I can tell you from experience what a home inspection actually covers, and who to call to get it done properly, without being taken for a ride or throwing your money away. Do a home inspection before buying any apartment or house. That is my advice, and here is why.

We poured money into our wedding, then saved shekel by shekel for the sake of our future kids: a good neighborhood, a spacious, well-kept home we would not have to renovate or repair. A home inspection can deliver that dream without leaving you wondering later where it went wrong.

After investing so much energy, time and money in buying a home, falling into a bottomless pit because we did not look closely enough would be unforgivable. A home is years of savings and a mortgage you will be paying off for the next 15 to 20 years, so it is worth spending a little more to avoid disappointment.

So there we were: our savings account had grown month by month, the bank had approved our mortgage, and we had, thank God, found the apartment. Egged on by the agent, we convinced ourselves it was the apartment of the century that would sell any minute: "It's gorgeous, there aren't many like it left, you should close if you love it." In that moment, do not think of the cost of a home inspection as savings, or as an unnecessary expense, and do not let the hassle of coordinating a visit with several parties put you off.

It is much simpler than it looks. A home inspection can always: a. Save you from buying a resale apartment that is actually a disaster but looks gorgeous to an untrained eye. b. Make sure you get real value for the money you saved and invested in a new apartment from a contractor who cut corners throughout the build.

(In the "worst case," you spent the money and the apartment really is perfect. At least now there is a report backing that up, and you have peace of mind.) Everything looks wonderful, and the excitement of buying a home can blind you, but a home inspection comes from an objective, professional place whose whole purpose is to protect the quality of the property and the client.

Believe me, it matters just as much as hiring a lawyer to handle the contract and confirm the property's title. When will we learn to be smart consumers instead of cheap ones? We will spend tens of thousands of shekels on wedding catering and a hall, but try to shave a few dozen shekels off the quality of the invitations. There is plenty of room to save money when buying an apartment, just not on the home inspection.

I already made that mistake myself. I bought an apartment without a home inspection, wanting to save the relatively small amount it would have cost against the purchase price, because I assumed defects are always visible and I did not need to pay an engineer to walk around my apartment.

I was wrong, plain and simple. Three years later, I am still chasing the contractor to fix the dampness in my walls, because it turns out there was no water barrier under any of the windows in the entire apartment, something I would not even have known to look for.

Had I ordered a leak inspection from a sealing engineer in the first year and flagged the problem to the contractor then, it would all have been resolved far more easily: the contractor was still doing work in the building and could have fixed what a home inspection would have caught.

Under the Sale (Apartments) Law, the first-year inspection (shnat bedek) is unconditionally the contractor's responsibility anyway, so none of this would have dragged into legal arguments over who is right, when the defects appeared, who is responsible, and who has to prove it. Save yourself the stress: get a home inspection.