My husband and I bought our house in Syracuse a little over 2 years ago. The process wasn't completely painless, but was pretty smooth for being first time home buyers.
The process started out swell, but quickly went down hill - National City was great to work with, the realtor was so-so (helped us a lot in the beginning, and less and less toward the end), and the "home pro inspector" is hardly any one I would recommend.
We were told it was not necessary for us to be at the inspection, so neither of us were present. Even if we were, we wouldn't have known what the heck we were looking for anyway, and neither of us had an easy time taking off from work during the day. At any rate, after the inspection, we were given a huge binder full of forms and checklists and suggestions for keeping your house safe and efficient. We read through the book, noting the inspectors comments and ratings of the house we were buying...his comments indicated every thing was in good working order and that only minor cosmetic things should be fixed to improve the exterior appearance of the house. Great, wonderful! Nothing to stop us from buying our house!
Fast forward about six months into living in our new, cozy house. We bought a washer and dryer, and were trying to install it (honestly, all we had to do was plug it in) to no avail. The outlet wasn't working. We had a friend come over, who was an electrician, to take a look at everything to be sure things were wired safely...low and behold it wasn't. In our crawl space, hanging down by the furnace was an exposed live wire. Should my husband have come into contact with this wire, he wouldn't be here right now. Should the inspector have caught this, seeing as he inspected the entire inner workings of our crawl space? We looked back through our book of information and no where is there any indication of faulty or unsafe wiring.
When I called the realtor to inquire if this was something we needed to handle on our own, or if the inspector should have taken care of it, they told me the inspector was no longer in the business, but now - almost 2 1/2 years later radio advertisements for this guy abound...
If it was noticeable enough for my husband to see it, shouldn't the "home pro inspector" have noticed it too?
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