Generally speaking, if inspectors did their jobs well, almost nobody would ever buy a house, due to the prevalence of existing issues and the cost of remediation. I've found that there is a duality of thought among homebuyers, where most want a "perfect" condition house, but also don't want to pay for a perfect condition house. At the same time, home sellers also don't want to pay any more than they absolutely must in order to sell the house, so you end up with inspectors as these not-entirely-impartial middle-men whose job is mostly to CYA while not identifying too many problems that could create a reputation for them that might limit future realtors & home sellers from using them.
It's all pretty silly, really, especially considering the hottest markets, where you either want a house or you don't, and if you you'll probably pay top dollar with no contingencies and possibly not even your own inspection... since the seller knows if you don't buy it someone else is in line right behind you. Most of the time, houses sold this way aren't in significantly worse shape than those that are fully inspected and repairs made before the transaction.
Overall, this has led me to believe that, in most cases, pre-sale inspections don't really benefit anyone, especially since it's so difficult for buyers to seek E&O recourse/damages against either an inspector or seller after the sale closes.
I think it depends on who is paying the inspector. When we bought our house, the realtor we were working with connected us with her best and most rigorous inspector. He found fifty pages worth of stuff that was wrong, but most of them were fairly minor.
We took that list back to the sellers (who were then legally required to provide a copy of that report to other future buyers), and we simply waived the little stuff. We wanted them to fix the big stuff. They didn’t want to do that, so they came down on the price by a considerable amount. He saved us tens of thousands of dollars.
Now, given the problems we’ve had since then which the inspector didn’t identify, we would have paid back more than what he saved us — Except for insurance coverage. USAA is really good about paying out on claims, when many other insurance companies would weasel out.
We love this house, we love this neighborhood. If we had to do it over again, I think we would have pressed harder to get even the minor problems fixed or to get the seller to come down even further on price. But I think we probably would have still bought this house.
I don’t blame the inspector for anything he missed. Most of those problems were well disguised, until such time as there was an actual catastrophic failure. He couldn’t have known. If I knew his name and contact details, I would recommend him to future buyers in the Austin area.
It's all pretty silly, really, especially considering the hottest markets, where you either want a house or you don't, and if you you'll probably pay top dollar with no contingencies and possibly not even your own inspection... since the seller knows if you don't buy it someone else is in line right behind you. Most of the time, houses sold this way aren't in significantly worse shape than those that are fully inspected and repairs made before the transaction.
Overall, this has led me to believe that, in most cases, pre-sale inspections don't really benefit anyone, especially since it's so difficult for buyers to seek E&O recourse/damages against either an inspector or seller after the sale closes.