Waiving Home Inspections

[Christian Pirotte]

I recently bid on a few mountain vacation homes where I live. I've lost every bid recently to other investors who waived home and/or septic Inspections, even though they had an offer less than mine. The market I'm in is insanely competitive but I've never seen waiving inspections as worth the risk. However, after losing 3 in row for the same reason, I wanted to hear the BP community's thoughts. I can provide extra numbers if that factors in to the decision matrix.

[Paul Sandhu]

I've never used someone else to conduct an inspection.  Do it myself. Heck, I don't even have a realtor show me the property.  I buy bank foreclosures.  I figure the bank required an inspection before they loaned money for the house.  The banks use the same front door key for all their foreclosures.  I just look up the bank and figure which key I need from a previous foreclosure to open up the front door.  I let myself in and take a look around.  Mainly figuring out where I'm going to put all the furniture and determine how much rent it'll bring in in a week.  Then I take 26 weeks of rent, knock off a few thousand, and offer that to the realtor along with earnest money.  The banks usually accept the offer.  If they are dragging their heels, I find some code violation (usually tree limbs in the yard) and tell the city code enforcer.  They send a nasty letter to the bank.  The bank doesn't want to deal with it, so they accept my offer.