“Is it necessary to hire our own home inspector? The builder says it’s a waste of money since the county and themselves have done many rounds of inspection, plus there is warranty, if anything goes wrong, they’ll come to fix them anyway.”
We bought a spec home in 2005 and were told the same thing about inspection being a waste of money, county inspections were performed, home warranty in place. The builder agreed to an inspection as long as the inspector wasn’t a particular contractor who gives them headaches about every little detail. We had an inspection and found a few small issues that the builder fixed. When we moved in we found many more issues that we wanted fixed. The builders warranty amounted to a fight for every thing we wanted fixed. The builder attributed all of the problems to “settling” and sent over their amatuer carpenter to slap a quick fix on everything. We ended up raising hell, reporting the builder to BBB at which point they cut us a check to have our own contactor make repairs including tear up the 1500 sqft of harwdwood floors an reinstall new stuff with appropriate fastners. It was a giant headache.
My advice is demand an inspection, ask the builder if there is any inspector they won’t work with, then demand that inspector or else you walk away.
