Baker Street Home Inspections

07/22/2022

New regulations are coming. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction. Having so many consumers taking big risks with little to no due diligence has to change.

06/28/2022

DIDN'T GET A HOME INSPECTION - BUT GOT THE HOUSE?
You found the right house. Now it’s time to hire a home inspector to go over every inch it – inside and out – to make sure everything you see and don’t see won’t develop into major problems once you move in. GO TO THE HIABC.ca website and choose your inspector by region. You can be confident that you’ll receive all the information you need to make an informed choice.

06/03/2022

Home Inspections Save You Money

An average cost for home inspections is 450-$600. However, if a home inspection notates needed repairs or potential problems with the home, it could save you thousands of dollars.

Although the numbers represented are American, it’s highly likely that Canadian numbers are very representative.

In a recent case study performed in the US they determined that over a 50 inspection case study, the Average Home Inspection Cost was $662.76 with an Average Repair Cost Per Inspection of $4,120.41.

More important, of the 50 homes inspected, 43 had repair costs that exceeded the home inspection cost. The other 7 homes all had repair costs that were greater than 50% of the inspection cost.

Better Home and Gardens reported that in 2022, much like the year before, 2021 continued to see many people spending more time at home, leading to homeowners investing more money into maintaining and upgrading their spaces. According to Angi's 2021 State of Home Spending Report, the average home improvement spending was $10,341 this year—a 25% increase from 2020.

Spending on emergency repairs increased 42%, with an average of $2,231 spent on an average of 2.2 projects per household, likely due to the added stress on home systems from people being indoors more, as well disaster repairs — the effects of flooding and fire.

01/12/2022

You won the bidding war, and you’ve moved in. Your bid won without any subjects, including waiving a home inspection.
However, there are a few things to consider.
• Have you read your Property Disclosure? If the property was used for rental or had a foreign buyer? Patent defects (visible to the human eye) are not required to be disclosed in the property disclosure statement as you buy what you see.
A home inspection will provide peace of mind and a clear course of action with what may need to be done in the future.
Find your accredited home inspector from HIABC, or ask first “Do you belong to HIABC?”

09/20/2021

A pre-listing inspection is a home inspection that the seller has done before listing the house for sale. For the seller, getting this information about their home can be helpful as they begin their selling process, as it gives them more time and control over repairs and prices their home more accur...

05/29/2021

Home buyers should have the right to a home inspection to gather information about the house despite the pressures of the realty market. The government should step in and make pre-purchase home inspections mandatory to protect the consumer. Please sign this petition.

In a continued effort to protect the BC consumer, the Home Inspectors Association BC (HIABC) reminds home buyers of the large financial risk of buying a home without the benefit of a professional home inspection. With multiple offers on properties, potential buyers are feeling pressured in the purch...

03/03/2021

You have a 15 minute window with your partner during an open house viewing.

What are you looking at?

Are you considering the things you want to change? Paint, flooring, appliances?

In the big picture, those are all small ticket items.
How about the roof, or if there are significant cracks in the foundation, or problems in the crawlspace.
Did you check the crawlspace?
How old is the furnace and hot water tanks?

After that 15 minute viewing you are expected to make an offer - or not.
If you do make an offer, how confident are you that there’s no problems in the house?
After all, you had 15 minutes to look at it.

Making a confident purchase means you’ve also had an accredited home inspector from HIABC inspect literally hundreds of components and is reporting back to you. They are on YOUR side.

10/11/2020

In most BC homes built prior to 1990, the presence of some building materials with asbestos is almost always present. It was commonly used in office buildings, public buildings and schools. It insulated hot water heating systems and was put into walls and ceilings as insulation against fire and sound. It has also been found in many products around the house: clapboard; shingles and felt for roofing; exterior siding; pipe covering; compounds and cement; textured and latex paints; acoustical ceiling tiles and plaster; vinyl floor tiles; and appliance wiring to name a few.

Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation (CMHC) cautions: “To avoid health risks through prolonged exposure to asbestos fibres, proper precautions must be taken when repairs or renovations disturb asbestos-containing materials, such as: disturbing loose-fill vermiculite insulation which may contain asbestos; removing deteriorating roofing shingles and siding containing asbestos; ripping away old asbestos insulation from around a hot water tank; sanding or scraping vinyl asbestos floor tiles; breaking apart acoustical ceiling tiles containing asbestos; sanding or scraping older water-based asbestos coatings such as roofing compounds, spackling, sealants, paint, putty, caulking or drywall….” Safe practices for handling asbestos can be found at www.worksafebc.com.

Health Canada updated their information on asbestos in June 2015: http:// healthycanadians.gc.ca/healthy-living-vie-saine/environment-environnement/air/contaminants/asbestos-amiante-eng.php

08/25/2020

• Providing and requiring members attend quality educational and training opportunities
• Creating and using best home inspection practices
• Adhering to a Code of Ethics – eliminating conflicts of Interest
• Maintaining a professional arms length between the home inspection and real estate industries to ensure consumer confidence
• Working with the BC Government to raise the level of excellence for home inspections in BC
• Holding our member inspectors to our higher standards and business practices
• Providing a 1-800 number for consumers to call with questions about the Industry, our Association, or our Members
• Providing a fully staffed office to offer full time support and assistance to our members and the public

07/27/2020

Reading the Strata Minutes alone isn’t good enough.

Buying a Condo or townhouse?
You’re probably going to be dealing with a Strata Corporation. Stratas are organizations (usually made up of residents who live in the complex) set up to govern a multi-family residential complex, such as a condo, residential community, tower or a group of townhouses. It is the law in BC for the seller to provide two years‘ worth of strata minutes to persons considering purchasing and have made an accepted offer. You should definitely read the minutes, look out for Special General Meetings, and depreciation reports (if there are any) In the depreciation reports, find out if there are any engineering reports, or upcoming costs and levies that may impact your monthly payments. Look as well at how the strata made their decision. Did they always choose the least expensive option for repair?

But that’s just the beginning. Make notes of what you’ve read and bring them with you to the inspection. Armed with what you’ve discovered, a home inspection will (and should) shed light on some of the issues that have come up and in some cases, find others that haven’t been disclosed in the strata report.

When looking for your home inspector, ask first, do you belong to HIABC?

04/16/2020

It’s important to know when you are in the process of purchasing a home, getting a home inspection is vital. However, what inspector you choose can make a big difference.

Inspectors in British Columbia have several options. All inspectors in BC must be licensed through Consumer Protection BC. You can check the status of a licence online.

It is not mandatory to belong to any home inspection association however.

Why is this important? There is no incentive to adhere to a Code of Ethics. A home inspector may use marketing techniques - such as providing realtor incentives; business to business relationships that can be questionable; or meet just the baseline qualifications for a business practice; may not keep the educational aspects of their business up to date; and consider business first - not client first attitudes.

Although the provincial organization provides some measure of consumer confidence, an accredited inspector through Home Inspectors Association of BC (HIABC) offers you much more.

• Providing and requiring members attend quality educational and training opportunities
• Creating and using best home inspection practices
• Adhering to a Code of Ethics – eliminating conflicts of Interest
• Maintaining a professional arms length between the home inspection and real estate industries to ensure consumer confidence
• Working with the BC Government to raise the level of excellence for home inspections in BC
• Holding our member inspectors to our higher standards and business practices
• Providing a 1-800 number for consumers to call with questions about the Industry, our Association, or our Members
• Providing a fully staffed office to offer full time support and assistance to our members and the public

12/30/2019

We service many coastal communities and this issue is often discussed in our inspection reports.

The power of a sea breeze
Anyone who has lived by the sea knows it has its pros and cons. And one of the biggest cons is the harsh weather conditions that come with having sand and salt constantly whirling around in the wind, slowly but surely wearing down everything in their path. This picture shows the drastic difference between the indoor and outdoor handle of a door of a beach house. Despite just being a few inches apart, the harsh sea breeze has ensured the outside handle looks about a hundred years older.