Charlottesville’s Real Estate Blog since 2005.

Clear, Honest Market Analysis. For People, Not Realtors.

Buyers

Choosing a Home Inspector (in Charlottesville)

The values of having a home inspection are innumerable. A home inspection could be the best $300 – $600 you’re ever going to spend.

Get Rich Slowly – Buying a Home – Pay Attention to the Home Inspection

All this being said, this year I have been recommending more inspections beyond the typical home inspection, including:

Septic inspections (this has saved my clients more often than not)

Radon – but keep radon in context

Phil Price, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, has spent a lot of time studying radon. He is willing to accept the government’s rough estimate that radon causes about 21,000 deaths from lung cancer each year. But, he says, people should know something about that number.

“A large fraction of those estimated deaths are thought to be among smokers,” he says. “One way to think of it is it’s just one of the things that goes along with smoking, is that it increases your chance of radon-related lung cancer.”

– Sewage line from the house to the street

– Trees

– Some other kind of inspection that I haven’t found yet.

Interested in Learning More?

Jim Duncan has been helping buyers and sellers in Charlottesville’s neighborhoods for 25 years. Get local insight born of experience.

Dig Deeper

Sewer Scopes are Good (in Charlottesville)

Sewer Scopes are Good (in Charlottesville)

Orangeburg, Terra Cotta, PVC .. what kind of sewer line does your house have? What kind of sewer line does the house you're considering have? I wrote last month about sewer scopes I advise my buyers to have the sewer lines scoped. It’s usually about…

When Should Buyers Pull their Credit (when buying a home)?

When Should Buyers Pull their Credit (when buying a home)?

I asked Matt Hodges with Gray Fox Mortgage  a couple simple questions a lot of my buyer clients have, and thought you'd find the answers useful. When should buyers let their lender pull their credit? Regardless of when a buyer wants to purchase, if they…

Artificial Housing Inventory in Charlottesville

Artificial Housing Inventory in Charlottesville

I'm guilty of this, too. For houses that come on the market in Charlottesville and the Charlottesville area, what I'm seeing is this Home is listed as a Coming Soon on Monday/Tuesday so that we Realtors can tee up our buyers. House is activated on…

Interested in Learning More?

Jim Duncan has been helping buyers and sellers in Charlottesville’s neighborhoods for 25 years. Get local insight born of experience.