Horrible Things Home Inspectors Almost Didn't Notice

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  • 01
    Font - GrandUnhappy9211 · 13h Not an inspector but I went to look at a house once that was for sale. The house was looking good until I looked at the bathroom. The toilet tank was really crooked, it was angled about 15 degrees. Anything you might sit on it would've slid right off. It looked ridiculously bad. I asked the wife owner "Any idea why this toilet tank is so crooked?" She was silent for a long pause and said "No, it's it's not crooked...." She lied right when I'm looking at it. To be ni
  • 02
    Font - PanTopper · 15h Not a home inspector, but inspect appliances sometimes. Came to a house when the owners were out for vacation for another week and their water heater was leaking into their 2nd story attic. I had walked into the garage and heard a small waterfall going on and found their ceiling waterlogged and fallen through with the pipe spraying down. Called the owners but no answer so we turned off the water and left it at that. G Reply 1 120 3 ...
  • 03
    Font - TidalDeparture · 18h Going through a home with home inspector didn't find any issues, bring my dad in to look through the house too and he was OCD checking everything. Looks at the Zillow listing with the floor plan, measures the basement, finds out the actual measurements smaller than the floor plan which led us to go looking in a closet and realize they finished a wall and closet around the old oil tank, never decommissioned it, never planned to tell anyone about it, and we would have h
  • 04
    Font - cburgess7 · 20h Not me, but one I spoke to. Place almost passed, until out the corner of his eye... bam... jack stand holding up a beam under the house 6 Reply 4 369 ...
  • 05
    Font - Blmdh20s · 8h Homeowner decided that they needed more closet space downstairs so they moved the 50 gallon water heater into the attic without adding the necessary support. And to add insult to injury they added a second water heater to double the capacity. People just don't understand the weight of water plus the water heater combined. All being held up with 2 X 4 joists. G Reply 4 28 ...
  • 06
    Font - Sereniakat · 12h I was a tenant, not the inspector, but a house I rented some years ago was being sold as the owner had died. I stuck around while the building and pest inspector did his thing. In muggy weather (summers in SE Qld), we often got brown liquid running in drips down the fibro inside walls. We'd reported it to the agent, but nothing was done. We had wondered if there were possums peeing in the roof or something. So I asked the inspector. He said it was tar coming out of the wa
  • 07
    Font - sexywallposter · 16h House shopping back in 2019, found a cute little refinished house. Turns out, they never connected the new AC unit to literally anything. Mold for DAYS. All through the attic, all through the walls. They also didn't check the attic vents and the trapped moisture causing the mold was compounded by the lack of ventilation. Also, the inspectors were trainees. My dad went through with them (40+ years carpentry, sheet metal, and HVAC installation, among other talents) and
  • 08
    Font - mckulty · 12h Just bought a townhome, hired an inspector, closed the deal then found an 18 inch crack in the bottom of the guest bath tub. Covered by a rubber traction mat. Me: "But we PAID you to find stuff like this." L'inspecteur: "Sorry sir, we're not allowed to move or touch personal property." Le Selleur: "Why, we never used that bathroom! The mat has been there since we bought the place!" G Reply 4 50 ...
  • 09
    Font - ozarkbanshee · 18h Not a home inspector, but I did ask our home inspector what crazy stuff he had seen over the years. He had two stories. He inspected a modest three bedroom house and found that were very strange structural cracks in the walls. The area where the house was built is primarily clay soil which leads to a lot of foundation issues, but these were really abnormal cracks. He headed to the attic to wrap up his inspection; it was located over the garage so there was absolutely no
  • 10
    Font - OntologicalMuppets · 17h Inspector was finishing up, house was fine. I found water in the garage that wasn't there when we started - but no source! No drips, nothing. It was leaking from the upstairs tub into the subfloor, but storage / plywood planks along the beams in the garage hid it well. G Reply 1 39
  • 11
    Font - stickpoker • 18h 1 Award I'm sure there will be some stories about wiring above drop ceilings. When I was looking at houses, I saw (not the home inspector) one once where like 10 different wires came into one rats nest of a cluster. To make it even better, there was a regular lamp cord that ran from it to power the hanging kitchen light above the table. And if you want whip cream and sprinkles on that... the power came into that mess through knob and tube. G Reply 4 391 3 ...
  • 12
    Font - limonade11 • 18h I bought a foreclosed house last summer and the inspector was pretty vague about alot of things, but as it was the second inspection and the first had gone well I figured ok. I did buy the house without an initial walk through as I was out of state, but based on the inspection and the conversation with the inspector again, I figured it was ok. Upon arriving I found that 1) the "loosely attached" upstairs toilet was in fact, NOT attached and was just resting on the floor.

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