Your Home Inspection Won’t Uncover a Devils Postpile

Little is worse in a Sacramento short sale than hearing from the buyer’s agent that the buyer is canceling the purchase contract. Well, I guess it beats having a buyer ask for repairs, because at least this buyer had the good sense not to even try. I find my silver linings where I can these days. In this particular short sale, the buyer canceled because her home inspection revealed defects. No joke, all home inspections uncover defects.

Home buyers often cancel because they don’t want to fix things. They get upset over a broken window or because the AC isn’t working. I question whether these buyers should be homeowners, because stuff breaks and stuff stops working after escrow closes, too. It’s called home maintenance. You deal with it.

This buyer needed a 4-bedroom home for her three recently acquired kids. She needed the home in this particular neighborhood in Sacramento. It had to be priced around $160,000. Not to mention, this short sale is a preapproved Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale, so there is no maybe about this escrow — seller, property and price is preapproved. In this market in Sacramento, this buyer is probably not buying a home now. There is very little inventory. The odds of her finding another home like this are almost nil. We had many offers for this home, and the seller personally selected the buyer among dozens vying for the home. It’s sad and unfortunate that a few problems uncovered in a home inspection are causing this buyer to lose out on home ownership. Her three children will most likely grow up not knowing what it’s like to own your own home.

A home inspection is a report for the buyer’s edification. It is meant to uncover and disclose things a buyer might not be able to see simply by looking at the home herself. It gives a buyer a clear picture of what she might want to do to improve the home. It exposes the unknown.

Talk about a discovery. If you want to see something truly magnificent that was uncovered, take a trip one day to Mammoth Lakes and visit the National Monument Devils Postpile.

Many years ago, this area was a hot lava bed. As the lava cooled in the lava lake, cracks formed. These cracks ran vertical and formed columns of basalt. Usually you don’t see this because it’s underground. At Devils Postpile, the area of basalt columns was exposed after the glaciers excavated and then polished the formation. Devils Postpile was established in 1911 a National Monument.

Photo: Devils Postpile by Elizabeth Weintraub