About Health and Safety Issues in a Sacramento Home Inspection

Those dreaded words for a home buyer after a home inspection — Health and Safety Issues — could mean life or death or it could mean federal regulation, get out of my face. The people who freak out over health and safety issues probably do not adhere to the 5-second rule. You know, if you drop a piece of food on the floor, you’ve got 5 seconds to pick it up and eat it before it becomes contaminated.

For example, an ungrounded receptacle into which a lamp is plugged is most likely not going to explode or burn down the house. Sometimes, people replace ungrounded receptacles with 3-prong receptacles, which are still ungrounded if attached to the same wiring. You can even find instances in which a homeowner has piggy-backed the neutral to make it appear grounded when a home inspector’s tester is plugged into the socket. In my own home, built in 1948, I have pulled Romex from the electrical box to new outlets for our electronic equipment, but I do not lose sleep over a lamp plugged into an ungrounded receptacle.

I have a healthy respect for electricity. After all, I am a person who once, by accident, stuck a fork into a receptacle when I was a kid. Then, after the shock wore off, I wasn’t really sure what had happened, so, just to be sure, I inserted said fork back into the receptacle. It’s a miracle I am alive today. Don’t ever do this.

A really good home inspector can explain the issues to a home buyer because, believe it or not, most agents are not certified home inspectors and don’t want to engage in conversations about this. The liability is too great. Yet, home buyers need help to understand a home inspection.

I’m a little jaded, I suppose, because I’ve worked on my own investment homes over the years and there’s not much I can’t do in the arena of home repair and maintenance. I can put on a roof, install a fireplace, cut holes in the ceiling for skylights, build a garage, finish off a lower level shell, all with my own two hands and aching back. Unless a home is sliding off its foundation or sinking into the ground, most defects can be fixed and are not necessarily a huge deal.

We recently had an escrow in which the buyers were terrified that the door to the garage was not fireproof. Notwithstanding the fact the home was built in the 1960s and hasn’t yet burned to the ground. They wanted the seller to install a fireproof door because their FHA appraiser noted it in the appraisal. This happened to be a short sale, which is sold AS IS. We had explained to the buyers that any repairs they wanted needed to be completed at their own expense, but somehow those words didn’t sink in, and when they spotted Health and Safety Issues in the home inspection, they became even more freaked out over it.

Agents get freaked out, too, but generally for a different reason than buyers. They don’t want to get sued. They know that a raised sidewalk is a trip hazard and could be called a Health and Safety Issue. They also know that if you can’t look where you’re walking, then don’t step off the curb and text; moreover, you should probably go home and lock yourself in the bathroom because you’re too inept to walk in the world among the rest of us.

Fortunately, the buyers finally came to their senses in that escrow and installed their own fireproof door in the garage. We closed yesterday, and the seller was ecstatic.

When a buyer purchases an older home, there will always be Health and Safety Issues because codes and regulations continually change. These “issues” probably not exist as a code when the home was built. Are they gonna kill you? Probably only if you don’t eat it in 5 seconds. Ask your home inspector.