Pre-Purchase Home Inspection

Your offer was accepted. Somewhere in that contract is a subject-to-inspection clause with a date on it, and that date is the last moment you get to change your mind cheaply. Everything after it costs you money.

A pre-purchase inspection puts what is actually wrong with the house in front of you while you can still do something about it — walk away, ask for a price adjustment, ask for a repair, or go ahead knowing exactly what you are taking on.

Book an Inspection Call or text (250) 212-4025

The clock is the whole point

Subject removal in BC is usually a matter of days, not weeks — check your own contract, because the date in it is the one that governs. Working back from that date, you need the inspection booked, done, walked through and reported with enough time left to actually use the findings.

So tell us your subject-removal date when you call. It changes how we schedule you. Call or text (250) 212-4025 and you will hear back within one business day; on a tight deadline, text is fastest.

What you get

The full residential inspection — three and a half to four hours on site, over 1,500 points checked, a walkthrough with the inspector when we are done, and a written report delivered online with photographs, notations and recommendations.

What makes it a pre-purchase inspection is not a different checklist. It is that everything in the report is written for someone deciding whether to buy: what it is, whether it matters, and whether it is a today problem or a five-years-from-now problem.

Full detail on how the inspection runs

Buying an older house, or a place with land

Most of what sells in Vernon, Coldstream, Armstrong, Enderby and Lumby was built well before 2000, and a lot of it is not on city services. If you are coming from a newer or serviced home, the things worth knowing are different.

Older stock

Original wiring in one part of the house and replaced wiring in another. Roofs on a second covering. Additions built across three decades, each to the standard of its day.

Water and waste

A well and a septic field instead of a utility bill. We inspect and report on the visible plumbing; the well water itself and the tank are their own specialists, and you want them booked inside the same subject period.

Wood heat

In a lot of the north it is the primary heat source, not a romantic extra. Where it is, the appliance, its clearances and its chimney matter to you and later to your insurer.

What comes with the property

Barns, shops and outbuildings a buyer often assumes are included and sound, and which may never have been permitted. Long driveways, steep cut-and-fill access, and irrigation crossing the parcel.

Manufactured and modular homes

Manufactured and modular homes on rural lots — how they were set up and what is going on underneath.

None of that makes a rural purchase a bad one. It makes it a purchase with more moving parts, and a subject period that has to cover more than one trade. Buying a Kelowna condo or a newer hillside house instead? Then it is a shorter list and a faster conversation, and we will say so.

Be there. Genuinely.

You are welcome at the inspection and you should come. Not for the whole four hours if you cannot spare them — but be there at the end for the walkthrough.

A report tells you there is staining on the subfloor beneath the ensuite. Standing in the room while someone shows you the staining, tells you what caused it and what it will take to fix, is a different kind of knowing. You will ask questions in person that would never occur to you reading a PDF at eleven at night. And you will walk into the negotiation understanding your own report, which matters more than you would think.

What we can and cannot see

Straight answer, because this is where buyers get caught out.

We inspect

Roof, attic, exterior, envelope, grading and drainage
Foundation, visible structure, basement and crawlspace
Electrical service, panel and wiring type
Plumbing, water heater, and visible supply and drainage
Heating and cooling equipment
Interior finishes, windows, doors, stairs and safety devices

We don’t

Open walls, lift flooring or dismantle equipment — the inspection is visual and non-invasive
Report on anything buried, sealed, or hidden behind the seller's furniture and storage
Predict when something will fail, or guarantee that it won't
Measure radon — a valid test needs a detector in place for at least 91 days during the heating season
Test well water or open, pump and inspect a septic tank — both are separate trades, and on a rural parcel you should book them alongside us
Test for mold or asbestos as part of the standard inspection — those are separate, and we will tell you if we think you need one

If we see something outside our scope, we say so in the report and tell you who to call. We would rather send you to a specialist than guess.

Using the report in the negotiation

A report is not a repair list to hand the seller wholesale. Every house has findings; a fifteen-year-old house with none would be more worrying than one with twenty.

What your realtor needs from the report is the short list — the things that are material, urgent, or expensive. Structure, water getting in, a roof at the end of its life, a heating system on borrowed time, an electrical safety issue. Those are the ones worth reopening a price on. Worn caulking is not, and asking for it makes the rest of your list easier to dismiss.

We will tell you plainly which is which at the walkthrough. Then it is your call, and your realtor’s.

Who is inspecting your house

Vin McConnachie, Consumer Protection BC Home Inspector Licence #78731, thirty years of inspecting property in the UK and Canada, working the Okanagan since 2005. He is not paid by your realtor, the seller, or anyone else with an interest in the deal closing.

Credentials and licensing Buying in Vernon