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    Home Inspections in Kelowna

    Our base is in Vernon now, about fifty kilometres north up Highway 97. Kelowna is still where a large share of our work is, and the inspector coming to your door is the same one who has been inspecting houses in this valley since 2005.

    Which means we have been inside the whole range of it — post-war cottages in the older streets off Bernard, Rutland bungalows from the subdivision years, Glenmore split-levels on the bench, Upper Mission houses rebuilt after the fire, and glass condos downtown that are younger than some of our equipment. Whatever you have an accepted offer on, we have almost certainly been in one like it.

    There is no typical Kelowna house

    Kelowna has been growing steadily for seventy years and the building stock shows every decade of it. Around half the housing here is single-detached and just under a quarter sits in apartment buildings under five storeys, with the newer towers on top of that. In practice the inspection changes street to street.

    Lower Mission and Pandosy

    Older lots, mature trees, original site drainage and a lot of additions. The additions are usually where the story is.

    Rutland and Black Mountain

    Heavy subdivision building through the 1960s to the 1980s — the decades when aluminum branch wiring and, later, polybutylene supply piping were common in BC homes. Both are worth knowing about before you own them.

    Glenmore, Dilworth and Wilden

    Benchland and hillside. Retaining walls, cut-and-fill lots, and where the surface water goes.

    Upper Mission and Kettle Valley

    A great deal of it built or rebuilt from 2004 onward, after the 2003 Okanagan Mountain Park fire took 239 homes off the south slopes. Newer is not automatically better. Fast-built is its own category of problem.

    Downtown

    Condos, and a genuinely different inspection.

    What the ground and the water do here

    Three local things shape a Kelowna inspection more than anything on a brochure.

    Water

    The City actively manages flood risk on Mill Creek, Bellevue Creek and Priest Creek and along the Okanagan Lake foreshore. The 2017 and 2018 freshets did roughly $10.7 million of damage across 52 locations in the city. If you are buying near a creek or on the lake, we spend real time on grading, foundation drainage, sump arrangements and what the basement is quietly telling us.

    Slope

    Any Kelowna lot with part of it steeper than 20% falls under the City's hillside development permit rules. On those lots retaining walls are structure, not landscaping, and runoff has to be sent somewhere deliberate rather than downhill onto your neighbour.

    Soil

    Low ground near the lake tends to be loose silty sand and soft lake-bottom deposits. Higher up it turns to denser glacial till. The same crack in a foundation means different things depending on which of those you are standing on.

    Buying a condo downtown

    Kelowna’s downtown has been adding towers for a decade and a good share of our calls are now condo buyers who assume an inspection does not apply to them. It does, and it should be honest about its limits.

    We inspect what is inside your door, and what we can reasonably see of the building. Everything past that — the envelope, the roof, the parkade, the elevators — is common property, and it lives in the strata’s own documents and depreciation report. We will tell you plainly which of the things we found are yours to fix and which belong to the corporation, so you know what you are actually buying.

    Buying a condo downtown? Tell us the building when you book.

    What Kelowna buyers ask us for

    What happens on the day

    Three and a half to four hours. Over 1,500 points. Then a walkthrough with you, where we show you what we found and explain what it actually means, followed by a detailed written report with photographs, notations and recommendations, delivered online.

    Your inspector is Vin McConnachie — Consumer Protection BC Home Inspector Licence #78731, Qualified Home Inspector with Carson Dunlop Canada, 30-plus years inspecting property in the UK and Canada. The full list is on the credentials page.

    “Vin was a very thorough and honest home inspector. He really took the time to not only inspect the house, but also to break down all of his findings. As a first time home owner I felt confident in his skills and abilities”
    — SB

    Book your Kelowna inspection

    Send us the address and your subject-removal date. Call or text (250) 212-4025, or book online.

    We look at your home with our heads so you can look at it with your heart.