The idea of a pre-inspection on your home before you list it is becoming more popular these days. I have always thought that the home inspection occurs at the wrong time in the home buying process. It seems more logical to me that the home inspection should be done at the front end of the process, before the home is even listed. If there are issues with a home, why wait until the very end to find them? More and more home owners are realizing that if there are problems with their home, they want to know about them before the home inspector finds them, and possibly lose their buyer over it. The seller may not want to fix the problem themselves, but they know about it and can be prepared to deal with it when it comes up on the inspection.
I have also had clients that were sellers use the pre-inspection report as a marketing tool for their home. They market it as "home inspection already done, report available". This makes their home a little more attractive to a buyer because they will not have to pay for an inspection. It has already been done. I offer my pre-inspection clients a one time consultation with a prospective buyer to go over the results of my inspection report in detail so they can see for themselves. My experience is that this works about 80% of the time. Some buyers just want to have their own inspection anyway, but 80% is not bad. It is a good investment for sellers.
