You’ve budgeted, saved, planned and worked extremely hard to buy a newly-built home designed to meet your family’s needs.
That’s why it’s essential to have a professional home inspector examine your new house from top to bottom, ensuring your builder got everything right and you can move into your dream home with added peace of mind.
The same holds true if you’re buying a home that’s just a few years old. Issues can turn up with any home regardless of age and the builder’s reputation. There are multiple trades involved in the construction process, including contractors. Like any profession, workers can range from highly professional to completely unreliable. And, in many cases, you won’t know the difference until an experienced home inspector scrutinizes your new house.
With new home construction, the builder often provides owners with a 12-month warranty, whereby all issues that arise in the first year will be resolved by the builder, including major settling, drywall or foundation cracks, leaks, and so on.
In other words, you have a one-year grace period for all of the kinks to be worked out within your new home. It makes sense, therefore, to have a second home inspection completed in the 11th month. Your home inspector can conduct a thorough walk through and provide a report that you can pass along to the builder, ensuring all important issues are addressed before the one-year mark is up.
What does my new home warranty cover?
All new homes should come with a third-party warranty that protects buyers. As you look at your new build options, be sure to carefully consider each builder’s warranty.
In many provinces and states, builders must provide homebuyers with a third-party warranty. It’s important to know if you live in a jurisdiction where warranties are mandated. If not, you’ll have to source your own coverage. But, regardless of how your warranty falls into place, it’s essential to know exactly what’s covered and for how long.
A new home warranty generally includes deposit insurance and protection against deficiencies in work and materials as well as major structural defects. These can cover you for two, three, five and even 10 years depending on the builder.
Consider an annual home maintenance inspection
It’s wise to have an annual home maintenance inspection completed regardless of when your home was built but, in the case of new builds, this is a great step towards ensuring you don’t miss major issues while you’re still protected under warranty.
Maintenance inspections also catch the small symptoms that can easily lead to bigger problems. For instance, a loose pipe can turn into a drip, which, if left unattended, can then lead to a burst pipe, displacing you from your home, destroying personal items and generally wreaking havoc.
Have questions about common problems that can arise for new builds or details on any of our inspection services? Answers are just a call or email away.
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