Ask the REALTOR: Can I do my own home inspection, or do I need to hire someone to do it?

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Ask the REALTOR® is a regular video series in which I answer your most commonly-asked real estate questions, with a new Q&A posting every week. If YOU have a real estate question for me, drop me a note here.

This week’s question: Can I do my own home inspection, or do I need to hire someone to do it? Here’s the answer in this brief video, and don’t miss the transcript below.

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Transcript:

Hi. This is Cari McGee with Keller Williams Real Estate. Welcome to this week’s episode of “Ask the Realtor.” Every week, I answer questions from buyers and sellers and pretty much everyone in between regarding real estate. This week’s question is:

“For my home inspection, can I do that myself? Can I have my buddy do it? Or do I need to hire a home inspector?”

You need to hire a licensed home inspector in the state of Washington. All home inspectors have had to be licensed in this state since 2008. Or you can do it yourself. You can’t have your cousin do it or your best friend who knows a lot about houses. And unless you have a really intricate knowledge of Washington’s state building codes and trends and things that have happened in the construction industry over the last several years — unless you have that, I’m gonna go ahead and recommend you go ahead and hire a licensed home inspector.

They have knowledge, and they can tell you whether something is not a big deal, something that’s major and needs to be brought to the seller’s attention, whether something’s a real quick weekend project or whether something is, you know, pretty significant. And they have all of that knowledge right at the ready, and they are absolutely worth the money you pay them.

So that’s the scoop for that question. If you have any other questions for me regarding real estate, by all means, give me a shout via any one of the methods that follow on the next screen. Have a great week, and I’ll talk to you soon. Bye, bye.

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About The Author
Cari McGee

My husband and I came to the Tri-Cities in 1994, and we thought it would be a temporary stop on our way to larger cities. He was a television sports anchor at the time, and we planned to go wherever the "next step up" took us. Twenty-plus years later, we're still here and we've loved every minute of it! We have two children now, and we've found the Tri-Cities area is a wonderful place to raise a family. It's a great place to do outdoorsy things -- I like to hike Badger Mountain or run along the river path. I also love reading ... by a cozy fire in the winter or a beautiful picture window in the summer (with the A/C on!). I've been a licensed Realtor since 2004. I earned my managing broker's license in 2016, which means I can run my own brokerage, or create a team of real estate agents and supervise them, which is exactly what I did when I formed the Cari McGee Real Estate Team in 2018! We have administrative and marketing personnel, as well as additional agents to serve you. I became a director of the Tri-Cities Association of Realtors Board of Directors in 2016, became Secretary/Treasurer of the organization, and was elected to Vice President in 2019. Want to talk about real estate? Click here to schedule a meeting with me!

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