Quote:
Originally Posted by 604nguyen
All new construction needs to pass strict municipal inspections for electrical, plumbing, sprinkler, framing, insulation, structural, and whatever else i missed, before the building can get 'occupancy' status from the city. You should be in pretty safe hands when buying new, and honestly you shouldnt 'need' a home inspector.
But make sure when you do your 'walkthrough, you're pretty much just looking for cosmetic deficiencies, ie paint chips, crooked receptacles, etc...
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This thinking is very naive. I used to think likewise until I'm currently in the process of building a custom home. The municipal inspections you refer to, they're usually the barebone minimum requirements. Basically the city wants to make sure the house isn't going to collapse and is built according to building code, but the actual workmanship and the materials they can careless. But yes you were right on the home inspection though, because by that point, you're just looking mainly for cosmetic items but if you want to see the quality of the sub-trades there are always signs you could look for such as: is the floor even, if you have tiles, are the grouts even and straight, if the tiles are flat with no bulging spots. You can also try to see if the walls are straight and plumb, are the door frames square. Other things I can think of off the top of my head is, what kind of doors they used, fibreglass, hollow wood core, solid wood core, whether or not the cables and wires are bundled up and labelled properly, these should all give you an indicator of how good the sub-trade worksmanship is