Can a Real Estate Agent be Your Home Inspector in Dubai?

The Importance of a Real Estate Home Inspection

For most people, buying a home is a lifetime goal. Considering that life goals don’t happen every day, it is important to make a buying decision without any regrets. In most cases, regrets appear on the technical aspect of the bought home, particularly since it’s an area that requires expertise to understand.

Whether you are buying, selling, or renting a property, real estate home inspections are a key element of your journey. There are a few things that you worry about when negotiating a deal on your dream home. On one side it’s the mortgage, from a second, it’s the home aesthetics, and on a third, it’s the technical condition. Particularly when buying a home on the secondary market, your priority concern is the future and unforeseen maintenance costs. To avoid that, a home inspection highlights all defects, even the smallest.

Real estate home inspections in Dubai are intended mainly to highlight below-par AC performance, sub-optimal insulation, and plumbing damage. For example, for the insulation, it might not seem like a big problem, but in fact, it affects the energy bill, the indoor air quality, and enables water leaks to the inside of the home.

These defects are important because they not only affect aesthetics but also your well-being and day-to-day life at home. They may have an adverse impact on the property value and can even pose an unreasonable risk to people. Furthermore, these defects are in most cases costly or lengthy to fix. Being aware of such defects before closing a deal will help avoid further costs.

Legal Implications of Not having a Home Inspection

For home buyers purchasing an existing home, a home inspection typically happens before signing the deal. Home buyers should seek technical assistance from experts to conduct an in-depth inspection of their future homes. This is an essential step to ensure full transparency when closing the deal.

Typically, most new homeowners “discover” issues in their new home, after they have signed the deal and moved in. This fact is backed by data, as 80%+ residents in Dubai discover at least one major issue in their new home after they have moved in. Typically, new homeowners would raise this topic with the seller or previous owner of the home. This results in legal disputes in most cases as none of the parties want to incur repair costs. Legally speaking, the seller has no obligations to fix any issues since the new owner has signed on the property “as-is” unless stated otherwise in the contract.

As such, to avoid any legal complications, a real estate home snagging checklist in Dubai is necessary before closing any deal. In case the home inspection was not possible before closing the deal, some contracts include a clause that gives the new owner a “buffer period” to claim any identified issues, after signing the contract. In this case, the new homeowner should conduct a home inspection during this “buffer period”.

The Advantages of Getting a Home Inspection Done

A home inspection will ensure avoiding future maintenance costs and increase homeowner convenience. It will also guarantee deal transparency and ensure the long-term well-being of home occupants. As such, a home inspection can ensure to avoid unreasonable future risks to home occupants and protection against such issues.

A home inspection also has other advantages, among others. By identifying all the issues in the new property bought on the secondary market, the new homeowner can prepare a clear rectification plan to restore the home to “as-new” condition. Book Now