Quote:
Originally Posted by champion6
You don't want to skip the home inspection, but postpone it until about 9-10 months after closing. A good inspector will submit the report to the TV Home Warranty Dept. for corrections to be made before the one-year warranty expires.
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Good advice but precludes finding some major defect before buying, which may have caused you to change your buying decision. Possibly a remote issue.
Having the Home Warranty is good, but my experience was that it transfers the quality control inspection to the buyer.
Crews building these houses are under pressure to build to a schedule and many hands and trades are involved. One crew may have to cover mistakes by a prior crew. Takes away pride of workmanship.
One example is that a garage door with defective parts was installed. Was not noticed by me. The home inspector I hired found it when I had the home inspected prior to the 1-year warranty expiring. The defect was rusty horizontal galvanized support beams. Certainly, not a deal breaker. The rust was on the downward facing surfaces, not observable unless the door was up and you focused your eyes upward from the entrance to the garage. Required all of those supports to be replaced. When I questioned the builder rep as to how that could happen, he explained that the schedule required the door to be installed at a certain time so that the house could be secured as further work continued (Perhaps installing fixtures, appliances etc). Stopping work to reorder and replace the defective parts was simply not possible, as the work schedule on this house and others must proceed. The workers know that and no punch list was created for follow-up action as they know the customer is covered by a home warranty.
Another example was unfinished tile work in the walk- in shower. The top edge of the tile was not sealed leaving a gap between the tile and dry wall allowing moisture access behind the tile (possible mold issue). The inspector did not even find this. I found it when I was painting that section above the tile. Again, somebody neglected to properly finish the job and the follow-on painters did not feel a need to have it corrected. Left up to the buyer.
Not saying that The Villages provides an inferior home value, but the process and schedule can create issues left for you to resolve. Hence, the Home Warranty is offered as a benefit to cover these issues.