Cliff Baron here with my weekly update for October 4th-10th for Milton, Georgetown and Glen Williams. 

Before I get there, I would like to share some tips about home inspection. When the market is crazy, like it is now, I always tell people, always, always, always put a home inspection.  But there are times when you just can't and right now is one of those times. If you put an offer in on a property - as an example, I put an offer in on a property last week for some clients - we were 10% higher than the highest offer, but we lost because we had a home inspection clause in there and a financing clause.  So occasionally you have to forego the home inspection, but there are a lot of risks involved in that - as everybody knows. I'd like to give you some pointers.  

I've been to over 200 home inspections in my career. I'm not the inspector - I go with the inspector and I follow him around - and over the years, I've also renovated my house from top to bottom, by myself, so I have a pretty extensive knowledge about construction.  I still however, recommend that people get a home inspection. Sometimes you can't - in an instance where they're holding off the offers and you think there are going to be 10 offers, then you just can't put a home inspection in because you simply won't get the home. You'll spend that $400 for nothing. So what I recommend that you do is on your first visit, it's just to see the house and then on the next visit, which is an hour long, you take that time to do your own kind of "home inspection" with your agent. Here are a few pointers of what you should look for. Don't take this as gospel - you have to consult your professional about this, but here's a rough rundown of what you should look for if you can't do an actual home inspection:

1) So first of all, start in the basement of the house.  As you know, look for cracks in the walls. If the basement is finished and you can't see anything behind drywall, then use your nose. Your nose is a big indicator of mold because the main thing with home inspection is water. You don't want water damage anywhere in the house - that's a big thing. 

2) Another thing, when it comes to the basement, if it's a finished basement - check out the airflow.  Many people's inspectors don't even catch this - but there's supposed to be air coming out of the furnace and air going back into the furnace. So there should be supplies and returns in the basement - in every room - and that's rare. Many people don't think about that because they only think of the airflow upstairs. 

3) Then, go into the furnace room and check out the age of the furnace. You can see if it has white pipes, then it's fairly new. If it has black pipes, it's older, it's a mid-efficiency. 

4) Don't forget while you're in the basement, if it's an unfinished basement to look up, even if it's finished, look up because you want to check out the floor joists/ceiling joists above you, to make sure they're not cut. I've seen that before, right from builders where they've purposely cut things to put ductwork in and this compromises the structure. Somehow it passes inspections from the towns though. 

5) Once you've done that, go to the electrical panel.  You can't open it because you're not an inspector, but you can look at the wiring coming into it. If you see aluminum wiring, then you'll know that's one thing to keep in mind. You've got to see if it's breakers or fuses. If it's fuses then you know you're going to have to upgrade it eventually, which will cost you a few bucks. 

6) Once you've done the basement, go to the main floor and check out the windows. The windows are a big thing.  If they're vinyl, they should last quite a while, but if they're wood, they last 15 to 20 years and then have to be replaced. It's funny, replacing windows before they're due is not a great idea because the money you save or you lose on the escape of hot air, doesn't equate to the cost of the windows. So it's better to run your windows until they're right at the end, as long as they're not leaking - that's the big thing, you don't want moisture coming in. 

7) Look for GFI's, that's another thing - in the bathrooms and the kitchen.  They have to be within a meter of water soures.  If you see any plugs, they should be a GFI plug. 

8) And again, like I said - look up in every room.  Look up because you want to check for moisture and check for stains. If you do see any stain, then go upstairs and track it. You'll probably find it's underneath the bathroom.  Usually in bathrooms, the main culprit is the toilet because they use a rubber flange a lot in the toilet and the flange shrinks over time. Replace it with wax and it should be good. 

9) Another thing you can look for is slow drains.  Go into every bathroom and check the drainage.  You want to make sure you don't have a basement fill up with water, if things don't drain properly. 

10) When you go to the upstairs, look up again, you can't go in the attic, but look for stains again.  If there are stains on the second floor, and there is no plumbing above you, then there's a good chance that was from a roof. 

11) When you go inside, you're going to have to do an exterior inspection (that's what I call it), but it's not really an inspection, just a "visual" inspection. You're going to be checking for the brickwork to see if there are any cracks.  And you have to check the grading of the property to make sure it slopes away from the house because you don't want water pooling towards the foundation.  Then take a visual inspection of the roof. If it's starting to curl, you're not going to have many years left.  And you don't know how long has been coroding for, so that's a red flag if you see that. 

So hopefully that helps you out a bit.  It's always best to get a home inspection, like I said, but sometimes you just can't, otherwise you'll never get the house and you'll be left sitting on the sidelines. If you find a house you love, do one of these visual inspections and expect a little bit of money to be spent down the road, after you take over ownership. But if you do this, hopefully you won't run into any major problems. If you have any questions about this, I know quite a bit about it, so just send me a DM/PM and I'll help you out. 

Let's move on to the sales for Milton and Georgetown. In Milton, the sales were at 50 this week, as opposed to 39 last year. So sales are still pretty healthy. Last week, we did 50 and 48 this week, so it slowed a little bit, but not much compared to last year, we're not slowing as much. And the average detached sold for $1,000,091 this last week.  There was 23 - of those, 19 towns at $764k. Towns have really gone up, that's interesting to know. It's kind of like train, where the cars are detached and are starting to slow a bit, the big detached because they're prices are so high, but the towns are catching them up now and then they'll start pushing them forward again. And 6 semis sold $804k and 3 days on the market. And again, regarding days on the market - within a week everything's pretty much selling. 

And then we move on to Georgetown and Glen Williams. Georgetown is actually picked up a little bit.  Last week it was a little slower and this week it's picked up a bit. There were 20 sales in Georgetown as opposed to 15 last week.  And last year, there was the same as this week. So you can see it's picked up a little bit, which is kind of interesting. The average detached home sold for $961k and there were 19 sales, at 6 days on the market. And that was it - no semis or no town sold this week, which is interesting. The average detached is a little bit lower than last week, but that's because there weren't any big ones sold.  When you get the big ones in Glen Williams or some of the bigger properties, it kind of skews the numbers up a little bit, whereas it's funny $961k is a little detached.  

So hopefully this helps you out.  Any questions, let me know.  Send me a DM, PM, email or just an old fashioned phone call.  I'm always here to help. Thanks and take care.