When you preview homes as a home buyer, you can get a good feel for the home's visible traits -- its finishes, its room counts, and its landscaping, for example. What you can't get a feel for, though, is the home's "bones". It's for this reason that real estate professionals recommend that you have a property formally inspected immediately after going into contract for it. A home inspection is a thorough, top-to-bottom check-up of a property's structure and systems. It is not the same as a … [Read more...]