Archive for the ‘Home Inspections’ Category:

Over the years we have seen just about every type of electrical panel installed with just about every degrees of competency.  Just because a panel is new doesn’t mean that it was installed correctly.  Make sure you have it inspected.  Here’ are four samples of what you might see in order of oldest to newest:

This Bryant fuse panel is connected to knob and tube wiring.  I can’t find anything on the Internet about its age. (more…)

Continuing our series on the  Oregon Home Buyer Advisory.  We’ve covered  the sections on Home inspections, Sewers & Septic Tanks, and Death, Crimes and External Conditions.  Today we’ll cover pest and dry rot: (more…)

I’ve started writing a series on the  Oregon Home Buyer Advisory.  We’ve covered  the sections on Sewers & Septic Tank and Death, Crimes and External Conditions.  Today we’ll go to the beginning of the Advisory and cover the Professional Home Inspection: (more…)

Last week I wrote about the Oregon Home Buyer’s Advisory and the section on Sewers & Septic Tanks.  There are over a dozen buyer due diligence items in the Advisory so it makes sense to go through all of them in the next few weeks.  Today: “Death, Crimes and External Conditions:” (more…)

The yellow pipe is a natural gas line.

If you are a regular reader of the Portland Real Estate Blog then you should see a theme developing: scope your sewer! We’ve come across yet another sewer issue that would have been discovered with a $95 scope: the sewer line is not connected to city sewer but to a (now very full) septic tank, which is under the garage (we were not involved in the transaction). (more…)

The home inspection is a standard part of most Oregon real estate transactions.  The buyer has the right to waive the contingency but it is highly recommended that the home inspection takes place as soon as practical so that other inspections can be scheduled if there are areas of concern.  The Oregon Real Estate Agency publishes the Oregon Property Buyer Advisory which describes the inspections a buyer might want to have during the inspection period. (more…)

Oregon DEQ records are the most solid evidence that an oil tank has been removed and decommissioned.  Buyers of any Oregon real estate become the responsible party for soil contamination at closing which makes finding out if there is/was an oil tank an important part of buyer due diligence during the inspection period. (more…)

The Oregon Senate passed “Heat Smart” Bill 102 last year in an effort help clean up the environment by exorcising over 300,000 non-certified wood burning stoves  from Oregon homes. The latest revisions to the Oregon Property Disclosures look like this regarding wood burning stoves:

Stoves that are not certified or installed without a permit must be removed from the property prior to closing. (more…)

January is National Radon Action Month.  Don’t get me wrong, radon wasn’t discovered last year.  But over the last few years, it has become on of the most common Portland real estate inspections buyers have and one that often yields results that need attention.  Radon is not isolated to one part of town.  We had results over 4.0pCi/l in every quadrant of Portland last year.  Ideally the test runs for about 72 hours in an undisturbed environment.  You can see in the chart where doors may have been opened while the test was running.  The test and system were done by Alpha Environmental. (more…)

The Oregon Health Division has a spreadsheet of radon levels tested around Portland. I created the graphs below using their data.  The general recommendation is that any home testing over 4.0 pCi/l should have radon mitigated as it is the second leading cause of lung cancer behind smoking.  It is important to take both graph into consideration.  In 97268, 100% of homes test high but it was one of one.  In other zip codes there were over 100 tests so the data is more meaningful.  The link above has data for all of Oregon but I only used Portland. (more…)