Top 10 Safety Repairs To Do Before Selling Your Home

The one comment I hear from my sellers most often when we discuss the home inspection is, “I don’t think the inspector is going to find anything.”  They do, they always, always do.  In 9 years I have had one home that had nothing come up on the report.  It was a newer townhome owned by a single man who kept his home immaculate and pet free.  So please, don’t purposely not fix something because you want to leave “something” for the inspector to find!  Trust me, he will find plenty that you would have never even thought about.  Most inspections reports reveal a page and a half to two pages of repairs that the inspector found.  Let’s go ahead and get the most common repairs out of the way so the buyers can be impressed of how well you take care of your home!

1)   Make sure you have working smoke detectors in each bedroom and outside the sleeping areas of each floor as well as at least one on each floor.

2)   Install a CO Detector on each floor of your home in a hallway outside of sleeping areas.

3)   Have your heating system cleaned and inspected including the garage heater.  This includes changing your filters!

4)   Clean gutters.

5)   Make sure your windows meet egress.

6)   Install an anti-tip device on your stove.

7)   Adjust the tension in your garage door.

8)   Adjust your garage door to close from a 90 degree angle by itself.

9)   Seal up all openings in the garage.

10 Make sure outlets that need it, have GFCI protection. 

For more information on common safety issues in homes in the Municipality of Anchorage, visit Muni.org and read their Frequently Asked Questions for homeowners.