What a Contractor’s Eye Catches on a Walkthrough

The short version: a showing is not the time to admire the finishes. In the twenty minutes you get, look at the five things that cost real money: the roof, the structure, signs of water, the age of the big systems, and anything that has been freshly covered up. Finishes are cheap and changeable. Bones, water, and location are not. This is what I check on every walkthrough, and it is not a substitute for a licensed home inspection. It is how you decide which houses are worth paying an inspector to look at.

What should you look at before you walk in the door?

The most useful ninety seconds of a showing happen before you go inside, and almost nobody spends them there. Stand at the end of the driveway and look at the whole house at once, then walk the perimeter.

• Look down the rooflines. They should be straight. A sag, a dip, or a wave in the ridge is a structural conversation, not a roofing one.
• Follow the water. Where does the ground slope? Soil should fall away from the house. If the grade runs toward the foundation, or downspouts dump right at the corner instead of being carried away, you are looking at the root cause of most basement and crawl space problems in Georgia.
• Check the gutters and fascia. Rusted, sagging, or plant life growing in them means years of overflow. Look at the wood trim behind them for softness and staining.
• Look at the siding where it meets the ground. Siding should not touch soil. Wood or hardboard in contact with dirt is a rot and termite invitation, and it is the single most common thing I see written up on metro Atlanta homes.
• Note the trees. Large limbs over the roof and mature trees close to the foundation are both future expenses. Beautiful, and worth knowing about.

None of this requires a ladder or a flashlight. It requires walking all four sides of the house, which most buyers never do.

How can you tell how much life is left in the roof?

The roof is usually the largest single item a buyer inherits, so it is worth a real look from the ground. Architectural shingles typically last somewhere between twenty and thirty years in our climate, and three tab shingles less than that, and Georgia sun and summer storms are hard on both.

From the driveway, look for shingles that are cupping or curling at the edges, bald patches where the granules have washed off, and any course that looks visibly darker or newer than the rest, because a patch means a leak was chased. Then look at the ridges and valleys, because that is where roofs actually fail. Inside, the ceilings under any roof valley and around every chimney or skylight deserve a glance for staining.

The two questions I ask the listing agent on your behalf are simple: how old is the roof, and was it replaced with a permit and a transferable warranty? A roof five years from the end of its life is not a reason to walk away. It is a number that belongs in your offer.

What are the real signs of foundation trouble?

This is where buyers panic about the wrong things. Almost every house has some cracking, and most of it is meaningless. Georgia red clay swells when it is wet and shrinks when it is dry, so a certain amount of seasonal movement is normal here and shows up as hairline cracks in drywall and mortar.

What actually concerns me is a different pattern:

• Cracking that steps diagonally through brick or block, especially wider than about a quarter inch, or where one side sits proud of the other.
• Horizontal cracks in a basement or foundation wall. Vertical and hairline is common. Horizontal suggests pressure pushing in from outside, which is a different and more serious category.
• Doors and windows that will not close, or that visibly taper in their frames. Walk the house and open a few interior doors. If several stick on the same side of the house, that is a pattern, not a coincidence.
• A sloping floor. Bring nothing more sophisticated than your own feet, or set a marble down if you want to be theatrical about it. Old homes settle; a floor that dives toward one corner is worth understanding.
• Fresh patching in an unfinished basement or garage. Nobody skim coats a utility wall for looks.

When I see these, I do not tell you the house is broken. I tell you it needs a structural engineer, not just a general inspector, before you go further. That is a few hundred dollars that has saved my clients from mistakes that ran into the tens of thousands.

Where does water damage hide?

Water is the most expensive thing that can be wrong with a house and the easiest thing to hide for one afternoon. It also causes most of what people call "mold problems." Trust your nose first: a musty, earthy smell in a basement or a closet is information, and an unusually strong air freshener or a dehumidifier running during a showing is information too.

• Under every sink. Open the cabinet doors. Look for staining, warped particleboard, or a suspiciously new shutoff valve.
• Ceilings on the top floor, especially in corners and around bathroom fans.
• The basement or crawl space perimeter, where the wall meets the floor. Efflorescence, a chalky white mineral bloom on concrete or block, means water has been moving through that wall.
• Around the water heater and HVAC air handler, where a pan or a drain line quietly fails for years.
• Windows and their sills, particularly on the weather side of the house.
• Flooring transitions. Cupped or lifting hardwood near an exterior door or a dishwasher tells you the story regardless of what the disclosure says.

One more: look at the crawl space if the house has one, which many metro Atlanta homes do. You do not have to go in. Open the access, shine your phone light in, and look for standing water, a torn or missing vapor barrier, and insulation that has fallen down. Falling insulation usually means it got wet. Sellers rarely stage a crawl space, which is exactly why it is the most honest room in the house.

How old are the systems, and what will they cost you?

Finishes get all the attention and cost the least to change. The mechanical systems get none and are where the real money sits. All four of the big ones tell you their age if you look.

• HVAC. Find the outdoor condenser and read the data plate; the manufacture date is usually in the model or serial number. Systems generally run fifteen to twenty years. In Georgia, air conditioning is not optional, and replacing a full system is one of the largest line items you will face as a new owner.
• Water heater. Same trick, same data plate. Most last ten to fifteen years. A rusted base or a drip pan with staining means it is already telling on itself.
• Electrical panel. Open the closet or garage and just look at the label. Panel capacity matters if you plan to add a car charger, a hot tub, or a kitchen renovation.
• Plumbing. Look under a sink and in the basement at what the pipes are actually made of.

You are not diagnosing anything here. You are building a rough ledger of what is near the end of its life, so that "the house is a little over budget" becomes a real number instead of a feeling.

What to ask based on when the house was built

Every construction era has its known issues, and metro Atlanta has a wide spread: bungalows in town from the 1920s, midcentury ranches, the enormous 1980s and 1990s subdivision boom out through Gwinnett, and new construction going up right now. Knowing the year built tells me what to go looking for.

• Built roughly 1978 to 1995: ask whether the home has polybutylene water supply pipes, usually grey, sometimes blue, flexible plastic. It was used heavily in Georgia in this period and is known to fail. Many homes have been repiped; whether this one has is a question worth a direct answer.
• Built roughly 1965 to 1973: ask about aluminum branch wiring. It is manageable with the proper corrections, but insurers ask about it and so should you.
• Older panels: certain brands from that era have a poor safety reputation and can be difficult to insure. If a panel looks decades old, have the inspector call it out specifically.
• Homes built before 1980: ask about cast iron drain lines, which corrode and collapse from the inside, and about how any renovation handled the materials common to that era. Federal law requires a lead paint disclosure on homes built before 1978.
• Synthetic stucco (EIFS), common on some 1990s builds here, can trap moisture behind it when it was not installed correctly. It requires a specialist inspection with moisture probes, not a visual one.
• New construction: different risks entirely. Look at grading and drainage around a young house, ask about the builder warranty and what it actually covers, and remember that a brand new home still deserves its own independent inspection.

To be clear about what this list is: these are questions, not verdicts. Every single one of these has a fix, and plenty of excellent homes have one or two of them. What you do not want is to discover them after closing.

What is fresh paint hiding?

I am not cynical about sellers. Most are simply presenting their home well, and I tell my own sellers to do exactly that. But there is a difference between a house that has been cleaned up and a house that has been covered up, and the tell is almost always that the work is localized.

A whole house painted a fresh neutral is good preparation. One freshly painted ceiling in an otherwise untouched house is a question. New carpet in only the basement, a single new section of drywall in a garage, a newly installed bathroom vanity in a dated bathroom, a rug placed at an odd angle, a large piece of furniture in front of nothing. These are places to look more closely, not places to accuse anyone of anything.

The polite version, and the one I use, is simply to ask: "Has any work been done in here recently?" Sellers in Georgia have disclosure obligations, and most people answer honestly when asked directly. The question costs nothing and the answer is often the most useful thing you learn all day.

Which problems are cosmetic and which are permanent?

This is the judgment that decides whether you should buy the house, and it is the one I care most about teaching my clients, because buyers routinely reject good homes over things that cost a weekend, and fall in love with homes whose real problems can never be undone.

Changeable, and cheaper than you think: paint, light fixtures, faucets, hardware, carpet, countertops, appliances, landscaping, and the previous owner’s taste in all of it. Ugly is not a defect. Ugly is negotiating leverage.

Expensive but solvable: roof, HVAC, water heater, windows, repiping, a panel upgrade, kitchen and bath layouts within the existing footprint. These are budget items. They belong in your offer, not in your decision.

Effectively permanent: the lot, the orientation, what backs up to the property, road noise, the floor plan’s bones, low ceiling height, a layout chopped into small rooms in a house with load bearing walls everywhere, and serious unresolved structural or water intrusion. These are the only things I will actively talk a client out of, because no amount of money makes them go away.

When people ask what an agent with a construction background is actually for, this is the answer. Not to find every flaw, which is the inspector’s job, but to tell you which flaws matter.

Does this replace a home inspection?

No, and I want to be blunt about that. Nothing in this guide is a substitute for a licensed home inspection, and I recommend one on every purchase, including new construction. An inspector gets on the roof, into the crawl space, and behind the panel cover with training and instruments. I am walking a house with you for twenty minutes with a flashlight and experience.

The two jobs are different. The walkthrough decides which houses are worth writing an offer on and paying to inspect. The inspection tells you, in detail, what you are actually buying, and gives you the documented basis to renegotiate during your due diligence period. Where my background pays off is in reading the inspection report afterward, separating the twelve routine items every house has from the two that genuinely change the deal, and knowing roughly what the fixes involve when we go back to the seller.

The ten minute walkthrough checklist

Screenshot this and take it to your next showing:

• Walk all four sides of the house before going in.
• Sight down the rooflines. Straight?
• Which way does the ground slope, and where do the downspouts end?
• Is any siding or wood trim touching soil?
• Shingles: curling, bald, or patched?
• Open the crawl space or walk the basement perimeter. Water? Smell? Fallen insulation?
• Look under every sink.
• Open several interior doors. Do they latch?
• Read the data plates: HVAC and water heater age.
• Look at the electrical panel and what the pipes are made of.
• Note the year built and ask the era questions above.
• Find anything that was freshly repaired in only one spot, and ask about it.
• Last: stand in the main living space and ask what could never be changed.

If you want, I will do all of this with you at the showing and tell you what I am seeing as we go. It is how I work with every buyer, and it costs you nothing to have me there.