I highly recommend Apex Home Inspection! We needed to get a home inspection for a house that looked perfect upon first look. Apex Home Inspection was able to help us understand what kind of house we would be buying and thus, what we needed to negotiate with the sellers. Apex's website was very informative and super easy to use. We were able to find an appointment on Apex's website that fit our time frame and get information that completely explained the process of a home inspection. These features made it easy for us to choose Apex over other home inspection companies in the area that did not offer such detailed information about the process. After scheduling the appointment, Chris McDougall contacted us and confirmed the address, day, and time on the day we made the appointment and a day before the inspection.
You can tell Chris has many years of experience in the region (including Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and San Benito Counties) and that he knows houses: the good, the bad and the money pits. While Chris did all the things you can expect during a home inspection (checking the attic, and working down through the house in each room, checking floors, walls, plumbing and leaks, stair construction), he was even able to tell us other things. Like, while under the house he saw cat paw prints. This was an indicator that a cat had entered the crawlspace through a missing crawlspace vent, and thus could be the potential entrance for other unwanted critters (this is an easy fix). Furthermore, despite the fact that the house had a 5 year-old roof that looked great, Chris was able to identify that one of the roof vents was cracked and leaking water right above the upstairs bathroom; something that was not detectable from inside the house since the new interior paint hid any water markings on the ceiling (but left untreated, a real problem). Overall, by going with Apex we knew we were not buying a crumbling house in need of thousands of dollars of repairs. Chris' inspection report included color photos with arrows that highlighted specific areas that need our attention. We felt the cost for the 3-hour inspection was very reasonable considering Chris' physical inspection of the house and the detailed report we received.
I recently re-watched the 80s movie "The Money Pit" (still funny after all these years). Clearly, Tom Hanks and Shelley Long's characters should have called Chris at Apex Home Inspection before buying their mansion. The characters' needed an expert like Chris to help them understand the scope of what they were purchasing before it literally fell into ruins around them. read more