Inspect It First

When it comes to buying or selling a home, there is always a level of shady-​ness to be expect. Obviously it’s smart to stay away from the high risk shady-​ness. Low risk is the smart way to go.
The amount of shady-​ness we experienced during the purchase of our home was probably one of the highest risk that I’ve come across. Working in mortgage a few years ago thought me a thing or two about the mortgage business and it’s dark side. But man did we learn a lesson!
We were advice by our realtor Ed Quain of O’Conner Realtor to use Gary Ravin, owner of Inspect it First. We trusted our realtor and went with this guy/​company. Although I wasn’t present during the inspection, my husband was. He said that the inspection took a little more than an hour and Gary and Ed did a lot of chit-​chatting. Finally, we closed on the house! Move in day the problems started. First, our handy and oh so trusted inspector missed the MAJORLY OBVIOUS issue of both upstairs and downstairs showers not working. We ended up calling a plumber and said that it was going to cost around 4k to fix the problem. We called Gary’s office and we were ignored for two weeks. Until we randomly found the guys cell phone number and got to finally talk to him. After not having showers for 2 weeks and taking baths everyday we demanded a refund from Gary. He refused to give us a refund, but after a lot of pestering Gary angrily came over to our house saying he would fix the problem. He came one day and tried a few things here and there. Had to come back the following day and was finally able to fix it. While trying to resolve our shower issue my husband said to Gary, «I’m not very handy around a house» to which Gary replied, «well, I guess you bought the wrong house» to which my husband replied, «well, that’s why I hired you, so you can help me make that decision.» Gary’s response *** silence *** But that was just the beginning of the many issues to come up within the first 6 months of living in our new house. Next, water leaks in the basement. Sump-​pump broken. Well pump broken, sink and pump for laundry water disposal broke. We needed new water softener system. The list went on! As excited we were to move into our beautiful home it literally became a stressful nightmare. It was one thing after another. By the time we finished fixing EVERYTHING that our inspector should have seen we were down a lot of money!
Now, I’m not a realtor or an home inspector guru. But, a lot of the issues our house came with were overlooked and probably swept under the rug. We could have avoided spending thousands of dollars and avoided a lot of stress if in the very beginning we would have had a good inspector. So, if you’re looking to have this company do your home inspection, run the other way as fast as you can. Don’t allow your realtor to tell you whom to use, unbeknownst to you they could be best buddies and are just trying to make some cash at your expense.
And on a random note, we were told by other Gary Ravin victims that he keeps the realtors at O’Conner Realty very happy. He makes sure to take realtors out for special outings like golfing. He does this to keep the guys in his back pocket to help bring in all the business. Also, we were told that Gary has been sued multiple times, 30 times to their knowledge. So again my friend, stay away!