Let There Be Light!

Sellers, don't overlook the importance of lighting in your homes. Buyers and their agents need to be able to shed a little light on the subject.

Recently, I accompanied a young couple and their home inspector as they went room to room in a home the couple has an interested in purchasing. Fortunately, this couple is very anxious to purchase this particular property. Otherwise the situation we encountered could have damaged the deal. There were rooms in this home we literally had difficulty seeing.

The basement rooms in particular were problematic. There was very little natural light, so we really needed to be able to turn on electric lights, not just to test the lights, but in order to actually see the rooms. Some bulbs seemed to be blown, and in one large room we could not find a way to turn on the overhead fixture. We searched every conceivable interior and exterior wall for a switch of some kind, but none could be found, and the fixture itself had no pull chain or switch. That room received only a cursory inspection by the dim glow of the inspector's flashlight, the hall light, and an adjacent bathroom's light. This experience was unnecessarily annoying and unsatisfactory.

Another related problem we encountered in this home was the circuit breakers had no labels. All that could be determined by the inspector was the amperage and that circuit breakers exist. Once again, the experience was unnecessarily unsatisfactory.

The problems we encountered in this home could have very easily been avoided. Make sure fixtures have good bulbs, leave a note explaining tricky switches, and label circuit breakers. Those simple steps would have made a world of difference.