Akron Life November 2022

hurt local real estate markets if you have lower home sale prices, lower property tax values…and likely that could be because of escrow,” McMillen says. She applauds Euclid and others that are rolling back policies. “They’re making homeownership more achievable,” Mc Millen says. As Task says, there’s value in periodic home inspections — the mailman’s per spective from the street, exterior only—on a regular basis, and not just for sellers. And, buyers should get a general home inspection to assure their purchase is a good investment. Wright encourages, “Work with your municipality to look at their point-of-sale requirements and come up with another way to ensure that the housing stock is safe, sanitary, running well — but not in such a way that it penalizes buyers and sellers at the time of transfer.”

A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD Are point-of-sale inspections fair? It depends how they are conducted. A federal court class action suit against the City of Bedford ruled that enforced point of sales and presale programs that require citizens to pass arbitrary, warrantless inspections (in terior) before selling a home is a violation of Fourth Amendment rights. For instance, in Bedford, the city claimed it could block home sales because of architectural style and detail, color and lack of orderly appearance. Bedford enacted a freeze on its in spections. Now, they are voluntary and performed upon written request. “Our call to action is that we want consumers to share their stories — it can

inspections or inside/outside, home values have increased, Gail reports. The updates may have contributed to the increased home values., as well. The last triannual appraisal from Cuyahoga County showed an 18% increase, above the county average. “We have also seen a change from some properties that were previously rentals and are now owner-occupied,” she says. Gail adds, “We have been working on a number of initiatives to increase attraction to Euclid as a community, and we have seen increased interest in houses. Sales have gone up, we’ve seen a lot of investment in homes, a record number of housing per mits — even from existing owners wanting to improve their homes. We are certainly happy about that.”

Has a city inspection derailed or delayed achieving your dream of becoming a homeowner? We want to hear from you! Tell us your story.

Our point-of-sale inspection was requested, and rehab work began. The city was in and out for months. Once completed, we called for a reinspection. The city said we would then need a new POS inspection to be completed! The new report indicated many more items that had to be repaired. We were supposed to close in mid-April, but the actual close date was not until two months later! The office help was uneducated as to the rules and never returned calls or emails unless we added a supervisor to the email. —MW, Cleveland Heights

I S T O C K

6 Akron Cleveland Association of REALTORS