Your offer has been accepted and, like 77 percent of American homebuyers, you've heeded your agent's advice to hire a professional home inspector to examine the home you hope to purchase. But once the inspector has done the job and issued a report, what's your job?

Barring the discovery of a major defect that will significantly alter the negotiations, you shouldn't dismiss the inspection as just a formality. Instead, you should use the findings, along with a little research, to calculate how much replacement and maintenance of individual parts will cost you in the coming years and analyze the value of the home you're about to purchase.

To begin, you'll need to scrutinize each part of the picture and analyze the finding as a whole while considering the home's construction, the amount of maintenance required, the quality of the individual parts, replacement cycles, and improvements that have been made, says Freddie Mac, which finances one of every six homes in the country.

Once you have the report in hand and have gone through the house carefully several times, including with the inspector, Freddie Mac recommends that when you evaluate the big picture you:

Published: May 13, 2002

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