In a slower market, buyers aren't willing to throw caution to the wind, and are less willing to buy houses with problems.

Buyers are less willing to fix problems after they buy

In most areas of the country, the winter hasn't been as bad as it was last year, which reduces the amount of cleaning up you'll need to do before the summer heat propels you poolside.

Whatever has fallen or peeled since the last warm day of autumn needs to be picked up or repaired before then, and certainly before the house goes on the market. That means sooner, not later, because with a slowing real estate market in many regions, the first house on the block for sale has a leg up on the competition.

Before I mix more metaphors, let's just say that when you do get a house ready for sale, you can miss many of the things that will capture the notice of buyer and especially the home inspector or other professional the buyer employs to make sure what he or she is buying is as sound as the dollars being spent.

Should you obtain a pre-inspection of your house before you put it on the market? What this entails is hiring a home inspector to come up with a list of things that the buyer's inspector might find after the house is on the market. Knowing ahead of time might give you a chance to correct all those problems in advance, thus making the transaction go much more smoothly and virtually ensuring that your asking price won't be whittled down by roof replacement or a new heating and cooling system, to mention two examples.

From what my readers, real estate agents and many home inspectors tell me, it doesn't work that way. Depending upon where they are coming from, two inspectors could look at your house completely differently, and their lists could have few similarities as a result.

Here's a reader's example: "I put my house on the market, and it attracted several interested buyers. The successful bidder hired an inspector, who found that we had mold behind a wall in the second-floor bathroom, and that the roof needed to be replaced. We were willing to negotiate, but the buyer was nervous about the mold and pulled out of the deal."

"Those were the only two problems that inspector found with the house," the reader continued. "The next prospective buyer hired a home inspector. We warned the buyer that the previous offer had been rescinded because of the mold and the roof, but that we were willing to negotiate, and would either take care of the problems ourselves or reduce the price of the house by the cost of the work."

Now, the reader's state doesn't require a disclosure statement, which is fairly rare these days, and the buyer didn't mention the roof or the mold to the next inspector. That inspector found the mold (the odor in the bathroom made it hard to miss), but thought that roof seemed in pretty good shape, and might need replacement a few years down the road.

The inspector did find a cracked heat exchanger in the furnace that definitely needed replacement. The other inspector had checked out the furnace and had not found the problem, but expertise only goes so far. Two different sets of eyes don't necessarily see the same thing.

Again, this is not a complaint against home inspectors. I hired my first in 1982 and have used them on every house I've purchased since. I tried to talk the successful bidders on my last house to employ one because there might have been a problem I'd missed in 14 years. They decided not to, so I spent the three months between agreement of sale and settlement finding things on my own and fixing them.

After five years, they still love the house, but it's not the way I wanted to spend a summer, working on a house I wouldn't be living in after Aug. 24.

Real estate agents are divided on pre-inspections. In disclosure states especially, agents say that the less the seller knows the better, since caveat emptor went out the window long ago, and it is easier to sue than not to sue these days.

Other agents like the idea, because it means sellers can get a jump on the problem and get the house quickly on what is becoming in many areas a buyer's market again.

It's the seller's choice. From what I've already seen, however, buyers are getting picky about houses and are taking more time to choose. Inventories are up, so there's more to look at, and with interest rates rising, buyers are beginning to hang on tightly to every dollar before they spend it.

It's something to think about.