find me someone who will tell me not to buy the house

December 18, 2012 1:12 PM

Looking for recommendations for an aggressive, adversarial home inspector in the Milwaukee, WI area (specifically Shorewood).

My wife and I are considering purchasing a foreclosed home. In addition to wanting an aggressive home inspection in general, the terms of foreclosure sale generally shift much more risk to the buyer and we want to go in with our eyes wide open. Any home inspector recommended by our agent would seem to face problematic incentives; we'd like someone independent.

Thanks for any recommendations (or even anti-recommendations) you have! MeMail or email is fine if you want to keep it off the thread.

posted by gerryblog to Home & Garden (2 answers total)

Best answer: We had good luck with Tom Feiza, who also happens to have a home improvement talk show on WTMJ. Our house was not in need of an "aggressive, adversarial" inspection, but he correctly pointed out numerous items, the things he said were going to eventually be a problem were in fact a problem, and he had absolutely no hesitation to refer us to a specialist for one issue that he did not feel he was able to address (turned out to not be a problem and the specialist he referred us to was reasonably priced).
posted by jgreco at 6:22 AM on December 19, 2012

Response by poster: OP UPDATE: That offer didn't go through, so we didn't wind up needing as adversarial a home inspection as we expected. But Angie's List's was a great resource for the home inspector we ultimately did choose.
posted by gerryblog at 12:05 PM on January 21, 2013