You are shopping for a house and you find your perfect dream home. A beautiful stucco-clad, single-family dwelling that looks like the perfect home for you and your family to live and grow. You have a home inspector check the house out, and all is good, but he suggests that you get a professional stucco inspection carried out to make sure that there are no hidden areas of damage. So you call a stucco inspection company, hopefully, the Stucco Testing Specialists (shameless plug, we know).

The stucco inspection company sends you an “Invasive Stucco Inspection Authorization Form” for the homeowner to sign. This provides legal consent for the stucco testing company to perform a stucco inspection on a home which you do not own yet. However, the homeowner says no and refuses to sign the consent form. What do you do now?

Well, there are two reasons that may lead a homeowner to deny permission for stucco inspection to take place. The first reason is just naivety. This is simply a case of the homeowner not understanding the process, or the need for a stucco inspection. In some cases, the homeowners are worried that drilling holes into their stucco will damage the stucco or somehow cause future problems. This is simply not the case. In some situations, having the homeowner call the stucco testing company to discuss the process can alleviate their fears and get them on board with the process. In other scenarios, fear and lack of understanding makes them stick to their refusal.

The second reason that a homeowner may refuse a stucco inspection is one to be very wary of. They are aware of the stucco epidemic and suspect, and in some cases KNOW that they have unhealthy stucco and hidden damage beneath the stucco. We have on occasion inspected properties that have been recently purchased and during the inspection, we have seen evidence of a previous stucco inspection which, illegal so, was not declared to the home purchaser. A homeowner refusing consent for a standard stucco inspection should be viewed with a suspicious eye.

So, what do you do? Well, you have two options.

Option 1. You continue to buy the house, but understand that there MAY be hidden deterioration beneath the stucco facade. Get in touch with a stucco remediation company and obtain an idea of how much repairs may cost and try to negotiate a discount on the property. But be very careful with this approach, repairs are not cheap, and there are often additional costs involved once the stucco is removed for things that could not be anticipated.

Option 2. Walk away from the sale. This, in my mind, is the best option as you don’t leave yourself vulnerable to unknown problems and surprising high cost repairs. There are many more homes for sale out there, so keep shopping!

I hope this article was of some help to you, but if you still have questions or concerns give us a call here at Stucco Testing Specialists and we will be happy to give you the benefit of our experience. Advice is always free at STS!