Thurston could become 1st county in U.S. to mandate energy assessment before home sales
Any home going for sale will need to have an “audit” for its energy efficiency and this must be disclosed to buyers who presumably can ignore it or use it to negotiate a deal or some such.
This new mandate seems questionable; a town local to me is discussing a similar mandate to require all homes for sale to undergo an “energy audit’. These audits will have zero impact – literally zero – on climate.
In the above county, no one is currently certified to perform the audit and realtors say it may halt home sales.
One home we sold had
- a traditional home inspection – actually two because the inspector was training a new hire and they did everything twice
- a VA home inspection because the buyer used a VA loan and the VA requires its own inspection
- an insurance company inspection (never heard of this before) – the insurer sent a representative to check on the roof and windows. The home passed all of the inspections.
Unknown to us, the buyer had never visited the property, only looked at photos.
Two weeks after buying the house he decided he didn’t like the house and wrote threatening letters to everyone involved (us, realtors, etc) – wanting to get out of the deal. Afterward, he blamed a past brain injury for having impulsively bought the house (he was not aware that I too had had a 5″ long skull fracture and 5 concussions). We and the realtors had to spend a few thousand dollars on legal fees to shut down his tirade.
