Abacus Home Inspections

We were in the process of buying a house while living in a different state. I called Abacus, spoke with Doug Garretson, and explained that we needed a house inspected we were interested in purchasing, but that we would not be able to come to look at it in person before purchasing it, and that I would therefore need him to do an even more thorough inspection than hopefully he would do anyway. We agreed on a date and when finished, he sent me the inspection report. From the report, there were a few things the house needed to have addressed which we worked out with the sellers. All in all, from Abacus' report, I got the impression the house was in decent condition. We purchased the house, having negotiated the couple of things the inspector mentioned, and finally, after about 6 weeks, rolled with our moving van to the front of the house, seeing it for the first time. Right from the very first sight of it, I noticed that the house had a bit of a "rough" looking exterior. The paint was not in good of shape as Abacus described, and the front porch had paint peeling which was not mentioned in the report. When I walked in the front door, I right away noticed that the wood flooring was in terrible condition. Every single part of it needed to be sanded and restained. Parts of it even had water marks on it. No mention of this was in the report. The house was stuffy and being it was end of August, I wanted to open all the windows to let it air out. The house, only being about 1150 square feet, does not have many windows. In fact, it has 15. I wanted to open every one. What I found was that 2 of the 15 windows needed to be pried open by stemming my foot against the wall to give me enough leverage to get it open. One of them was in the living room and the other in the kitchen! Two rooms we spend a lot of time in! The window in the upstairs room opened, but didn't stay open and needed to propped. None of the window issues were ever mentioned in the report. That tells me that he never even checked them. Windows are expensive! Three of the windows also have some kind of film in between the two panes that one cannot get to to clean. So they always look like the have soot or something on them. No mention of this in the report. Upon continuing to check the house, I noticed that the door going to part of the attic as well as the door leading to the basement, scraped the floor so severely when opened, that the wood stain was scraped off where the door was scraping against the floor. Again, no mention of the door problems in the report. Going down to the basement, I noticed that the flight of stairs felt a bit "floaty". Checking the bottom of the steps, I saw that one side was no longer touching the ground. The wood had rotted away. No mention of this in the report. There is a door going from the backyard going to the basement. The second time we used it, the already very wobbly hinges, gave way and the door fell off. There was no mention of the condition of that door in the report. The final and most unbelievable thing I found was a few months later when I decided to take a closer look at the basement (which has flooding issues and a non-working sump pump which also was never mentioned in the report). I initially noticed that the basement was very, very dusty and also that there were small mounds down there and wanted to find out what they were and if I could get rid of them. When starting to work with them, I realized they were a combination of earth and old cement dust which I found odd. I then realized when sweeping things up and trying to get the dust more cleaned up by sweeping the foundation walls in the basement, that the foundation of the house was turning to earth!!! The very foundation of the house is compromised and the inspector never saw this and therefore did not mention it in the report!!! Unbelievable!!! I e-mailed him all of my complaints and never heard back a word from him. All I can say is that we would NEVER have bought this house knowing the problems it had, the condition it was in, and that the very structure that was holding it up, was crumbling back to earth (with many, many small roots growing in it!). Beware of Abacus Home Inspection. Doug Garretson did a very, very poor job for us. Very, very poor, and when I addressed him about it by writing him with all the issues the house came with that he never noticed, he just ignored it and never got back to us. Extremely unprofessional company, and very poor inspection that is costing us 10s of thousands of dollars. Besides that, we completely overpaid for the house, thinking it was in much better condition than it, in fact, is.

Failed to note that a portion of the roof was covered with roofing paper only. Failed to note water damage in door jam that required us to install drains after flooding to the home, built on slab cost us over 15,000 dollars to repair. I do not feel that a proper and complete inspection was performed and would caution against using this company or individual.

Doug Garretson was very nice and professional. A+ job

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iew Pretty simple process: We set up and appt and Doug met us at the home for the inspection. He pointed out many minor items and several things that he felt passed code but we might want to address either with the seller or after we closed. His report was thorough with pictures and details to make clear his comments. He was on time for the appointment and he submitted the reported within a few days. I had one other estimate that was $50 higher from another vendor. I felt like we got what we paid for and his professionalism is appreciated. I'd use his services again and will recommend him to anyone who is looking for an inspection.

At the time of Doug's inspection I was very impressed by him friendliness and know-how. He took the time to explain things to us and answer our questions without any sense of irritability. I also appreciated the fact that he took photos of important components. His report was promptly written and delivered. HOWEVER after moving in and being in the house for less than a week we discovered that Doug had not properly inspected the plumbing. All we had to do was run the shower or washer and water gushed from the pipes all over the basement. This would have been easy to detect in an inspection had he tested these components. Then we could have had it taken care of by the seller... instead the pipes all had to be replaced after the fact on our dime.