If you're planning to buy a home this year, here's what you should know before agreeing to waive an inspection. The more competitive the real estate market, the more tempting it is to skip a home inspection. But have you really considered the risks of skipping the home inspection?

When deciding how to go about the process of selling their homes, homeowners should carefully consider the pros and cons of hiring a real estate agent. While most sellers opt to You can save a lot of money by selling your home yourself and hire an agent to assist them with the sale, a minority of them choose to sell it themselves. 

Homeowners have more to worry about than being ripped off by shady contractors Majority of tradesmen are generally honest professionals, but there is a large number of unscrupulous contractors who will fix items that don’t need fixing or grossly overcharge you for services or parts. Worse, there are plenty of con artists posing as tradesmen who will simply take your money and run. Inspectors are often the first ones to uncover such fraud, so they too need to be familiar with its common forms in order to best serve their clients.

Some common home repair scams include...