Understanding the Home Inspection

Understanding the Home Inspection

Quick buyer tip, what is a home inspection? A home inspection is what you as a buyer are going to do as soon as you get under contract because we want to take advantage

of that termination option period that we've negotiated for you. And so hopefully by day one, two, or three, a home inspector is coming in there.

A home inspector is a licensed individual who basically is gonna come through the entire home. They are gonna check roof, structure, electric, plumbing, everything that they can see with their eyes,

everything that they can gain access to, and they are going to determine whether or not it's in working order, whether or not maybe it needs repair,

or if it's starting to look a little bit off or not working. You can additionally do a pest termite inspection for typically 80 to $100 extra. If you're doing a VA loan, you have to do that extra cost.

And there are, for the most part, there are some other services you can do like maybe scoping the sewer line, things like that. But for the most part,

a home inspection is gonna cost you $300 to $500, $550, depending on the square footage of the home. 22% of the asking price every month in 2025. That basically tells us that well-priced homes

attract buyers regardless of the calendar. Yeah, that's a crazy number, 99%. So basically, on average, home sellers in El Paso got 99% of their sales price.

That's pretty remarkable. 2025 was not an epic real estate year by all means. So that's pretty remarkable. So let's move on though.

Let's dig into why spring is the best time of year to sell your home. So there's a couple of conversion factors that are happening in spring.

One, yeah, the military demand is picking up. So a lot of folks have received their orders that they're gonna go to Fort Bliss. And so they're like, all right, time to get a house.

Maybe they have to be here in June, July, or whatever. So they're gonna start looking. Another thing is that people are getting their tax refunds. And if you actually, if you get a tax refund,

well, that's just can be maybe more money for your down payment. And then the other thing is that in the spring, quite honestly, the weather is so nice

that like house hunting couldn't be any more pleasant. We've been showing a couple houses this week. I mean, it's like, it's perfect. So it's a good time of year for that.

So let's talk a couple, some data points. So basically we're talking last year, 2025, closed sales, right? In March, there were 686.

April, a little bit more, 703. And then like Alejandro said, in May, 775. So it just kept creeping up. So basically the important thing here,

really the draw way for this is for sellers, basically, if you can list in early to mid-March, like that is the best time of year to sell your house. Like people will say, what's the best time of year to list?

There you go, March, early to mid-March, that's the answer. Next, we're gonna talk about summer. So summer, June and July specifically is gonna be the second strongest selling window

here in El Paso. It's gonna be driven mainly by PCS buyers. Most of them are gonna be here between May and June. That basically creates another window

where a lot of people are motivated, especially because a lot of these buyers have a secure loan with the VA. So that's pretty much the second best window.

And it's gonna show us with the data. In June and July of last year, we reported approximately 749 closed sales with about 66 to 62 days on the market.

So it's really not that bad. Now, respectively, the Northeast is the area that we talked about in many of our videos that is very popular with military families.

Basically, the list of sell ratio hit 99.2 to 99.6 during the summer months. So again, summer is the second best time to sell, specifically June and July.

I think another point in that is also because kids are out of school for, you know what I mean? And so if you're making a move, forget PCSing, if you're just relocating to El Paso for work

or family or something, that's a good time. So if you got kids, you got the time to make the move. And then Alejandro mentioned the Northeast does pretty well at that time.

But keep in mind like our other areas, the West side, Far East horizon, like they're doing just fine too. So, okay, let's move into the fall.

Now, you would expect that in the fall, things slow down a little bit, right? We're starting to, the weather wouldn't be getting cold for most of you and we're getting towards the holidays

and people put stuff on hold. But last year, 2025 in September, 737 closed sales. Like that's still pretty darn solid. So we're by that point,

we're not seeing a ton of the PCS virus, but homes are still selling during that time. Now, the summer was hot. So now the weather is starting to cool down again, 60s, 70s.

So fall actually does pretty, pretty, actually pretty good when you look at the data. Next, we're gonna talk about winter. Now, December through February is gonna be El Paso's

slowest selling season by volume. Just this past month, January of 2026, we recorded only 548 closed sales. Now, obviously, like you mentioned,

it's gonna be the time of the year, a little bit the weather, not as bad as other places. We don't have like a snow season, in other places you just can't show houses

as well as we can do here. So it does slow down. We can definitely see that the evidence is there with the data.

But again, it's not as bad as some other places. We don't have like a standstill for two weeks or three weeks just because there's a big snow. For sure, yeah.

And yeah, that January number, yeah, of course that makes sense because to close in January, you would have had to get under contract in December

with Christmas and everything. So it makes total sense. So absolutely, for you homeowners out there in El Paso, yeah, winter is gonna be the slower time.

But then, yeah, you might be on the market longer, which isn't great, but at the same time, boom, what's coming next after winter? Boom, we're back into spring, our busiest season.

So, and let's talk a little bit about basically the neighborhood factor. So where you sell matters just as much as when you sell. So let me just kind of shoot a bunch of numbers at you

for the different locations. So east side, specifically kind of far east, this area consistently sells the fastest. Dare I say it's the most popular

residential suburban area for buyers. So your home could be, at least this last year, your home might be on the market for 37 to 54 days throughout 2025.

Medium prices in the far east, ranging basically to 206 to 245. But of course, we know that there are much more expensive homes in the far east

that are selling as well. The west side, Upper Valley, that area does really, really well too. It actually saw its fastest sales last year in spring

with homes selling in about 40 to 42 days. Medium prices, 317 to 372. But of course, we know they go much higher than that. The northeast, we already kind of talked about

that it can kind of be a hotspot, especially for PCS buyers. Northeast, April, for instance, 51 days on market. It's funny because November, it was also 51 days on market.

So April was because of that PCS season. November, eh, just people like the northeast, like you live here, so you know it's got a lot going for it. The mountain views, traffic's pretty chill,

close to the base. So, Horizon Socorro. Now, this one's a little bit different. It showed the longest days on market,

but that's kind of false and misleading because.