The One Person in the Deal Who Works Only for You

It’s worth being honest about how a real estate transaction is arranged. Your agent is paid when the sale closes. Your lender is paid when the loan funds. The contractor writing your repair estimate has an interest in the size of the repair. None of that makes those people dishonest — most will deal with you straight — but nearly everyone involved does better when the deal goes through.

The inspector is the exception.

That’s worth something anywhere. It’s worth more when you’ve moved here for a job, you don’t know a soul yet, and every professional you’re relying on is someone you met three weeks ago. My fee is the same whether you buy the house or walk away from it. I have nothing to sell you afterward, and my only job is to look hard, tell you the truth, and put it in writing.

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Inspecting Homes in Lebanon

Lebanon is the place the Upper Valley actually runs on. The hospital is here, the airport is here, and most of what anybody in three counties needs to get done on a Saturday happens out on 12A. Hanover gets the attention. Lebanon gets the work done.

The houses match that. Old ones in town, a lot of two-families, whole neighborhoods that went up when somebody needed housing in a hurry, and rural places a few minutes out with barns, wells, and long driveways. What they have in common isn’t when they were built. It’s that many of them have been lived in hard, and repaired by people doing what they could afford at the time with whatever was available. That’s the part worth reading, and it’s the part that doesn’t show up on a listing.

Winter is the other constant. Frost doesn’t do anything to a house quickly. It works about a sixteenth of an inch at a time, for forty years, while everybody’s at work, and then one spring somebody notices the sill.

What I Look For in a Lebanon Inspection

Foundations and structure. Stone, brick, block, and poured concrete, often more than one in the same building. Settlement and movement, deterioration at mortar joints, water entry, and the condition of sills, posts, and beams where wood meets masonry — which is where old buildings usually fail first. Where additions meet the original structure, that junction gets particular attention.

Water, from the roof to the ground. Roof coverings, flashing, valleys, chimneys, gutters, grading, and where the water goes after it lands. Then cellars and crawlspaces: staining, efflorescence, rot, sump systems, and the signs that water has come in more than once. A stone foundation can be damp seasonally and perform fine, which is a different situation from a finished basement hiding a foundation that was never meant to stay dry.

Attics, insulation, and ventilation. Insulation coverage and depth, air sealing, bath and kitchen venting, soffit and ridge ventilation, and any staining, frost, or rot on the underside of the sheathing. Ice dams are usually a heat and airflow problem before they’re a roofing problem. Houses that were tightened up over the years sometimes solved a heating bill and created a moisture problem, and the attic is where that shows up first.

Heating and cooling. Boilers, furnaces, heat pumps, mini-splits, oil and propane equipment, distribution, venting, and the wood stoves that back a lot of it up. Age matters less than how the equipment has been used and maintained, and a house that’s been added onto repeatedly can heat very differently depending on which room you’re standing in.

Electrical. Panels, service, grounding, visible wiring, outlets, and fixtures. Older houses here often carry several generations of wiring, some partly abandoned when the service was upgraded. I sort out what’s unsafe, what an electrician should evaluate, and what’s simply old and working.

Plumbing. Supply, drains, water heating, fixtures, and visible leaks, plus where the pipes run, whether they’re protected from freezing, and what the different eras of pipe in the building add up to.

Renovation work, and what’s underneath it. A lot of houses here have been updated at least once. New finishes are frequently wrapped around original wiring, untouched drainage, or a heating system that got a service call instead of a replacement. I’m looking at how the work was done and whether the parts nobody replaced can support the parts they did.

Two-families and rental buildings. Each unit brings its own systems, so there’s more to look at. I pay particular attention to safety and insurability items — egress, smoke and CO alarms, stairs and railings, panels, water heaters — along with the wear that builds up under tenant use.

The exterior and the site. Siding, trim, windows, doors, porches, decks, stairs, railings, grading, and drainage across the lot. On hill properties, driveways, culverts, and retaining walls are part of how the building performs, not a side note.

Barns, garages, and outbuildings. Included when they’re part of the scheduling. Out in the surrounding towns the barn is often older than the house and the detached garage sometimes has its own electrical service. Rural properties are generally on private wells, which I test directly. Septic systems aren’t part of a home inspection — I’ll note what’s visible and can point you toward a good evaluator.

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Radon Testing

New Hampshire has elevated radon, and this part of the state is no exception. It’s a soil gas, and it has nothing to do with how clean, new, dry, or well-built a house is. A tidy finished basement can test high while the house next door tests low.

I offer radon testing as an add-on to the inspection or as a standalone service, using continuous electronic monitors that record readings across the whole test period rather than producing a single number without context. Elevated levels can almost always be mitigated. The point is knowing before you own it.

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Water Testing

If the property is on a private well, a home inspection tells you nothing about what’s in the water. That matters more in New Hampshire than most places, because arsenic occurs naturally in the bedrock here and turns up in wells throughout this part of the state. You can’t taste it, smell it, or see it.

I offer laboratory testing covering bacteria, arsenic, lead, nitrates and nitrites, hardness, pH, and other parameters relevant to New Hampshire and Vermont well water, with additional panels including PFAS available when the property or the buyer calls for it.

Water and radon testing can be bundled with the inspection for a reduced combined price.

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Who Is Buying in Lebanon

For buyers. A lot of people buying here have moved for a job, often from somewhere with a completely different set of houses, and they’re deciding fast. Buying in a hurry from four states away is how people end up owning a crawlspace they’ve never seen. My job is to turn as many of your assumptions as possible into information. I’ll ask you to join me near the end for the walkthrough, where we can stand in front of the actual foundation, boiler, panel, or repair and talk about what it means. Afterward you get a detailed digital report with photographs and plain explanations, and if you can’t be here, the report stands on its own and I’m glad to go through it by phone.

For sellers. A pre-listing inspection tells you what a buyer’s inspector is going to find while you still control what happens next. Repair it, service it, document it, disclose it, or price with clear information — all better than finding out mid-negotiation with fewer options and less time.

For homeowners. If you already own the house and just want to know where you stand, a home maintenance inspection is the same thorough look without a transaction attached to it. It’s a good way to plan work in an order that makes sense instead of in the order things break.

For investors. Lebanon and the surrounding towns have real rental demand and a lot of older multi-family buildings, which is a combination that can hide expensive problems. I focus on the major systems, structure, moisture, safety and insurability concerns, and the maintenance that’s been put off long enough to become a capital item. I won’t produce a renovation budget from a visual inspection, but twenty years of running construction gives me a useful sense of what’s a nuisance and what changes your plans.

For realtors. The inspection support page for agents covers scheduling, turnaround, communication, and what my reports look like inside a transaction.

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What Does It Cost?

Pricing follows the size of the home. Condos and homes under 1,000 square feet are generally $500, and 1,000 to 1,500 square feet is $600, stepping up by $100 per size tier from there. Homes over 3,500 square feet are quoted individually, as are multi-family buildings and properties with unusually extensive systems or multiple structures.

Homes built before 1950 carry an additional fee for the added time involved. A house with a stone foundation, several additions, more than one heating system, old wiring, and a barn takes real time to do properly.

Radon and water testing can be added to any inspection, and bundling both saves $100 off the combined total. Barns, garages, workshops, and other outbuildings are factored into the quote based on what’s there, so tell me what’s on the property when you reach out.

For a firm number, use the online scheduler or send the address, square footage, year built, and any add-ons you want included. I’ll confirm pricing before anything goes on the calendar.

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A Practical Inspection Report

You’ll have the report within 24 hours of the inspection. I know how tight the timelines are here, and a report that arrives after your decision is due isn’t worth much.

It’s a digital report with photographs, clear explanations, and findings organized so you can tell what’s significant from what’s routine. Safety issues and major defects get direct attention. When something needs a specialist — a structural engineer, an electrician, a plumber, a chimney professional, an HVAC contractor — I say so plainly and explain why.

The report is written to still make sense six months later. You should be able to hand a finding to a contractor, revisit it during a negotiation, or use it to plan work your first winter in the house without decoding anybody’s shorthand.

Serving Lebanon and Nearby Communities

From Lebanon, I serve the surrounding Upper Valley and Connecticut River Valley, including Hanover, West Lebanon, Enfield, Canaan, Grafton, Lyme, Plainfield, Grantham, Plymouth, Lincoln, and Cornish. I also regularly serve nearby Vermont communities across the river, including Bradford, White River Junction, Hartford, Norwich, Woodstock, Windsor, and Springfield.

This page connects with my nearby service area pages for Hanover, White River Junction, Windsor, Woodstock, Springfield, Claremont, Sunapee, and Newport, as well as broader coverage throughout western New Hampshire and eastern Vermont.

For the full list of towns I cover, see the Service Areas page.

Frequently Asked Questions in Lebanon