Common Sense Required
One of the great things about Wyoming is it’s desire to keep government regulation under control. One of the challenges of home buying in Wyoming is the lack of government regulation. It’s a double edged sword.
Wyoming is a “buyer beware” state. Sellers aren’t required to fill out a disclosure form listing the deficiencies of their property. This is great for the seller, but not so much for the buyer. When we asked the realtor for the disclosure on the first house we wanted to put an offer on she replied, “Oh, we don’t do those here. In fact we discourage sellers from filling them out because they really don’t know how to.” What!? It was a bit of a shock because we had just sold our home in Oregon and the disclosure was part of listing the house.
We decided to use common sense and paid for a home inspection, including a radon test. What a blessing the home inspection was! We learned a lot of new information during the home inspection like:
Outside city limits permits are not required (After looking at some homes inside the city limits it appears many home owners aren’t taken out permits there either!)
Radon is a common problem in Wyoming (it’s in good company with many other states on this one)
Cement work here has some challenges because of the soil types. It’s really important that you inspect the flat work for cracks, sinking, and heaving. We saw all of these problems in different homes.
There are NO inspectors outside city limits. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. No permits, no need for inspections. The quality of work done on the house can vary.
Not all contractors and inspectors are required to be licensed.
I think you get the picture.
In our case there were some big problems we didn’t want to tackle so we pulled out of the deal. The home owners requested a copy of the home inspection, which you own and are not required to share. We shared it with them because there were some items that needed immediate attention due to safety issues. The surprise to us was the home owners are not required to disclose this information to any future potential buyers. They mean it when they say “buyer beware” here!
Some of the advantages of home buying here are in the financing department. The earnest money required here is $500.00. To show you are really serious you put $1000.00 in earnest money. This is much less than the 1% of the purchase price required in other states.
Also, we shopped around for our mortgage and all of the lenders were super nice. The follow up was impressive. They have been patient with us as we try to figure our way through this new system. They share information with you freely and work hard to keep things moving forward.
The slowest part of the process, besides finding a home we felt comfortable with, has been waiting for the home appraisal report. There aren’t many appraisers in this area so a back log is not uncommon. (We are thinking we should find out what we need to do to become home appraisers in this state. We could make some good money doing that!)
Armed with all this information we looked at A LOT of houses and did our own mini inspections to weed them out. We increased our search area and visited different towns in hopes of finding the one. We prayed for guidance and researched like crazy. It all paid off when we decided to look at some properties in Pinedale, where it all began with our two week road trip a year ago. Funny how things work out sometimes.
Wyoming is a “buyer beware” state. Sellers aren’t required to fill out a disclosure form listing the deficiencies of their property. This is great for the seller, but not so much for the buyer. When we asked the realtor for the disclosure on the first house we wanted to put an offer on she replied, “Oh, we don’t do those here. In fact we discourage sellers from filling them out because they really don’t know how to.” What!? It was a bit of a shock because we had just sold our home in Oregon and the disclosure was part of listing the house.
We decided to use common sense and paid for a home inspection, including a radon test. What a blessing the home inspection was! We learned a lot of new information during the home inspection like:
Outside city limits permits are not required (After looking at some homes inside the city limits it appears many home owners aren’t taken out permits there either!)
Radon is a common problem in Wyoming (it’s in good company with many other states on this one)
Cement work here has some challenges because of the soil types. It’s really important that you inspect the flat work for cracks, sinking, and heaving. We saw all of these problems in different homes.
There are NO inspectors outside city limits. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. No permits, no need for inspections. The quality of work done on the house can vary.
Not all contractors and inspectors are required to be licensed.
I think you get the picture.
In our case there were some big problems we didn’t want to tackle so we pulled out of the deal. The home owners requested a copy of the home inspection, which you own and are not required to share. We shared it with them because there were some items that needed immediate attention due to safety issues. The surprise to us was the home owners are not required to disclose this information to any future potential buyers. They mean it when they say “buyer beware” here!
Some of the advantages of home buying here are in the financing department. The earnest money required here is $500.00. To show you are really serious you put $1000.00 in earnest money. This is much less than the 1% of the purchase price required in other states.
Also, we shopped around for our mortgage and all of the lenders were super nice. The follow up was impressive. They have been patient with us as we try to figure our way through this new system. They share information with you freely and work hard to keep things moving forward.
The slowest part of the process, besides finding a home we felt comfortable with, has been waiting for the home appraisal report. There aren’t many appraisers in this area so a back log is not uncommon. (We are thinking we should find out what we need to do to become home appraisers in this state. We could make some good money doing that!)
Armed with all this information we looked at A LOT of houses and did our own mini inspections to weed them out. We increased our search area and visited different towns in hopes of finding the one. We prayed for guidance and researched like crazy. It all paid off when we decided to look at some properties in Pinedale, where it all began with our two week road trip a year ago. Funny how things work out sometimes.
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