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Rating: 
Summary: Thank God for Barry Stone
Review: I bought this book to help through the process of buying a home that I had inspected already but felt as if the inspection wasn't accurate. The inspector found barely anything wrong with the 50 year old home I was buying. I was concerend, especially considering the inspector was a personal friend of my real estate agent. I chose this book over others due to Barry's national status as a columnist and after reading it, I hired my own inspector based upon Barry's insights. What I learned about the home in terms of what had not been disclosed to me was enough to consider action against both my agent and home inspector. Above all else, the old furnace was emitting hazardous fumes into the home. Thank God for Barry and this book.
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous Book
Review: I've been reading Barry Stone's columns in my newspaper for years. As an avid investor in residential propoerties, I have followed Barry's advice with pinpoint accuracy as his advice has kept me from making mistakes that would have cost me a fortune. I bought his book and have found it to be a remarkable warehouse of information that serves to protect both everyone including the buyers, sellers and even the many real estate agents who in my opinion often lead unknowledged comsumers down the path of home purchase without a clue as to how to protect them from buying a home that could be riddled with defects. I applaud this book and Barry Stone's continued efforts to place into the marketplace the most sound and sane advice I've read from any home inspection manual.
Rating:
Summary: Great teaching tool for homeowners
Review: Mr. Stone has managed once again to provide the consumer with a wealth of practical knowledge. His easy-going nature and vast experience is translated into a must read for any potential, or current, homeowner as well as anyone in the real estate and inspection professions.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth reading
Review: Not a good book to read. There are other books that provide useful information but this book had very little good ideas to use. The price is very but that still just justify spending the time to read it due to the lack of help I got from this book. Get something else and don't waste your money.
Rating:
Summary: I absolutely do NOT recommend this book. Nothing but filler.
Review: The first 120 pages of the book do nothing but drone on and on about why you should get a home inspection done and about the legal liabilities of the inspectors. I think most people who've bought the book have probably already decided to use an inspector and don't need to be told through 120 pages that they should!
Every other page is a reprint of a question that someone had sent him in his newspaper articles and are mostly redundant.
For example, he'll tell you that in most parts of the country Inspectors don't consider swimming pools to be part of the inspection. He'll then use up a full page for a q&a letter that says, "Barry, I recently got an inspection done and the inspector didn't include the swimming pool in the report. Wasn't he supposed to do this?".
I consider all of the Q&A letters to be redundant and insulting my intelligence by assuming I need the point repeated like a preschooler. It is nothing more than filler so that you won't realize you are buying what is essentially a 75 page book that is nothing more than a checklist.
Lastly, once the interesting part of the book commences (the checklist) he puts up pictures of common problems. The problem is that the pictures are black and white and are so small that you can't even see what the problem he's describing in the picture actually looks like!
In short, I think you could find the checklists you need for free on the internet and skip this book. It is nothing like what I expected based on the title.
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