The theory is that since you're the one who wants the inspection and who, presumably, will benefit from it, it's only fair that you should pay for it. Inspections today usually run between $250 and $350.

What seems logical on the surface may not make as much sense when we probe deeper. In a very real sense the home inspection protects the seller as much, if not more, than you the buyer. Here's the reason:

In today's litigious environment, home sellers may be liable for all sorts of defects in their properties. For exam­ple, their water heater may be leaking gas. But the sellers may not even be aware of it. If the home should be sold and a fire results from the defective heater, the sellers might be held liable. However, if there's an inspection, it may uncover the problem and the sellers can correct it.

Further, once you've had a Hawaii home inspection, it is much harder to come back at the sellers to claim that there was a hidden defect in the property. You, after all, had the opportunity to hire any inspector you wanted and to do any kind of inspection work. If the inspection revealed nothing untoward, then how was the poor seller to know there was a problem?

This is not to say, of course, that a home inspection pro­tects the sellers from defects that they knew about and failed to disclose. If, for example, the sellers know that a bathroom toilet has been plugged (as evidenced by the fact that they've had plumbers come in to clear it many times), and they fail to disclose this to the buyers, and if later on, the drain line plugs again, flooding a portion of the house with sewerage, they could be on the hook for repair and cleanup costs.

It's important to remember that an inspection is differ­ent from a disclosure. An inspection's purpose is to uncover possible problems with the house. The disclosure's purpose is to let the sellers tell you of problems of which they are aware. You need both, and often you want the home inspector to verify or amplify on items that the sellers disclose. There is no charge for the disclosure and today most states require it of sellers.