If you’ve ever purchased a home, you have had a Realtor tell you that you should get a home inspection. Even if you rent or lease property, you may have had to open your door to an inspector performing “due diligence” as part of the landlord’s purchase/sale of the property. When you are spending hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars on something, it only makes sense to make sure all is as it appears to be, right?

Well, as real estate values have declined, taxable values have declined in many places as well. The result is that many local governments are getting squeezed by lower revenues in a time where prices for just about everything but housing are going up. If you look closely, even the Fed has had to admit this was so. And in turn, that means local governments are having to cut corners here and there.

That brings me to today’s local newspaper, which informs me that Las Vegas Has Scrapped Some Structural Inspections. As nearly as I can tell from the limited scope of the article, the inspections involve the blueprints and plans rather than physically going on site and looking at the structure. I welcome comments from anyone who can correct me on this point, and will update this article accordingly. Honestly, I’m not worried about the safety of “strip malls… and big box stores” — the owner has too much to lose if it collapses and so much as injures a single person — but I have a little concern over the exemption for “tract homes”. Homeowners often don’t do the same kind of preventative maintenance that commercial real estate would have; not a big deal over the course of 5 years, but what about 20 years? A small problem can easily become a big one reaching across an entire neighborhood of homes in that time. At least one local lawyer “believes the city’s cost-cutting move could create more problems for local residents. He suggested eliminating the reviews would lead to more litigation over construction defects.”

While many experts feel that these inspections were duplicating inspections that also occur on the state and/or county level, it’s still a good idea to remind everyone that the last line of defense when it comes to avoiding a real estate nightmare is the property inspection.

Of course, there are some things that you can look for yourself and decide whether a property is even worth considering. Your level of “handiness” and willingness to do a lot of repairs will of course come into play. That being said, here’s This Old House’s Tommy Silva on What to Look For Before the Home Inspector Arrives and 18 Red Flags from Samuel Tamkin, who notes that “Of course, all of these problems can be fixed but for a price.”

As for choosing an inspector and what that inspector will do, here are some resources to get you started. Your broker’s office may have a list of inspectors that they have done business with in the past, and more information about the inspection process.

It’s a Caveat Emptor kind of world out there. Protect yourself with a property inspection when buying real estate.