Each year, Texans sustain property damage and are injured by accidents in the
home. While some accidents may not be avoidable, many other accidents,
injuries, and deaths may be avoided through the identification and repair of
certain hazardous conditions. Examples of such hazards include:
- Improperly installed or missing ground fault circuit protection (GFCI)
devices for electrical receptacles in garages, bathrooms, kitchens, and
exterior areas.
- Improperly installed or missing arc-fault protection (AFCI) devices for
electrical receptacles in family rooms, dining rooms, living rooms,
parlors, libraries, dens, bedrooms, sunrooms, recreation rooms,
closets, hallways, or similar rooms or areas.
- ordinary glass in locations where modern construction techniques call for
safety glass
- the lack of the safety features such as smoke alarms, fire-rated doors in
certain locations, and functional escape and rescue openings
in bedrooms.
- excessive spacing between balusters on stairways and porches
- improperly installed appliances
- improperly installed or defective safety devices
- lack of electrical bonding and grounding
To ensure that consumers are informed of hazards such as these, the Texas Real
Estate Commission (TREC) has adopted Standards of Practice requiring licensed
inspectors to report these conditions as "Deficient" when performing an
inspection for a buyer or seller, if they can be reasonably determined.
These conditions may not have violated building codes or common practices at
the time of the construction of the home, or they may have been "grandfathered"
because they were present prior to the adoption of codes prohibiting such
conditions. While the TREC Standards of Practice do not require inspectors to
perform a code compliance inspection, TREC considers the potential for injury or
property loss from the hazards addressed in the Standards of Practice to be
significant enough to warrant this notice.
Contract forms developed by TREC for use by its real estate licensees also inform
the buyer of the right to have the home inspected and can provide an option
clause permitting the buyer to terminate the contract within a specified time.
Neither the Standards of Practice nor the TREC contract forms require a seller
to remedy conditions revealed by the inspection. The decision to correct a hazard
or any deficiency indentified in an inspection report is left to the parties to the
contract for the sale or purchase of the home.