When we moved into a new home back in November, we didn't know what to expect. Sure, we had an inspection done, and had a sense of some of the work we would need to do, but an inspection only focuses on a certain point in time. Some things just don't show up until later.
So far, thankfully, aside from a few small negative items we didn't see, most of the problems we're addressing (or will be in future years; home ownership is nothing if not a gradual process :) ) are ones we discovered when we were in the buying process.
But, we've been lucky enough to find some "gifts" that we didn't know about simply because the timing wasn't right, or because our realtor (and the seller's agent, if you can believe it), just had no clue about them.
First, just within the last two days, we discovered we had two beautiful cherry trees (a weeping cherry and a cherry blossom [which may or may not be the same species...I haven't checked yet]). My wife and I love cherry blossoms (really, who doesn't), so it was a nice surprise.
Second, we discovered that we have a sprinkler system, something we were told was no longer operational. What is so interesting about this is that some might drop the further investigation, upon being told by both a real estate agent and a home inspector, however, the fact that the instrument panel was working, led me to dig a bit deeper.
When I started looking around the house (after all the snow finally melted), I noticed that there were a number of sprinkler heads around the property. So, while the system might not be working, the system hadn't been removed. I called the number that was on the instrument panel and it turned out that the company had been the servicing company for many years, but the previous home owners stopped calling a number of years ago. I set up an appointment, the techs came out, and with a few minor adjustments to a few of the heads, everything was in working order.
This was a huge find, and one that had I simply not followed intuition would have never known to exist. Looking a gift horse in the mouth isn't the problem (we should always dig deeper to collect data and make analyses). Rather, once we've taken a deep look, we have to be comfortable with what we find without doing anything that could hurt us in any way. (had the system no longer been operational, my wife and I would likely have not done anything further; our funds are going towards other projects currently).
But, the fact of the matter is we always have to look.
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