You made it through the bidding war. Your offer was accepted. You are under contract on a home you worked hard to get, in a market that gave you no room for error. Now comes the inspection – and if you are not prepared for what it might turn up, this is often where deals quietly fall apart.
Artur Tyszka, who leads the Tyszka Team in Wayne, New Jersey, has seen this pattern play out enough times to know exactly where it starts going wrong. The problem, he says, is almost never financing or cold feet. It is that nobody had the right conversation early enough. “Deals die because expectations were not set before the inspection,” he says.
Wayne’s housing market is particularly competitive right now, with homes in the $700,000 to $1,000,000 range regularly drawing multiple offers and selling well above asking price. That pressure does not ease once a buyer is under contract – it shifts to the inspection, where buyers who were not prepared for what they would hear are most likely to make costly decisions.
Much of Wayne’s housing stock is decades old, and inspections on older homes routinely flag aging systems and dated finishes. A furnace approaching the end of its life expectancy, a roof that is dated but not leaking, or electrical work that reflects an older code are standard findings – and in most cases, they do not give a buyer grounds to demand credits, repairs, or concessions.
“If an outlet does not work, you are not getting a $500 credit for it,” Tyszka says. “The time to talk about these things is before you make the offer, not after the inspector hands you a 40-page report and everyone starts panicking.”
Tyszka draws a clear line between findings any reasonable seller would address – active leaks, structural problems, mold, safety hazards – and the normal wear that comes with buying a home that has been lived in for decades. Walking buyers through that distinction before the inspection is what keeps a deal intact when the report comes back with a long list.
The difference in outcome is direct. A buyer who has already been told the roof is likely to come up in inspection takes that finding in stride. A buyer hearing it for the first time can treat the same finding as a dealbreaker – even when it is not. “I invest in real estate myself,” Tyszka says. “I flip houses, I build, I own investment properties. I see all sides of this. And the deals that fall apart at inspection almost always had an agent who wasn’t having the hard conversations upfront.”
For buyers in any competitive market, the approach is the same: ask your agent what the inspection is likely to find before you submit an offer, understand what is negotiable and what is not, and go in informed. In a market like Wayne, where winning a home takes months of effort and no small amount of luck, losing a deal at the inspection stage – over findings that were predictable from the start – is the one outcome that preparation can reliably prevent.
About the Tyszka Team
The Tyszka Team is a family-run real estate group based in Wayne, New Jersey, serving buyers and sellers across Wayne and Pompton Lakes. Led by Artur Tyszka alongside his mother and fellow team members, the group brings over a decade of local market experience to every transaction. Learn more at tyszkaproperties.com.
