Most buyers will want to conduct an inspection prior to purchasing a duplex or investment property. Anyone that isn’t an experienced buyer or a contractor with major experience would be crazy to purchase a duplex or investment property without doing their due diligence and having an inspection of the property done by a professional inspector.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky: where do you stop when it comes to doing an inspection?

I would make the answer dependent upon two things:

What You See with Your Own Inspection (When You are Viewing the Property with a Realtor)

How Deep Your Savings Account Is

Let’s focus on the first one: what you see in your own inspection of the property. This is where you and your realtor should be looking for tell-tale signs that there may be problems looming. It’s also where you might want to enlist further help than just a standard inspector.

You see, most home inspectors do general inspections – they’re looking for large problems. Many of the more specific issues are outside of their scope of expertise and require an expert in that specific field to tell you if you have a problem or not and to what degree of an issue it is.