My experience has been that a real estate agent will call me and ask how much it would cost to change out the panel. The agent then tells the buyers and they reduce the price that much. (Sometime more due to the inconvenience of having to handle it.) BTW, 95% of the time, I won't get that job or any job from that agent. RE agents like to waste your time. That's why I charge RE agents for estimates.
Home inspectors look good when they find things wrong. No home inspector wants to say "I didn't find any problems." Impress them all you want, but they are looking for problems. If the HI saw a new panel, he would probably check the permit database to see if it was permitted and inspected.
I share your view of RE agents in general.
But for the home inspectors, I have found that what the inspector finds/writes up depends on who hired him. I have been called into many newly purchased homes which had been inspected and passed by inspectors hired by the RE company. Many times I have told the client to make the RE co or the home inspector pay because the problems were pre-existent and easily seen and ought to have been called. Real estate companies will not re-hire inspectors who call too many things, which sometimes causes them to lose a sale.
On the other hand. the inspectors hired by the buyer (few) usually get everything wrote up, nit picked to death. I have been called in by the seller in those instances to make required repairs. Some are honest calls, actually I would say most are, but some are simply nitpicking. Such as writing up an extension cord running a dryer, which also had a gas outlet which could be used on a gas dryer. I would tell the seller to just unplug the cord and put it away, nothing else needed on that, and other similar things.
So what I am saying is it mostly depends on who hires the home inspector. Anybody buying a home is well advised to hire his own inspector, it will save most of them well over the cost of it.
As for how long galvanized water pipe last in a home, which was brought up in a post above, that depends on the locale in which it is located, determined by both soil conditions and mostly by the hardness or content of the water. I had a home which I had to replace all the galv plumbing at 18 years, and some of the neighbors had to replace theirs sooner. We had hard water. And a side note, in the city of Costa Mesa, or part of it, they had to stop using copper plumbing below ground because the soil was acidic and ate it up. So many things depend on locality.
I have been called out to replace Zinsco main panels because the insurance company would not insure the house with Zinsco in it. But have not been called to replace fused panels ------ ???? And some of the older homes here still have knob and tube wiring in portions of them which nothing is said about. ---- ????
