When you purchase a new vehicle there is no need to have a mechanic give it a checkup. Used vehicles are a whole different story however, and an inspection should be considered before laying your money down on what is essentially a bunch of used nuts and bolts.
When you purchase a piece of property you may have made the choice based on the trees that come with it. Or the trees and the potential issues that came with them may not have been even considered at the time of purchase.
I am fairly mechanical, but if I were to make a large dollar purchase on a used vehicle, I would have it looked at by someone who knows the ins and outs of that particular vehicle.
I have looked at trees after the purchase of a piece of property that I had to condemn for safety/liability reasons that turned out to be a big and expensive shock to the new owner. Sometimes a new house or home site may have exposed the existing trees to negative impacts during grading or construction without any type of protection zones around them. This happens all too often pretty much everywhere and it is impossible to remedy because the damage has been done, and rarely is “fixable”. A lot of the time the damage is to the root system, and after everything is smoothed over it can be very hard to determine the extent of injuries the tree may have suffered.
Trees large enough and close enough to crush a home are usually pretty expensive to have removed depending on the area surrounding the tree.
Sometimes the whole tree needs to be rigged and lowered onto itself and tricky removals can cost many thousands of dollars.
Expect to pay a mechanic to do a diagnosis on a used vehicle, as they usually have to tear into it somewhat and run it through its paces.
I don’t charge for a basic inspection of your tree(s) unless the sheer number of trees would eat a lot of time, or an aerial inspection is warranted.
Having an arborist check out the trees before you buy a property may save you a bundle of grief and money, or give you some room to haggle on the purchase price. If a home is advertised with the term “mature trees and landscaping” in the description, this can mean almost anything. The same goes for “new trees and landscaping”. Just because it is “new” doesn’t mean it is appropriate for the sight, or correctly planted and “mature” may mean decrepit – so buyer beware!
I know of more than a few houses that were purchased because the new owners fell in love with the giant oak in the backyard or something along those lines, and a couple of those trees just weren’t worth buying and have since been removed. A tree is more than the space it occupies in your yard. It is the environment that it provides as well. The texture, sounds, flowers, birds and wildlife they attract, the shadows cast, the definition of a border or barrier, the physical presence, and the scale it creates in your landscape are all factors in having a tree occupy your yard.
