Let me say it a few times: inspect, inspect, inspect.
Buying a home is an expensive undertaking, but buying a home that you have not done inspections on is also taking a huge, HUGE gamble with your money.
I believe when you are out looking for homes it is almost like falling in love. You find a home that you gives you that "oh so special feeling", and you want it, you want it so much that it is hard to sleep at night.
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You are dazzled by the features and disregard the flaws. You are sure it is perfect or close to it and then the agents start handing you disclosures and you start signing things, but you don't necessarily take the time to read everything that you sign and you don't truly take in the information on the disclosures. All that you know is that you want the home, and you believe that the quicker you get the papers signed the faster it will be yours. It doesn't matter to you if the plumbing seems to have issues or there appears to be a strange odor coming from the walls.
There was a movie out years ago that I am sure many of you have seen, The Money Pit, starring one of my most favorite actors in the world, Tom Hanks. In the movie, for those of you who haven't seen it, Walter Fielding (Tom Hanks) and Anna Crowley (Shelly Long) want to buy a home together but they have a very limited budget. In their search for a home they meet a con artist who sells them a beautiful mansion at a ridiculously low price, but when they move into their dream home it almost instantly becomes a nightmare of (costly) construction issues.