Spent nearly three hours going over our newly-purchased house with the home inspector (the very capable Steve Gregory of National Property Inspections). Overall, he pronounced the two-story Cape Cod house, built in 1977, “very well built and sound.”

Except for one thing — the roof. The asphalt shingles, Steve said, are at the “end of their effective life.”

Uh oh. A deal killer?

Not really. We had budgeted extra for repairs and the preliminary estimates for replacing the shingles fall well within that budget. Our Realtor had suspected the roof might need work and we factored that into our offer on the home.

The good news is that the roof is not leaking and no shingles are loose. A previous owner (before the ones we bought the home from) tried to save money by having new shingles installed over the old ones. Such repairs don’t last as long. We will have both layers of shingles removed before new ones are installed.

Steve found a few other small things but nothing major and the house is good to go for closing on December 3.