Welcome to what hopefully becomes an excellent location for great content for home inspectors and all overlapping industries. As a long-term home inspector in the middle Tennessee region, I hope to be a contributing voice to our industry. I welcome your eyeballs, your mental space, and your thoughts.
Throughout many of our future posts, you’ll likely start to see a theme from me as an industry professional. Most of them boil down to one main concept—home inspection for consumer protection. You should know, I also strongly believe and have an interest in building science. Now, neither of these concepts or themes are considered “mainstream” within the inspection industry. I firmly and unequivocally believe these are the right ideas to emphasize within the home inspection industry. A safe, healthy home is a home that saves the owner money and ensures good health for the occupants. The principles of building science, which are rich in data, theory, and decades of verified performance, meld well with what a home inspection should do–assess total building performance for the client to ensures the value of the investment and health of those living therein.
Our industry is riddled with issues, many of which will hopefully find light and a voice through this publication over time. The top three, for me, are price shopping, standards, and adversarial tendencies by competitors and agents/contractors. This last one can be rather irksome (future posts will focus on agents and contractors, promise!). We’d rather see an industry unified in the desire to proliferate value in home inspections (read: not cheap—but worthwhile knowledge and information in a consumable and actionable form). Yet, there are those that feel the only way to get ahead is to try and tear others down. We have a few in our middle Tennessee region like this—their websites specifically make claims of superiority based on prior experience as contractors or laborers in the construction industry. My retort: We inspect homes everyday built by licensed contractors, sub-contractors, and their employees. We’re not running out of work any time soon. Saying you are a licensed contractor, or having experience as a contractor does not make you an immediately good home inspector. On the contrary, if that’s the mindset you present for inspecting.
What makes a good home inspector is having basic knowledge about the system components that comprise a home, as well as the ability to show how all systems work together to create the entire home. You also need to know what your state licensing standards are, what your local and national association standards are (if you choose to be a member), what your insurer’s standards are, and where you fit on the spectrum of minimal vs. more than minimal effort and business practice. Often times, these standards are designed with minimal performance in mind. An effective home inspector will go beyond these standards to help enlarge the picture for a client.
Many inspectors will now balk at doing more than minimal work—it’s a liability to go beyond the set standards. You know who else would balk at doing more than the minimal set standard (residential building code)? Contractors. A good inspector performing a good inspection will naturally, without much effort, go well beyond the minimal standards for performing a home inspection. And, when this occurs, I believe it actually further limits your liability because your clients will see that you care—about their needs as well as about the house in general.
What our home inspection industry, and the real estate industry writ large, needs less of is individuals trying to tell consumers what they should or should not consider to be a big deal. Nowhere, and I mean nowhere, in home inspection standards does it say our industry should take that liberty. Contractors and agents are notorious for making “not a big deal” claims. The thing is—it isn’t their place to tell a home buyer what is a big deal. That’s for the consumer to decide based on her/his needs and expectations. What we should do as home inspectors is make sure our clients understand the scope of what we report. The rest is up to the clients.
So, be wary of claims of excellent home inspections by companies that base their prowess on a history as contractors. Instead, read up on the business reviews. Research companies’ longevity. Give them a call. Do they answer their phone? Do they call you back? Do they actually sound genuine and like they want to be of help? Or, do they just talk over/past your concerns? There’s a difference between making money and making money because you are helping people. I run my business based on the latter.
To my fellow home inspectors: You might be a good home inspector who has a history as a contractor. You are not a good home inspector because you have a history as a contractor. If you don’t get that difference, read it again. Do my industry a favor—put your effort into showing your local community how you are a good home inspector. Go help clients acquire information that empowers them as consumers instead of becoming just another cog in an industry designed to bleed away the value of an invested dollar. Home buyers and owners don’t need sycophancy. They need consumer protection.
