Home buyers are your most frequent customers, by far, but there’s a new trend toward pre-sale inspections. Also called pre-listing inspections, they’re a smart move on the seller’s part. Learning what’s good and bad empowers the seller to make the right decisions when placing the house on the market. And lucky you, it could put…
All that you need is to do a simple Google search and you’ll find numerous news and opinion articles about home inspectors. You’ll read about what clients should expect from an inspection, whether inspectors perform a good service, and how buyers should always beware. The “beware” part of the equation comes up often because although…
You know that your work is important. But do you know how much money a home inspection could save your customers? Aside from the largest amount, which is the sale price of a rotten old house, there are lots of potential costs that heeding an inspection report could avoid. Here are a few of the…
For the most part, the home inspection industry stays relatively the same. You learn the process of inspecting real estate, and if a system changes later, you learn how to inspect that and add it to your repertoire. The Standards of Practice that govern the industry for association members follows the same guidelines as it…
There are national and state home inspection associations, and at both levels there are plenty of members. Then there are state-level chapters of larger associations, too. There’s no shortage of opportunities to belong to one of the many home inspection organizations, but what’s in it for you? The short answer is that there’s plenty of…
Running a home inspection business is challenging, but getting it off the ground in the first place can seem like a daunting task. One of the most troubling questions is how to set home inspection pricing. Most inspectors don’t charge on an al la carte basis. A house is a house, and unless there’s something…
One of the biggest misconceptions that homebuyers have about home inspectors is that the inspection report is only the beginning. But inspectors don’t make judgment calls about how long a roof will last or where to find a good repair contractor for a broken HVAC unit. That’s a perfect environment for a customer complaint, or…
If you’ve seen one nice home you’ve seen them all, right? Hardly. Technology is advancing quickly, and along with it the systems and fixtures in luxury homes. What you’re accustomed to inspecting might bear some resemblance to what you’ll find in a high-end property. But some of it might leave you scratching your head. If…
For the most part, home inspecting is solitary work. Customers hire you to perform a job, and then you prepare a report for them to review afterward. But customers also ask questions. Sometimes, there are a lot of questions. How you respond can ease a customer’s mind and help protect you from liability. The potential…
There are exceptions, but in many cases no one will force a buyer to get a home inspection in order to get financing. It’s not cheap, and many buyers don’t understand the difference between an inspection and an appraisal. So it stands to reason that a lot of people skip the inspection, even though that’s…
