I could use my home page to tell you about the importance of choosing the right home inspector and how you are about to enter into one of the biggest investments of your life, and I could include pictures of smiling home buyers. But for now, I’ll tell you what you need to look for when you’re choosing a home inspector.
After almost 4 decades of experience, if my daughters needed home inspections, and I couldn’t do them, here is what I would tell them to look for in a home inspector.
Below, in order of importance, is what you need to find out about your inspector.
1. What is your inspector’s experience? The single most important aspect of any home / building inspection is the knowledge and experience of the home inspector that you chose and their ability to communicate that information to you. You are about to pay someone for information on something equivalent to the cost of a major medical operation. Would you want the doctor with experience or the one just out of med school. And, isn’t more experience better?
2. Does the inspector meet the state requirements? If your inspector doesn’t meet the state requirements, nothing else maters. The inspections may be a waste of time and money because you may not be able to use the information obtained to re-negotiate the sale price.
3. Is your Inspector Independent? Be sure your inspector is working for you!!! And not the agent. The very idea that agents are the primary source of home inspector referrals is a clear and obvious conflict of interest. Yet most home buyers never seem to give this a thought. They simply hire the agent's favorite inspector, without asking if this is the best one available. Do Not blindly assume that the agent is providing you with a list of thorough, qualified home inspectors. Do some home work!! Realtors have absolutely no incentive to offer, provide, suggest, or recommend a through, qualified, experience home inspector. In fact their incentive is just the opposite.
4. Talk to the inspector that will be doing your inspection. Not the secretary, not the order taker, not the answering service, not the spouse. And don’t order a home inspection on the internet. Take some time to interview them over the phone. Ask questions! How many inspections have they done, how many a day, how long is an inspection, what’s the process. Who do you feel comfortable with? They may be the most technically astute inspector in the world but if you can’t communicate with them move on.
5. Find out about the inspection report. When all is said and done, the home inspection report is what it’s all about. There are many different types of reports. Some are very minimal, some are confusing, and some provide information about systems that your house may not even have. Others particularly franchise or multi inspector company reports are so lawyed up that when they call something a defect by the time you are done reading about it, you’re glad you have it.
6. Inspectors availability for questions / guidance after the inspection. Once I do an inspection for you I am your lifetime house / building expert. Any question you have, just call me. I have saved my clients countless thousands of dollars.
7. Price. Notice that this is last on the list. Not that it isn’t important, especially if you are using every penny you have to purchase the “house of your dreams”. But the Home Inspection is one place you don’t want to take a short cut. Experience, Training, certifications, and continuing education don’t come cheap and therefore, my expertise isn’t going to be cheap either. If you were hiring a doctor to cure you of a serious disease would you hire the cheapest one or the one with the most experience and best credentials? When it comes to home inspections – as with most things – you get what you pay for. Saving a few dollars could turn the “house of your dreams” into a nightmare.
