A home does not “pass” or “fail” an inspection. Any home, even a brand-spanking-new one, will have deficiences. The inspector should have the background and experience to provide sufficient and accurate information to their client so that he or she will be able to make an objective decision based upon their requirements, budget, and wishes supplemented by the findings in the inspection report.

The inspector should be able to communicate with the client in a manner that lets them know what could be considered a “major” issue and how it differs from minor ones. A open furnace vent pipe that can kill the inhabitants with carbon monoxide IS a Big Deal issue that requires immediate repair. A pencil hole in a window screen is not usually considered a big deal. But, quite often there is no effort to differentiate, both issues are checked off as a deficiency requiring repair.

There is documentation of inspectors and realtors working together in a manner to promote their own best interest, not that of the buyer/client. Hang’em all!

InspectorStu
Virginia Inspection Service, LLC

“She also said that Ed gives bad reviews to the first three buildings he inspects for clients, and then gives a good review to the fourth”

Simply not true, he just won’t give a positive review on bad construction and there is a lot of crappy, cheap, poorly built, construction here. If you want to buy a very well built home, hire Ed.

Ed has a reputation for being very,very, thorough and some realtors don’t like that because their commission is on the line.

The inspector only points out all the problems with a home, ultimately, it is a buyer that choses to fail a house and not proceed with an offer.

We planned to use Ed when we bought our condo back then. Our realtor referred to him as “Dr Death”. Which is exactly what we wanted. She tried to convince us to select somebody else because Ed won’t give a positive review to any building. When that didn’t work, she said that Ed was being sued by a number of people for giving inaccurate review (a search of the court registries indicates this is not the case). She also said that Ed gives bad reviews to the first three buildings he inspects for clients, and then gives a good review to the fourth– so his inspections end up costing more and he’s just fraudulently giving poor reviews to the first few.

This turned out to be false, as Ed in fact refused to review our condo– we told him which company did the rainscreen repairs, which warranty program it was under, and said that our primary concern was with leakiness. He said he’d never faulted that company’s rainscreen repairs, and he didn’t think it was worth the money for us to hire him just to look at the rest. So we didn’t have him inspect. The building turned out to be just fine. No water problems, and there were only two defects with out unit that we found: some damage to the hardwood where a potted plant had been overwatered (we hid it with our sofa), and a bathtub that drained poorly (easily fixed).

All kinds of excuses and veiled threats to try to get us not to use him. She was an inexperienced realtor (we were her first clients– she’s a friend), and she was parroting her boss’ opinions, but it was annoying, to say the least.

I have also witnessed really bad ones.

Do your homework and if a friend or family member knows a good one that’s a great place to start.

When we checked out all the home inspectors reputations with the Better Business Bureau it turned out all the realtor recommended home inspectors had several complaints lodged against them and the home inspector we planned to use had zero complaints.

Seems the only complaints about our home inspector were from the realtors themselves because our inspector had the reputation of being very, very, thorough. Perhaps too thorough for their liking, but we really didn’t care because we wanted a solid, well built home, that wasn’t going to end up being a problematic money pit.

BTW we were very, very, pleased with the very, very thorough home inspector. We were glad we stuck with our original decision to use this particular home inspector and that we did not let our realtors personal opinion of our home inspector persuade us to use a different home inspector instead.

A good home inspector is worth their weight in gold, they can save you a lot of money by identifying problems before you decide to purchase a home. After all, unless you have very deep pockets, the majority of people do not wish to buy a home that will cost a lot of money to repair.

A home that has structural problems is like a car that has been in an accident and the frame is bent. It is never quite the same even after it has been repaired is it?

I also should mention that realtors will ask you who your home inspector is in advance. You may get a reaction of “oh” or “we have had problems with their home inspections in the past” or “we don’t carry that inspectors brochure in our office because we have had problems with them in the past”. Please don’t let a realtors comments persuade you to use another home inspector, you are the one paying for the home inspection, not your realtor and you don’t have to try to please your realtor by hiring a home inspector they prefer.