Most of them are incompetent whores....minimal certification and little responsibility

I hired a professional engineer when I bought my house. he was pretty thorough. I would use him again.

HA! Overkill much?

I got a little life lesson about 20 years ago, when I was buying a property in Vermont..

At our initial negotiation. We mentioned we were going to have an Inspection done by a"PROFESSIONAL"

The owner of the house said go ahead.. His price for the sale was fixed no matter what the inspection found.. and he would not do any repairs etc...

The price for the property was " As Is"

My brothers and I did a walk through and identified some areas that we thought needed attention..

Seller says: Price is as is.....

We bought the place.... and made some improvements and have enjoyed the place for many years..

I can advise you on mold issues. Let me know. I also have the credentials, not a one or two day mold school wonder, but the real deal.

3200 sq ft Craftsman house built in 1909....didn't wanna mess around.

It's a freaking joke. When we bought our house I had to point out major stuff to our inspector, like the front steps sinking 6" and pulling away from the house.

A home inspector saved my ass on a potential buy.

Had he not done his job I would have bought the place and some significant problems.

Like any other profession, do your research before you employ a contractor.

I've thought of moonlighting as a home inspector myself... I've already got E/O insurance and could get certified with a phone call. Some home inspectors actually take their time and do a good job. Typically here in PA mortgagors want some sort of report on what they are lending on and require inspection prior to.
Depending upon what organization certifies you as an inspector it wouldn't take much time wise to get out there and "spect" .

If you only knew how many times I get asked if I do home inspections for a living... Arghhh, it has taken almost 10 yrs of testing to be a fully certified commercial inspector/plans examiner... Horrible tests of 3.5hrs each with wickedly high failure rates. Usually I say "umm home inspectors tell you your dishwasher doesn't work, I make sure the biofuels plant doesn't burn a hole to China... not exactly the same

I did some for friends of my kids last year. They were shopping for a house and mentioned a house in my old work area. The street name put a blip up in my mind and I asked them for the address. Sure enough I had been in that house several times. When I was in the house it was owned by a couple in their 80's who both had severe medical problems. They moved into assisted living and sold the house to a flipper.

The house was a 1200 sq ft bungalow. L shaped living room/ dining room. With a central hall way to 3 bedrooms and a bathroom.

There was a crack in the main floor ceiling which ran the length of the room and down the hallway. The concrete basement had a crack in the wall under dining room/living room wall and the floor was heaved and cracked the length of the house exactly under the living room/hall ceiling crack. Two of the basement windows had cracks running from the window down to the floor. When I say cracks these are not hairline but large gaping type. Basically the foundation was screwed and would need major underpinning to repair properly.

When I went with the kids to look at the house I let them wander around first before saying anything. The flippers had dry walled a new layer over the crack in the living room and hall, but for some reason they took out the little L shaped wall between the kitchen and living room and dining room. Not a big deal but one of the walls was a support wall. The wall register in that wall now became a floor register and all they did was screw a wall register cover to the floor. The basement wall was drywalled over on the inside and the cracked basement floor had nice new carpet on it. They didn't fix the floor crack as you could feel the space under the carpet. They didn't spend $20 on material to trim out the walls by the basement windows and you could see the damage still. The crack in the basement wall on the outside they caulked the wall and then planted a bush against the wall to hide it. The kids ran. :)

I looked at about 20 houses for them over a period of 3 weekends. One had a furnace and water heater (gas) that the exhaust pipes were rotten and someone had wrapped silver Duck tape over to hide the holes. I called the gas company on that place.

I would also check out the neighbors and any access issues if there are private roads and HOAs near you. Ask how I know.

I have a couple friends who do home inspections, and take it seriously.
Washington State recently added stiff requirements to be licensed. Not long ago, all that was needed was business cards and a phone number. The new regulations include serious liability for poor inspections, so most of the hacks have been weeded out.

With a background in construction, I have been asked by friends to do an inspection. While I don't mind helping a friend, I tell them up front that I'm happy to take a look, but will accept no money, and will put nothing in writing- Just offer opinions of what I see.

The only time I do a "serious" inspection is if I buy a house for myself. I'd rather see for myself what I'm in for, rather than reading somebody else's report.

When we bought a house for the in-laws to move near us we used the inspector recommended by the RE agent. MAJOR mistake. This guy must have a seeing eye dog. I was so angry. I dawned on me after the fact that he had a vested interest in not seeing things and wasn't going to kill a deal for the RE agent and then not be recommended again. Licensed con artists.

The only up side was that when we sold the house, the buyer wanted an inspection done and we knew just who to use. As expected, he thought everything was perfect (we had already fixed the major issues while we owned it so I didn't mind using him).

When we bought our current home, I asked a friend who builds and remodels to do the inspection for me. I felt a lot more confident in his inspection.

For a long time, home appraisals were pretty much the same thing. The appraiser would ask "how much do you need the home to appraise for?" Of course the RE bubble fixed that game.

On a related note, Mold School Wonder is playing Lollapalooza this summer...

He must be a heck of a guy. I have a PE. I would review drawings, but there is no way I would get down in a crawl space with the rats and snakes to check for rot, mold, and termites. There are people more qualified and less expensive than a PE who do that work every day.

Bummer about the issues but amazingly generous offers from MRM and Hugh. Definitely avail yourself of both of them.

Sometimes it's not the house that screws the deal. One place I looked at for the kids the house checked out fine. The garage was a different story. The owner had cut the bottom web of the engineered trusses for "more head room". Both support walls were bowed out.

Not necessarily a tear down.

That might be fixed with through eye-bolts, comealongs, targeted load removal(cutting and doubling), and new trusses/brackets over a bit of time.
Pull the walls together plumb, then lock 'em tight.

Sometimes you get burned even with a very through inspection. I am a retired contractor and feel confident inspecting my own purchase. Last house we bought was a 1904 brick cottage built in a trendy part of downtown. The house checked out fine.I found a lead water service and an obsolete circuit breaker panel but nothing bad otherwise. . We replaced the lead service and upgraded the electrical It had a 2 car detached garage I needed more power for anyway.
Two months later the sewer backed up during a very heavy rain and we discovered we had a mutual sewer. Not legal here since the Canadian national building code in 1949. Still wasn,t common before that but we got one. It cost about 10k to install a new separate sewer and a sump pump as backup. Even a thorough inspection won,t find some problems underground put there a century ago.

Like in all professions 80% of home inspectors are not competent. However, the contracts do stipulate that they will not disassemble things to find problems, with the possible exception of the breaker box cover. I just had a similar situation. For all the bad stuff the guy found and we had corrected, he did not find everything. For $400 he was not going to spend 3 days there. we understood this.