Home inspections are a racket
 

I hired this company Inspecta-Homes to do an inspection before I bought my house. I wish someone would have told me this is a total racket. These guys did basically nothing. and when I called them later to ask why they missed so much and to request a refund they basically laughed and said "you signed a contract" What a complete waste of money.

What did they miss?

fify

they might. Why would anyone (especially a RE agent) give them biz if they shoot down houses?

Whores get the biz. They probably got recommended cuz they do miss so much. If there's a lawsuit, name them as well.

rjp

A **** ton of mold. All they had to do was take off a cover over an elec. outlet and they would have seen it. Much of it was painted over.

They also missed a lot of water damage that was intentionally hidden...

I think my realtor is friends with the owner of the company. So F him too.

Email me the contract and I'll take a look.

I think realtors have about 1 to 2 years left before they are completely replaced by technology.

The last home inspector I had took his job very seriously. he spent 20 min explaing to me how his expensive refrigerant sniffer was better than everyone elses.

It was so effective it sniffed out a evap leak that I think was a figmant of its imagination.

Have you ever watched a show called Holmes on homes? He is a builder contractor from Toronto His name is Mike Holmes. You wouldn,t believe how much he finds after a buyer has a regular home inspection. Problem is around here anyway They won,t remove a cover plate or anything else because you don,t own the house yet and can,t give them permission to pull cover plates or lift carpets.
The home inspector probably relies heavily on a check list and doesn,t see much especially if the realtor recommended them .

Mold is serious, you might have a case. Let MRM look.

rjp

There used to be a time when termite inspectors actually put on overalls and crawled under a house. No more. Not without additional charges. Everything is " further inspection required"
Some home inspectors are good.

Check your laws....around here you can go back on the seller within a couple of years after possession if they intentionally hid or omitted issues.

Hmmm. I would probably be doing some due-diligence prior to hiring a company called "Inspecta-Homes" lol. :D

Do you know if the inspection company is licensed/certified (a requirement in most states)? Bonded and/or E&O insurance? (also a requirement in most states)? Is that license/certification in good standing? Any previous or outstanding licensing/certification board complaints? Are they ASHI members? BBB rating? Any Yelp reviews? Etc. Etc.

Also, in a lot of cases, home inspectors are not allowed to do "intrusive" inspections (which is BS IMO). They have legal grounds to stand behind not removing switch plates, or looking behind fixed appliances, etc. However, that is not an excuse for incompetence and/or negligence.

If you have "intentionally hidden" items, then it sounds like you don't have an inspection issue, as much as you have a seller disclosure issue. If you can prove that the seller intentionally hid potentially dangerous problems/defects, then you have a bit of leverage. Disclosure is one of the few things that a seller can get nailed to the wall for, and one of the few things that can include criminal penalties, not just civil.

Agreed.

Just a little tid-bit for ya...

I just took a Disclosure CE class recently, reviewing case law. One of the recent cases was on a RE purchase/transaction somewhere back east. The home in question had gas heat, to include a heated driveway. The seller knew that the driveway heater system was defective, but didn't disclose it. The buyer moved in and had his family come to visit (brother or sister and two kids I believe). The new owner turned on the driveway heater one evening for the first time, to accommodate his family who were all leaving the next morning. It was left on all night. The following morning, 4 people, including 2 children were dead from CO poisoning. Seller is now doing 10-15 in state prison for neg. homicide for not disclosing the issue (they plead it down, hence the lighter sentence).

It only took one document to nail the seller; an estimate was found which he had received to fix the driveway heater prior to selling the house. Apparently, the $2k it would have cost was too expensive, so he declined to have it repaired.

Whoa! Makes my problems seem like nothing.

I will send it to you. And thank you.

Holy ****!

rjp

As a PE, I considered the Home Inspection biz as a potential job in my retirement. Sounds like the pressure from sellers to not find stuff, pressure from buyers to do a good job, and potential law suits if you screwup make this less desireable.

They have a check list. They just go down the list and sign off on it. They get paid.

Miss gogar's inspector (selling) gave her a hit because one of the hot water radiators didnt work. It was turned off. The other dig was that one of the stove burners didnt light fast enough. From that experience I have deduced that it's not entirely legit all the time, yes.

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.