home inspections Archives - Page 7 of 13 - Charles Buell Consulting LLC

July 18, 2013 by Charles Buell

As a home inspector are you as good as a doctor?

Why are home inspectors sometimes being held to a standard that no other profession or even individual is?

I am talking about the notion that if a home inspector makes 1 mistake in the inspection report it brings into question the entire report and the credibility of the inspector. I have heard this idea from home inspector educators, agents, and home inspectors themselves.

This notion itself is a variety of “incredible,” as in: NOT CREDIBLE.

Can you imagine what would happen if doctors, lawyers and politicians were held to this standard every day? I think there would be a serious shortage of doctors, lawyers and politicians.

For example, doctors typically misdiagnosis fatal diseases 20% of the time. While this means they are correct 80% of the time—-it only feels good if you are in the 80% group. I just hate it when I am in the 20% group.

Anyone that has ever been in a court of law knows that lawyers make mistakes ALL the time—-even losing cases they should have won.

Politicians?

Unless we are talking about Bulworth —-let’s not even go there.

I can almost promise you that there will be mistakes in my reports—-at the very least typos. And because the report is my opinion based on my experience and training it only stands to reason that sooner or later I am going to come up against something where the “accepted” answer turns out to be incorrect in the light of improved information—-or simply because I didn’t know any better.

As opposed to expecting your inspector to “know everything,” be wary of the one that pretends to know everything.

So what is the consumer to do with information suspected of being inaccurate?

The answer is really quite simple—-hold it up to the light of day.

If it holds up to the scrutiny of other experts in the field, then the inspector gets to be in the 80% group—-if wrong on that one issue he gets to be in the 20% group—-and nobody had to die either—hopefully. If 80% is good enough for doctors, I suggest it ain’t bad for home inspectors either. It would be interesting to know what percentage of Home Inspection reports is “substantially” accurate.

Git over the typoes—-they happin.

I would put my money on Home Inspectors being better than 80% most of the time—although I have seen some report where clearly someone died.

By Charles Buell, Real Estate Inspections in Seattle

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April 28, 2013 by Charles Buell

Don’t you wish you had come with an owner’s manual?

If babies came with owner’s manuals—we probably would not have time to read them.

Why don’t homes come with owner’s manuals?

If they did,would anyone read them? I think we would as needed—but probably not the whole thing from cover to cover before we needed them.

Someone's dream home — Someone’s dream home

Even my run-of-the-mill Jeep Cherokee came with a 248 page owner’s manual—-I have to dig it out twice a year to figure out how to change the clock—-so I know I use that one.

Given that homes generally do NOT come with an owner’s manual, what do agents do to prepare home buyers for what it means to own a home? Is the buyer expected to know all this stuff themselves? Are houses so simple we simply don’t need one?

Is it the inspector’s job to teach them everything they need to know?

If neither the agent nor the inspector does it, is it: “Tough luck?”

I have had buyers on an inspection that did not even know that the furnace has a filter—-let alone that it needs to be maintained—-and where the heck is it located? Who tells them, if there is a screened air intake for the furnace that it has to be maintained free of debris? The average house has MANY things like this that need vigilant maintenance in order for the house to perform properly. I can’t tell you how many times I have asked the buyer if the house has a crawl space or not—-and half the time they either do not know or think I mean the attic.

Somebody else's dream home — Somebody else’s dream home

Some home inspectors provide home maintenance manuals along with the inspection report. These home maintenance manuals are generally “OK” for what they are, but they usually have way too much information about all kinds of houses—-not just what is applicable to the house being inspected. In my opinion no one is going to wade through these manuals trying to figure out which information applies to their home and what does not.

Some home inspectors attempt to turn the Home Inspection Report itself into a sort of “beginning” Home Owner’s Manual—–others are not interested. Some think that the ONLY things that should be in the report are the “defects.” Some agents like this approach as well and are critical of home inspectors that have reports with more than 30 pages.

If the report is also trying to provide information about how to actually take care of the house as well as whatever defects are found—–it can easily get to 60 pages or more. The best place to provide information about how to take care of the furnace for example, is in the furnace section of the report—-not some hand-out that also talks about 20 other types of furnaces—-or is so minimal as to be useless.

The inspection report—-coupled with the many instruction manuals associated with the various appliances in the home—-can amount to a pretty complete owner’s manual for the home.

Ultimately when one buys “anything” it is our responsibility to educate ourselves as much as possible as to what is involved with that purchase.

Can you imagine taking your very first smart phone out of the box and expect to know everything there is to know about it? One quickly finds out just how “smart” we are.

I do think that we as inspectors and agents bear some of the responsibility to educate our buyer. I also think that we are being a little lax when we have an opportunity to inform and do not do it. Pointing the buyer in the direction of the information seems easy enough to do.

It seems to me that if a buyer were to visit ten home inspector websites and read the sample reports on those sites there would be a lot less buyers with that look of a “deer caught in head lights.”

An adequately prepared buyer at a home inspection is the “exception” rather than the “rule.”

I have to assume that agents in general feel very little responsibility toward getting buyers to a point where they are ready to own a house. If this was not the case would there not be a lot more home buying seminars than we see? Most of the home buying seminars I have been to, seem to be more about how to deal with mortgages and financial matters than the home maintenance part of the purchase—-geared more toward how to buy a house, than how to own a house. Also if this were not true I would see a lot more adequately prepared buyers following me around the home—-and they would know “why” they are following me around the home. This is a tremendous opportunity for them to find out what their house is all about—-not just its defects—-but about how the house works.

I think many buyers, if they were truly educated about what it takes to own a home, probably would opt for NOT owning a home—-at least at that point in their lives.

Perhaps, it is this concern that supports keeping the buyer a little in the dark about it all.

I mean, isn’t it a good thing that we are all kept a little in the dark about what is “actually” involved in having kids?

Later, when the buyer’s remorse sets in, and the learning curve begins, it can be useful to the buyer that they have a place to start with that learning curve.

Perhaps there will be an APP for it.

By Charles Buell, Real Estate Inspections in Seattle

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April 21, 2013 by Charles Buell

What you need to know before you Marry the Prince—or Princess!

As long as I have been an inspector, and longer than any of the inspectors that I know have been inspecting, there has been the notion that home inspectors have to act a certain way so as to “not blow the deal.”

I have known for a long time that there is really no way to adequately predict what will freak out a buyer.

I know of no fool-proof way to say: “There are rodents in the attic.” Sure some inspectors have better people skills than others—-but still it can happen where the inspector inadvertently freaks out the buyer. The inspector does not have to come out of the attic running and screaming: “There are rats in the attic and it is disgusting and smells really, really, bad—-and I stepped on one and squashed it all over the place!” Often the accusation of “blowing the deal” is less extreme and would likely not have been an issue had the buyer been better prepared about what buying and owning a home is all about beforehand.

Agents do sometimes counsel inspectors to discuss things without hysteria, to keep reports short, to only report on “serious issues,” and to not nit-pick. That said, can the inspector really afford to listen to any of this? Is it really in the best interest of the buyer, the agent, or the inspector to “pretend” to know what is important or not important to the buyer? Doesn’t it make more sense to simply report: “IT ALL”—-and let the buyer decide what is important to them?

This is where it becomes imperative that the agent, and the inspector, adequately prepare the buyer for what to expect (and not expect) in terms of the inspection.

Most of the whining about inspections that I hear is due to lack of information—-not because of too much information. If the buyer is not given enough information before the inspection, almost anything can be too much information after the inspection.

I think both agents and inspectors are too often inadequately trained in how to prepare the buyer for what is coming.

Sometimes there is not enough time, due to short contingency periods, or other “pressures” to get the inspection done “yesterday” or get the report back “yesterday.” I realize that most agents don’t even think this is their job. It is these very agents that seem to think the inspector has gone over the top and blown the deal—–when the buyer is ready to jump ship. This is exacerbated in today’s market where there is not another house right around the next corner when the deal goes south.

It becomes easy to blame the inspector for not handling the inspection properly; and often, the agent could have done more themselves to improve the likelihood of an outcome they would have found more favorable.

The inspector must focus on telling the full story of the house. This means that “ultimately” the inspector cannot afford to focus on whether the sale goes through or not—-or what particular information is necessary or not. To do so would color what they are there to do—-to inspect the house and provide the best possible information without bias or prejudice—-and I like to think that most do so without acting like a bull in a china closet—–the same way most agents only want what is best for their buyer.

I have come up with a way to eliminate this whole ugly phenomenon—-that nasty point where the buyer panics because they come face to face with the reality that the house they have fallen in love with was a mistake. They have kissed the frog and it has NOT turned into the prince—-and now someone is going to “pay.”

This is where a good Pre-Purchase Marriage Counselor could help—-to have a Pre-Listing inspection done on the house. Buyers and their agents would then know the vast majority of stuff even before they called for their own inspection and the number of surprises would go WAY down. They would have a far better idea whether this house was in fact the Prince or not.

All future Princes (and Princesses for that matter) come with a certain amount of risk but it certainly behooves us to do our homework. While on occasion “love and first sight” works—more often, we are looking through rose colored glasses and are perfectly willing to delude ourselves for a variety of reasons.

Of course I have to think that the reason this does not happen is because so much of the business of selling real estate seems a little like an “Ostrich with its head in the sand.” Somehow there is the notion that the inspector is just not going to find anything wrong with the “Prince.” This is evidenced in the all too common phrase that inspectors hear: “The house is perfect, you won’t find anything wrong.”

It may seem innocent enough, but this sort of statement places considerable pressure on the inspector. What is the buyer to think of their agent if there are in fact many things wrong with the house? How does the agent get out of this predicament gracefully? Sometimes the answer might be, “at the inspector’s expense.”

By Charles Buell, Real Estate Inspections in Seattle

If you enjoyed this post, and would like to get notices of new posts to my blog, please subscribe via email in the little box to the right. I promise NO spamming of your email

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