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Being Your Own Home Inspector or Choosing The Wrong Inspector
It is relatively easy to gather bits and pieces of information from
here and there, including this website. One may get the feeling of
knowing enough to do his own home inspection by counting "all those many
things" now learned about homes and home inspections. There is only one
problem - One cannot count how many things he does not know, simply
because he is not aware those things exist. Even more so, if one heard a
specific problem and how it may look it does not mean he can evaluate it.
I am quoting a very expressive article by Barry Stone as a response to one of his readers:
"Buyers become do-it-yourself home inspectors
Dear Barry,
We're buying a new home and are on a very tight budget, so we've decided
to do our own home inspection. We've already gotten some pointers from friends
and would like some professional advice as well. Please let us know what important
things we should look for when inspecting our new home. -Kari
Dear Kari,
Asking a home inspector to advice you on the conduct of your own inspection
is as ill-conceived as asking your family doctor to instruct you on the performance
of your own physical examination. In either case the number of maladies to be
considered exceeds all levels of anticipation, and the knowledge required to
discover and evaluate this wellspring requires years of full-time exposure.
Consider but a few examples: Acting as your own home inspector,
you must open the electric service panel and determine whether there are any wiring violations.
You must walk the roof surfaces to determine the condition of the roofing material,
the flashing and drains, noting defective conditions and faulty methods of installation.
You must evaluate the plumbing fixtures, water lines, drain lines, and gas piping
to determine their operational condition and their compliance with accepted building standards.
You must review the heating system and determine its functional condition and
identify any of a long list of potential safety problems.
You must crawl under the building and through the attic, searching for and recognizing
a vast number of potential construction defects.
A complete list of likely problems could easily fill a book.
The home you are buying contains an unknown number of hidden defects.
If you want to discover them prior to purchasing the property,
you should hire a qualified professional home inspector.
It is the only way to know what you are buying before you buy it."
Well, we cannot condemn the motivation behind the above couple since most people
buying a house are on a tight budget. The problem arising afterwards
is - their tight budget will become much tighter after buying a house
without the evaluation of a professional home inspector.
Not far from do-it-yourselfers are part-time and sporadic home inspectors.
Sporadic home inspectors meaning tradesman or related field workers who
believe that by installing heating ducts, or cable TV, they know houses
and can perform home inspections on the side. Even builders who know how to build
are not trained in time performance of structures and systems or the result
of the timely interaction between aging materials, factors of nature,
function, plus wear and tear stress continually exercised upon a house and its systems.
Please note that experienced builders do hire professional home
inspectors when themselves or members of their family are buying a
house. I have served several builders for this purpose.
The skill to correctly evaluate a house could be gained only through
years of supervised experience and continuous learning.
The American Society of Home Inspectors maintains such a program through its chapters.
This is the only home inspectors association where true continuous education really
takes place and it is imposed as a requirement for membership.
The experience from examining house after house at all different ages,
collecting data and trying to organize and understand it, sharing with experienced colleagues
and receiving feed-back, timely observation of progress and function,
cannot be replaced by any other means or occupation.
It is also the responsibility of the public consumer to carefully choose whom they hire
for this service. I kept track of all inquires received through the years; three out of
four inquires started with "... how much does it cost?",
and only one in four started with "... I would like to know your
qualifications and what kind of service you provide".
Money is definitely important, however relative to the quality of service provided
and the risk assumed. Many have found through unpleasant experience that a
$200 discounter is usually a waste of money, while the $400 experienced professional inspector
is worth that or more.
