One of the most important people you will meet in the purchase of a home is your home inspector. While most people have their homes inspected, many don’t really think about the person inspecting the home.

We’ve heard horror stories of inspectors who miss major defects, skip over major problems or find problems that they can fix for a small fee.

But these aren’t reasons not to have your home inspected. They are reasons to look more closely at your home inspector choices.

It is important to make sure that your home inspector is well trained and insured, especially since he or she will help you decide whether or not this investment is a good one for you. Look for the following things in a home inspector:

• Your inspector should be properly trained in all aspects of home inspection and is up to date in changes in residential construction techniques and systems.
• The inspector should be certified by a reputable training institute. He or she should test annually, such as required by the National Institue of Building Inspectors.
• The inspector must have insurance coverage. This includes general liability, worker’s compensatio and Errors and Omissions insurance. If you find an inspector that doesn’t carry the E and O insurance, it is an indication that the inspector has no formal training or a poor track record in the industry. It is the same as malpractice insurance for doctors.
• The inspector should be willing to provide a written guarantee to back up his or her inspection findings.
• An inspector should only be an inspector. You don’t ever want to do business with an inspector who is also a contractor. This gives a conflict of interest, an opportunity for repairs made for problems found.

The inspector is very important. You want to make sure that you are doing business with someone reputable. Even if he says he is certified, you must make sure that there is insurance in place. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. If the inspector is hauty or doesn’t want to answer easily, look for another inspector. After all, this is a major purchase. You want the best people on your team.

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Home Inspection Services

The purchase of a house is probably the largest single investment you will ever make. So, it only makes sense that you should know exactly what to expect, both indoors and out, in terms of repairs, maintenance and the associated costs that come with a new

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Home Inspectors

These days when you’re thinking of buying a new home, the trend is to get a Wisconsin home inspector check it first.

A home inspection is an independent and objective visual examination of a home that potential buyers like you are considering. The Wisconsin home inspector is an expert when it comes to assessing the overall condition of the house, including all its external structures such as roofing, ceiling, walls, foundation, etc. and its systems, like air conditioning, heating, and such. His role is very important in that he is able to give you unbiased observation of how good a condition the house really is or how bad, and from his report, you can then make your own intelligent decision whether or not to buy the house.

A Professional Assessor

The most important component of a good home inspection is the Wisconsin home inspector. He must be thorough and professional

in his assessment. A common misconception among home buyers and even real estate agents is that the Wisconsin home inspector is someone who assesses the real value of a property and examines whether or not it conforms to the building code of the community, when in fact, he only sees to it that both parties know the actual condition of the house.

On that thought, the Wisconsin home inspector therefore not only focuses on the bad aspects of a house (e.g. leaky bathroom faucet, roof leaks, faulty electrical system), but also on the good aspects. Not only that, he also gives the home buyer some pointers on the maintenance and increasing the good shelf life of the property.

What He Inspects

A Wisconsin home inspector will examine more or less ten key aspects of your home. These are the structures, the exterior, roofing, plumbing, electrical system, heating and air conditioning, home interior, ventilation, appliances, and fireplaces.

When examining your potential home, it is always best if you accompany your Wisconsin home inspector. That way, you can ask him detailed questions as to how bad things are or how good and how you can prevent further damage or maintain their working condition. Your Wisconsin home inspector is trained in all this and he possesses all

the technical skills and knowledge to satisfy all your questions.

In conducting an exterior inspection, your Wisconsin home inspector will be doing a visual assessment of entry ways, foundations, siding and porches. He will be looking for problems or symptoms of problems, such as sagging roof lines, gaps in or damage to the siding, porches pulling away from the building, obvious signs of rot or insect damage settlement, and certain types of cracks in the foundations.

Most of what he does is only visual examinations. He might probe the cill or rim, that wooden support that sits on the foundation and into which the framing is fastened, and framing where it is exposed, to test for soft or hollow spots caused by rot or pests. But anything more than that, he won’t be able to do.

The purpose of this, of course, is to make sure that your potential home is safe place to be, and whether or not, it is worth the price touted by the seller.

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Home Inspections

Prior construction experience is a great asset - either in renovation, construction, or trade-related experience such as electrician, plumber etc. - or as a quantity surveyor, construction estimator, trades coordinator, or as a professional architect or engineer.

An architect or an engineer is not automatically a good home inspector. These are disciplines that deal with very specialized and specific areas of buildings, whereas professional home inspectors are generalists, observing and understanding all the components in a building - and the relationships between different components and component systems.

The general categories are:

* electrical

* plumbing

* foundations, basements and structures

* insects, vermin and decay

* central heating systems, including heat loss/gain

* space heating, including fireplaces, wood stoves & chimneys

* central air conditioning

* roofing systems

* exteriors, including landscaping

* interiors, including insulation and ventilation

* environmental and safety issues

With or without prior experience, the prospective home inspector usually starts by reading about, and getting involved with the parts of the house he or she is not already familiar with.

There have been until recently, only a few private (and very expensive) schools of home inspection, and the content is frequently lacking. One way to start preliminary evaluation of a career in home inspection might be with a correspondence course.

Larger inspection companies will generally teach prospective inspectors how to inspect a house, but they won’t teach you “about” the house; you’ll have to learn that yourself.

Community Colleges offer a wide range of evening classes in trade-related topics, and recently some colleges have started to offer courses in the field of home inspection.

The Ontario Association of Home Inspectors (OAHI) has developed some training programs, primarily in the area of defect recognition, and groups such as Wood Energy Technology Transfer (WETT Inc.) offer wood energy technical training.

Most associations provide prior learning assessments, to help applicants determine which courses of study may be required, prior to attaining applicant or candidate status. In addition to any courses of study and possibly company training and/or apprenticeship, a number of fee-paid inspections, a review of the inspector’s reporting methods and formal examinations, generally must be completed before applying for full membership in a professional association.

There may be a requirement to write a preliminary exam, before one can be covered by association-sponsored insurance programs during training or appreticeship.

Some knowledge of the following will also be beneficial:

* real estate and real estate law as is pertains to the transaction

* wells, septic systems, municipal water and sewer systems, general infrastructure

* inter-personal communications, correspondence and report writing

* computerized applications, basic telecommunications

Home inspectors, whether working independently or dispatched by a larger company, require some form of telephone service, record keeping and follow-up service in conjuction with performing inspections. Inspectors usually have their own vehicles, and purchase their own tools, test equipment, cell phones, pagers etc. Personal liability insurance, errors and ommisions insurance, and disabilty/income security are usually the responsibilty of the individual.

IMPORTANT:

1. A conscientious effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this material. Electrospec Home Inspections will not assume liability for its use. Date of latest modification is noted at bottom of page. 2. Professional Association requirements may change from time to time. Check with each professional organization before making specific plans. 3. Information contained on these pages is not intended to solicit services, affiliations or applications for employment, or to offer any training or apprenticeship.

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Home Inspectors

Should you get a WI home inspector? Or shouldn’t you?

Right about now, you can probably name more than ten reasons why you should get a WI home inspector to examine your potential home, but most of them are just excuses, because a home inspection is one of the few additional costs you can avoid when buying a new home, and one of the few things you probably shouldn’t.

So why should you hire WI home inspector? What are the reasons? Well, here’s two:

Getting to Know Your House

You have to admit that you probably know only very little about home construction. And even if you know the basics or you’ve worked as an engineer in a construction site before, there are just some things that only a professional WI home inspector could do.

A good WI home inspector is one who will teach you about your house. There are certain major components of a home that you need to ascertain and a WI

home inspector is just the man to do it. You need to know what the systems are, how they work, and how to keep them working. A WI home inspector is trained in all that and he recognizes any problems or potential ones and points them out for you.

If you don’t have any construction knowledge or innate do-it-yourself skills, the level of confidence a WI home inspector can instill in you is well worth the cost involved.

Identifying Problems

The second reason why you should hire a WI home inspector is that you will want and need to know the current condition of the house you are buying. You need to know if that pretty wallpaper in the kitchen won’t make the plaster come off when you strip it off at a later time. Or you need to do

if the furnace even works. And what about leaks in the plumbing? Are the faucets working fine? Are there any pest settlement you should worry about? Roof leaks? Cracks in the foundation? Are all appliances working the way they should?

Identifying problems in houses is just one of the various functions of the WI home inspector. It’s good knowing these things beforehand. After all, your house is your biggest investment and you therefore want to be secure with the knowledge that you are spending all that money for something that is going to pay off in the future.

However, citing a long list of the problems of a house isn’t the only thing that a WI home inspector does. After all, he is, first and foremost, a visual assessor hired to make an independent and objective report on a potential purchase. The WI home inspector won’t include only problems in his report, but components that are in good working condition as well. It could be that the stairwell has a good and steady handrail, which is a plus in safety issues. And

if your roof is in fine, he can give you some pointers on approximately how long before you ever have to make any repairs and how to main its present condition.

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Home Inspection Courses

The Road Warrior

In response to a flood of inquiries about getting into the home inspection business, we offer the following notes on becoming a Professional Home Inspector, which we hope are helpful in evaluation of this profession as a career objective:

It should be noted that home inspection is closely related to the real estate industry, and as such follows the seasonal variances inherent in the business of real estate sales. Most home inspectors work independently, or on a commission basis for a larger company. There are generally no guaranteed salaries paid, however we can tell you that incomes vary from pitiful to 80K or more, depending on individual circumstances. During the height of any real estate season, the days can be long, up to 14 hours. In the off-season, work can be all but non-existent.

A career in home inspection is not for everyone. As a new, and largely unregulated industry, it takes an entrepreneurial spirit, a willingness to be flexible, change and grow at a high rate of speed, and constantly challenge yourself to improve.

If you’re a highly technical person, and you’re ready to swim with the alligators, then you’ll find home inspection an extremely interesting and rewarding occupation.

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Home Inspection Software

It is a dream to own a house. It is also one dream that comes with a lot of costs. There will be insurance bills, moving expenses, closing costs, furniture purchases, and so on. There will be incidental costs, owner’s title insurance, additional coverage beyond the minimum hazard insurance, etc.

But perhaps one of the most indispensable home owner’s costs you have is hiring a Virginia home inspector to examine your dream house. Sure, it is also one of those home buying costs that you can avoid, but probably should not. Because depending on where and what you are buying, pest, radon, mold, or lead paint inspections may or may not be critical.

The First Virginia Home Inspectors

Virginia home inspection is a relatively new trend. Back in the day buyers who are insecure about what they are about

to purchase would ask a tradesman friend or someone else who was handy to take a look at a potential purchase and see if it was worth the price the seller was quoting. After getting the green signal, they mostly just crossed their fingers, hoped for the best, and plunged ahead. For most people, this haphazard method worked out just fine. But for some, something always went horribly wrong in just a few weeks.

The roofs, cills, garage doors, appliances, electrical, heating, and plumbing systems could turn out to be hazads that a buyer could only wait out or pray for. A home owner could remove the wallpapers and find that the plaster came off right along with it. The furnace could be just taking up space in January and find that it is still just taking up space in April. Things could not be working as they should be. And

what did this all mean to the buyer? That’s right

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Home Inspectors

As sure as the spring flows at The Fountain of Youth, home inspecting provides a stream of knowledge to wash away the fears of home buyers. But fear may be replaced by frustration if the wrong inspector is chosen! Some pointers on selecting your next home inspector will go a long way toward making the process a happy one.

• Be sure to ask how long the inspector has been in the inspection business. Longevity gives comfort that the company will be with you in the future as new needs and issues arise.
• How many inspections has the inspector personally performed? This is important! An inspector may have been in business for 5 years but inspected less than a dozen homes. Your home buying decision is far too important to be a practice place for a part-time inspector.
• Confirm that your inspector has experience in homes similar to the home you are having inspected. All homes have some systems and features in common, but new home in Eagle Harbor has risks and issues that differ from an historic beauty in St. Augustine. Only someone who has walked the walk and crawled the crawl numerous times in similar homes can sleuth out those important items.
• Did the American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI) certify the inspector? In Florida, the business of home inspection is unregulated. This makes it especially important to verify professional credentials and experiences before making a selection.
• Ask when the report will be delivered. Often the buying decision is time critical, you want to be sure you will receive your completed report in time to read, review, and respond. The best companies can deliver the report to you right at the home as the inspection is completed.
• Does the completed report include photographs? Often the report will contain descriptions of damage or defect in locations of the home that only the inspector was able to access, like rooftops or crawl spaces. You will want pictures of these areas to make your understanding of the scope and location of the damage clear. It also makes repairs simpler to get estimated when a photograph is available.

Lastly, be sure to attend the home inspection, watch the process, and ask lots of questions - the history of your home will unfold before your very eyes! St. Johns County, as well as the rest of our beautiful area, is rich in homes and heritage, and your home inspector can help you to know the past and enjoy the future in your new home.

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Buying a new a home has always been your dream. But more than that, it is perhaps the biggest investment you ever have to make. That is why when you do decide to buy a new home and have the finances to back it up, you need all the resources you can get in order to make an intelligent decision. This is where Texas home inspectors come in.

Texas home inspectors play a very important role in home buying. The nature of their jobs provides you with the perfect ground for making an intelligent decision when you purchase a new home. Because their job necessarily connotes an independent test on a potential home’s condition, Texas home inspectors actually gives you the best chance to make a good deal out of your purchase.

However, there are a few more things you need to learn about Texas home inspectors and their profession. Here are five of them:

A Texas Home Inspector You Can Trust

If there’s anything at all that you absolutely, most positively need to learn when buying a new home, it’s this: most real estate agents work for the seller. Their job, therefore, is

to maximize the profit of their seller. Now, unless you have signed a contact saying that they are representing you as a buyer’s agent, their top priority would be the welfare of the seller, their boss.

So how does this relate to the Texas home inspector? Well, you see, most buyers don’t anyone in the home inspection business, so most likely they will be turning to their real estate agents for advice on who to hire. Seller’s agents would recommend Texas home inspectors for you to choose from, but whatever choice you make, the fact that these agents are working for the seller should give you a clue as

to how all this may not be in your best interest.

The answer, therefore, is to hire your own Texas home inspector whom you can trust. You can do this on your own. Just look for a Texas home inspector who can demonstrate education, experience, and professional affiliation. You can also check the State Licensing Board or the Better Business Bureau to make sure that your Texas home inspector has a good record and reputation in the industry.

Dig Through the Trash

In a typical home inspection, septic systems are not usually included. However, you should note that the system is a major cost component of a home and should therefore be inspected prior to purchase. These inspections are made not just to ensure that you are making a good purchase on your home, but for the protection of the environment.

All Them Bugs

Getting a termite inspection is essential if you are buying a single or multi-family home, a townhouse, or a lower level garden style apartment. The eastern subterranean termite can do major damage to the structure of a home and can go undetected for years. When you do hire a Texas home inspector to check your home, be sure that you also make him do pest inspections. Many Texas

home inspectors offer these as well in addition to the standard home inspection.

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Home Inspection Reports