Gaining experience is part of the job of a home inspector
Q. I am starting a new home inspection business and would appreciate your advice. After completing a training course and ten practice inspections, I read your column suggesting that a home inspector is not truly qualified without having done at least 1,000 inspections. What I want to know is how does someone gain this level of experience prior to going into business?
A. Most home inspectors (and I confess this was once true of myself) begin their inspection careers with very little direct experience at property inspection. As a general rule, most home inspectors enter the profession with varying backgrounds in the construction trades, and this provides the foundational knowledge necessary to begin developing their new skills as discoverers of defects.
Home inspection is a practice, like medicine, law, carpentry and child rearing. As a practitioner, you are always learning, always becoming more knowledgeable and skilled, and this remains true till the day you retire or sell your business. Unfortunately, there are two problems with entry-level internship as a home inspector:
In order to attract your first customers, the pretense of experience is an unavoidable part of marketing. After all, if you tell people you are not yet experienced, they are not likely to hire you. This means homebuyers, relying upon your ability to inform them of all property defects, will believe you are a well-seasoned inspector, able to discover all pertinent problems at the subject property. However, until you have attained adequate experience, there will be defects that will be overlooked in the course of your inspections - problems that will not appear in your inspection reports. This means your customers will not always receive what they are paying for. Instead, they could be saddled with unexpected discoveries after the close of escrow.
If homebuyers discover undisclosed defects after the close of escrow, you could be confronted with financial and legal liability. Buyers could demand you pay for needed repairs. If you are lucky, this would involve minor repair work only. In the event of major defects, you could even face litigation, which is why "errors and omissions" insurance is essential for every home inspector.
The less-traveled road for entry-level home inspectors is to become an employee inspector for a large home inspection firm. If such employment is available in your area, that path would be advantageous from a liability standpoint but would limit your income until you are ready to go into business for yourself. However, home inspection companies are not in business to train future competitors. They prefer to hire inspectors who want long-term employment.
If your choice is to enter the field by opening your own inspection business, do so with eyes wide open, both literally and figuratively. Weigh the risks and make yourself as knowledgeable as possible before you begin. Another good way to learn is to find experienced home inspectors who are willing to take you along on a few inspections.
• To write to Barry Stone, visit him on the web at www.housedetective.com, or write AMG, 1776 Jami Lee Court, Suite 218, San Luis Obispo, CA 94301.
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