Choosing an Inspector

A tongue-in cheek, but apropos version is:

“A business with illogically high liability, slim profit margins and limited economies of scale. An incredibly diverse, multi-disciplined consulting service, delivered under difficult in-field circumstances, before a hostile audience in an impossibly short time frame, requiring the production of an extraordinarily detailed technical report, almost instantly, without benefit of research facilities or resources.” – Alan Carson

One thing that is often overlooked about home inspectors is their relative inequality with regard to knowledge, experience and forensic skills. The purpose of a home inspector is to discover and report defects. The ability to do this effectively involves skills that take many years to develop and refine. Some inspectors are far better at this than others. Unfortunately, most people don’t realize this when they hire a home inspector, and spend little, if any, time selecting one.

The requirements for licensing by the State of Texas are embarrassingly minimal. There are two approaches to obtaining a license. Some persons begin as apprentice Inspectors under the sponsorship of a professional Inspector. They next become licensed as Real Estate Inspectors, and then as professional Inspectors after satisfying education and experience requirements, including the completion of a specified numbers of inspections. Using an alternative approach, an applicant may substitute specific additional courses or personal experience in lieu of the requirements of first having been licensed as an apprentice or real estate Inspector and having completed the required inspections from Dallas Real Estate Inspectors.

Herein lies the rub. With absolutely no construction experience, any person can enroll in 488 classroom hours of inspection-related courses in what often amounts to no more than a “test-teaching” facility; pass the exam and– voilà! – that person is deemed a professional Home Inspector by the State of Texas, complete with a mile wide and inch deep understanding of the profession. In the military we referred to these folks as “shake and bake”. When you realize that Texas requires 600 hours for manicurists and 1500 hours for hair stylists, perhaps you’ll begin to put things into perspective.

If those figures impress you consider that until January 1, 2005, Real Estate Inspectors were required to have a mere 188 classroom hours to pass muster! Further exacerbating the problem has been the growing out(in)-sourcing trend in corporate America, combined with the resultant rising unemployment, that swelled the ranks of licensed inspectors in Texas from 2,196 in 2001 to a whopping 4288 as of 7/17/08. That’s an almost unimaginable 195% increase in just a little over 6 years! And this during a period of time when the total state population grew by a mere 16%. Many of these practitioners are from backgrounds totally unrelated to residential construction and serve merely to make the crowd bigger. At last count the license numbers had soared to 20,736 (as of 7\2013) Stratospheric!

It almost seems that, for some unknown reason, real estate brokers want to flood the market with new inspector licensees. Could it possibly be that, compared with experienced inspectors, inexperienced inspectors find little that will impede a sale from proceeding or the brokers’ progress toward the collection of their commissions? So, if you feel really lucky and you’re up for a little on-the-job training, let high license numbers and low prices be your guide.