I had lunch with a colleague the other day. During our dining enjoyment the conversation turned to the good old days. He like me is a dinosaur who has roamed this earth for over 30 years inspecting homes. We talked about how pure and simple a home inspection was when we first hit the scene. Now you must remember that that was in the eighties and the profession was about twenty years old at that point. But it WAS VERY SIMPLE AND VERY CURSORY even then, so imagine what it was initially!
Our reports were short and sweet and done on typewriters. The whole process was meant to be simple, cursory, non exhaustive and non invasive in nature. And when finished, defects were negotiated and for the most part no one felt violated. As any cottage industry does, our profession has developed over time in many different ways but one…our standards have essentially remained unchanged for over 40 years.
Travelling back to the present, it is clear to me that we have taken the inspection and reporting process to a whole different level. I am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad one. Are we fast approaching the “Mike Holms” technique? Will an inspection one day consist of an army of experts who come in with sophisticated tools and hardware and probes and scanners and dissect a house like the poor frog on the table of your sophomore biology class? Everything that is built or installed in less than “by the book” fashion will be considered defective. Keep in mind…antique car enthusiasts look at an old 1928 Ford as a model of purity and simplicity and appreciate it for what it is while many home inspectors rummage through a 1928 home discussing all the inadequacies of the older structure pointing out where it falls short of all of the current building department requirements, almost with a tone as if it should be torn down. Will we be filling reports with so much information that the real point of the process is difficult to extract? Are we on the verge of creating the SUPER HERO HOME INSPECTOR?
We already have!!!!!!
Someone shared a home inspection report with me recently. I’ve seen so many inspection reports over the years I really don’t want to see any more. But what was unique about this one….it was 157 pages long. Yes that’s right, 157 pages. It was for a 1200 square foot house built in 1910, with no amenities. To be honest with you, I was remotely interested because of its length so I began to read it. Besides being filled with inaccurate terms and poor language, I couldn’t get past page 30. There was no flow, no rhyme or reason to it. There were too many pictures. For instance, there were four pictures of a nail sticking out of a deck railing cap board, one from each angle. The summary was 50 pages long…I jumped forward. The buyers who received this report could not decipher what was being reported on and asked their realtor to help them utilize it.
As my profession experiences a changing of the guard, I am hearing more and more complaints about home inspection reports, not just from Realtors but from buyers as well. Reports automatically got longer when pictures became popular, but the addition of additional maintenance recommendations, “how to” diagrams of how something should be built, insulated, roofed etc, website address links so on and so forth have muddied the waters and turned the inspection report from a succinct and concise report on the condition of a home to an information quagmire needing a GPS to navigate.
I’m sorry, but in the case of a home inspection, MORE IS NOT BETTER. My opinion is the lack of experience is being made up with a plethora of information.
Realtors….email me with your thoughts at s.bajerski@sbgclobal.net, I would love to hear them!
Experience counts! Call me for a thorough and educational home inspection…203 876-0353! Tell them Stan sent ya!
