home inspection claim

Home Inspector Selfie! Take More Photos During Home Inspection

Tip 23 - Home Inspector SelfieHome inspectors – I’m sure you are familiar with the “selfie” mantra of today’s youth. In essence, they love taking photos. You should have the same passion during a home inspection. Take photos of each room in the house, appliances, HVAC units and more. Take far more photos than required or that you will even put into the inspection report.

Why is taking so many photographs important from a legal perspective? I walk you through the protective process and highlight a specific home inspector’s plight in this week’s video blog.
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Don’t Indulge Rage-Induced Home Sellers

Don't Indulge Rage-Induced Home SellersI’m starting to see a very disturbing trend developing between the home inspection industry and the real estate marketplace: non-client home sellers are bringing claims against home inspectors for the failure of their clients to follow through on the agreement of sale as a consequence of the home inspector’s findings.

Some of these frustrated sellers, desperately attempting to unload a home in a still slowly recovering housing market, vent their fury at the home inspector for a lost sale in entirely inappropriate ways.

How should you, the competent home inspector just fulfilling your professional duty, handle these angry home sellers when a filed complaint comes your way?

I go through how to squash these unreasonable requests in full force in this week’s video blog.
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Why Your Home Inspector Insurance Company MUST Defend You

Your Insurance Company Must Defend YouA claim is brought against you after inspecting a vacant house, and your insurance company wants you to (surprise, surprise) settle it quickly and claim responsibility. However, you didn’t do anything wrong and instead want to fight the claim, but you are afraid your insurance company will bail if you don’t agree to settle.

False. I explain why your insurance company must defend you in this week’s ClaimsAcademy video blog.
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My Subrogation Secret Sauce

Subrogation Cases Against Home InspectorsInsurance companies will sometimes pay a claim to a homeowner and THEN try to recover the financial losses from the home inspector through a process called subrogation.

In subrogation, one party succeeds to the rights of another either by law or by contract. In this process, the home inspection insurance company blames the home inspector for the issue at fault EVEN if the homeowner does NOT blame the home inspector.

There are a growing number of subrogation cases that involve a home inspector’s professional liability. However, these claims CAN be squashed, as they are just as meritless as many other home inspection claims.

I describe how to protect yourself and fight back against subrogation claims in this week’s video blog.
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Joe Ferry’s Fight For YOU Against Meritless Home Inspection Claims

People ask me regularly to explain my business’ mission – and while the end result is easy to quantify (get rid of meritless home inspection claims), its power is best rooted through video, as you can see below in this video that clearly answers WHAT I do and WHY you need me on your side! My interest is in squashing these meritless home inspection claims before they destroy the professional reputation and livelihood of home inspectors across the country.

99% of ALL home inspection claims have NO merit – and you shouldn’t have to fork over valuable capital or lose your insurance deductible to a claim that has NO merit!

Click ‘More’ to watch why you need Joe Ferry on your side.
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All About Arbitration – Who Should Pay?

Tip 44 - All About ArbitrationA Connecticut home inspector recently wrote to me about a “finding” he heard at a local law course, in which he has told that the American Arbitration Association (AAA) is now looking at DEFENDANTS for a substantial sum of money when a claim initiates.

This law course “professor” instructed the students to specify arbitration using an attorney qualified to arbitrate and with related experience.

He asked for my opinion – henceforth this week’s video tip!

I believe the AAA is feeling the financial pinch just like the rest of us and believes pushing the financial burden to the defendant is just what the doctor ordered to gin up a slew of new arbitration matters by removing the financial disincentive to the filing of ludicrous claims.

Home inspectors can head off this change by inserting key phrasing in their pre-inspection agreement. Watch the video tip below to find out the exact verbiage plus listen to why I believe the “professor” was wrong in saying that inspectors should demand an arbitrator have home inspection-related experience.
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The Six Home Inspection Claim Categories Are All Defensible

Rare is a home inspector training Law and Disorder Seminar that does not have a few – and often several – casualties of war among the attending home inspectors – the multi-front war between them, their unreasonable and unrealistic clients, their referring real estate agents and, all too frequently, their insurance companies. They all seem to think that it is the inspector’s responsibility to “make things right”, even if he has no culpability whatsoever, which, in my experience, he almost never does. Here’s why.

Almost every home inspection claim will fall into one of the following six categories.
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Underbussing is Now a Reality TV Show!

HGTV Show Underbusses Home InspectorsThere is a current television show whose host maligns home inspectors for not discovering defects he was only able to discover through using a sledgehammer and other intrusive means.

Home inspectors were immediately taken aback by the show’s message, and rightfully so. Several asked me to watch a few episodes to gauge how the show would play in the meritless claim game.

After watching a few episodes, and switching between disbelief and comedic release at the host’s house destruction, I came to a firm conclusion.
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Dirty Harry and Home Inspection: You Don’t Need to Pay

There’s a scene in the original Dirty Harry movie that resonated with me when I first saw it and that I am frequently reminded of in my practice of advising home inspectors. Clint Eastwood, as Inspector Harry Callaghan, is hustling against a deadline set by a lunatic serial killer, based on the Zodiac killer that plagued San Francisco in the early ‘70s. Along the way to his rendez-vous with the killer, Harry is accosted by some street toughs whom he handles methodically despite being outnumbered. They keep coming back for more, however. Finally, exasperated by their perseverance, he whips out the huge .44 Magnum, sticks it in the face of one relentless punk and says “You don’t listen, do you, Asshole?”

Recently, one of the home inspectors who participates in my ClaimIntercept had this unhappy experience. The inspector conducted the inspection in August and was accompanied by the client’s agent on his rounds. He reported his findings in the normal fashion and everyone seemed to be happy with the results.
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