home inspection claim

Don’t Get Caught in Pre-Sale Inspections Trap

Pre-Sale Inspection Trap - Tip 34Sellers are encouraged to obtain home inspections prior to listing their house for sale.

That said, home inspectors MUST be aware of exposing themselves to liability to non-client third parties.

Home inspectors run into problems when someone with whom the home inspector does not have a contract claims to have been warned by the alleged negligence of the home inspector.

In this week’s video tip, I discuss why home inspectors like you should not get caught in the pre-sale inspection trap, illustrate how you can avoid it and detail an example from a case I recently handled.

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Cooling Off a Fraudulent Home Inspection Claim

The number one complaint that I receive from home inspectors is that insurance companies simply cave in and pay claimants even when the home inspector has done nothing wrong. I used to think that this was just general professional bellyaching that had no basis in reality but that was before personally squashing hundreds of claims that were absolutely ridiculous.

A lot of home inspectors have rather large deductibles on their Professional Liability Insurance [E & O] policies, up to $5,000 in some cases. And I can understand why they do that. For one thing, the higher the deductible, the lower the premium. For another, they just don’t believe that they are ever going to be called upon to respond to a claim from one of their clients.

This belief is based on the fact that they have a lot of confidence in their professional skills, a belief that is entirely justified in my experience. The problem is that you do not have to conduct a negligent inspection to be accused of having done so. You merely have to have a client who thinks that you did. And unfortunately, those sorts of clients abound.
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The Broken Heat Pump

Since 2007 I have been providing home inspector training all over the country about legal issues that impact their practice and the tools and techniques that they can implement in their own businesses to reduce their likelihood of becoming victimized by their ungrateful clientele.

Since I began giving the seminar, I have also been asked by hundreds of home inspectors to respond to claims made by their clients and their clients’ attorneys. As of this writing, I am batting .970 at terminating those claims with prejudice.

I am not surprised by that statistic because the majority of home inspection claims have no merit. And by majority, I mean the overwhelming majority. In my personal experience, meritless claims represent about 99.999 percent of all claims against home inspectors. In other words, virtually all claims against home inspectors have absolutely no merit.
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