home inspection risk

Home Inspectors: Competence Does Not Equal a Claim-Free Existence

Myth 1: Competence Equals Claim-Free ExistenceMany home inspectors believe that competence and experience guarantee a claim-free existence. They are stunned when they receive their first claim (likely a meritless one) after 20 years on the job.

As part of my home inspector training video tip series, ClaimsAcademy, the video below debunks the theory that competence equals a claim-free existence. Watch the video for further examination of the myth and how that false sense of security can hurt your business and professional reputation as a home inspector. Then make sure to sign up for my free video and case study library, which includes a robust collection of valuable information to help you, the competent home inspector, protect your business.
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Reputation Management: There’s an app for that!

One thing that I have decided after five years of total immersion in the trials and tribulations of home inspectors is that I could never be one.

Now, my father was a union carpenter and worked for decades as such on literally thousands of houses constructed in Philadelphia, once known as the City of Homes, and its suburbs. On weekends, he would take a busman’s holiday and work on our house, conscripting his home-grown workforce as gofers. No tradesman ever came into our house to do anything. My dad did it all: painting, wall-papering, plastering, masonry, electrical, plumbing, roofing, tile work.

One day he decided that we needed to convert to gas heat. And took a sledge hammer to our ancient and massive coal furnace. Now that furnace could take a punch but, by and by, it yielded to my dad’s John Henry-like determination. Then he installed and plumbed the gas boiler.
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Risk, Its Place in the Home Inspection Industry and How to Combat It

The recent earthquake that hit near Japan set me to thinking about emergency preparedness in general and disaster-preparedness, in particular. The earthquake-prone nation is being widely praised for the strength of its building codes which contemplate the need for buildings to be able to withstand these inevitable periodic massive shocks to their structural integrity. And by all accounts, all things considered, the minimal damage that was sustained by buildings in cities closest to the epicenter of the huge quake has vindicated the decision to implement those precautions.

Where I live, we seldom experience earthquakes, a fact that prompted the actor David Morse [St. Elsewhere] to move here with his Philly-born wife, after an earthquake destroyed their family home in California in 1994. And the ones we do experience tend to be at the lower end of the Richter Scale. I personally have never experienced one and apparently slept through one that took place here in the early ‘70s.

We do get our share of capricious weather, however – Nor’easters, blizzards, hurricanes and the occasional tornado – for which you do have to be prepared. As President Kennedy sagely observed, “The time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining.” The time to plan for disaster is before disaster strikes.
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Caution: Clause Interactions May Be Hazardous To a Home Inspector’s Wealth

Over the past five years, I have probably reviewed the pre-inspection agreements of about 400 home inspectors, either because I was responding to a claim that was being made against them or because they wanted me to review their agreements for strength, comprehensiveness and enforceability.

As a result, I make frequent research excursions via online legal databases to which I subscribe to ascertain a particular state’s relative friendliness or hostility to the sort of contract clauses that so frequently appear in home inspectors’ pre-inspection agreements.

For example, some nanny states are hostile to Limitation of Liability clauses on the grounds that they are anti-consumer and/or tend to vitiate the benefit of the bargained-for service while others routinely enforce such clauses on freedom of contract grounds.

On the other hand, clauses that require disputes to be adjudicated in Arbitration are universally upheld.
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Brand X Insurance Companies Can Be Hazardous To Your Wealth

As I was writing that headline, the thought struck me that many readers might not be familiar with the Mad Men-era advertising invention. For those benighted youngsters, in ubiquitous television commercials of the day, Brand X was the competing product that left ring around the collar, caused soapy buildup and dry lifeless hair. In real life, Brand X E and O Insurance Companies for home inspectors are ones that can cost you a small fortune.

A veteran home inspector recently called me about a claim that he had only the day before turned into his insurance company. He advised the company that he wanted to engage his own attorney to respond to the claim. The company told him not to do that; that it would handle the claimant. That, the inspector told me, was what he was afraid of.

The claim, of course. was completely ridiculous and involved the inspector’s alleged failure to advise the claimant that the supports for an elevated deck were inadequate. By the time that the claimant notified the inspector of the issue, she had already completed the “repairs”.
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