home inspection

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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Another Groundhog Day

Since our kids have grown into responsible adults and are no longer needing or wanting to be around us for longer than necessary, Lady Agag and I have been spending more of our time at the seaside, especially in the so-called shoulder seasons of May-June and September-October.

At the moment, we are half-way through what local meteorologists are calling “the best week of the year” weather-wise at the New Jersey shore. I cannot disagree. The temperature has been a very-tolerable-for-Irishmen eighty-ish and the humidity has been blessedly low every day so far and it is forecast to continue so. It’s a bit like Groundhog Day.
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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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Pre-Inspections for Relocation Companies

A home inspector recently emailed me with a question about doing pre-inspections for relocation companies. I referred him to a prior post that I wrote on the subject which answered his question. But it reminded me of several cases that I have had involving inspection companies that subcontract out inspections on behalf of relocation companies.

Based on the experience of those cases, if I were a home inspector, I would steer well clear of doing inspections for one of those outfits. For several reasons.

First, in order to get the business from relocation companies, they drop their pants on pricing precipitously. So the inspector who actually does the inspection is very likely losing money on the proposition.

Second, their loyalty is to the relocation company, not the inspector. So the minute that there is an “issue”, they are all too willing, ready and able to adopt a customer-is-always-right attitude despite the mountain of empirical evidence that I have assembled that, when it comes to dissatisfied home inspection clients, the customer is invariably wrong.
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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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A Home Inspector Client’s Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish Decision

A Client's Pound-Foolish DecisionI remember the advice I received from a savvy real estate investor as I was about to purchase my first house.

It was listed at $29,000, and I inquired about whether I should offer $28,000.

The investor told me, “If you like the house, don’t lose it for $1,000. Do you know what $1,000 is? It’s $6.00 a month for the life of the mortgage.”

When broken down into those terms, who wants to lose a desirable home for $6.00/month? You can use the same logic when trying to convince possible clients NOT to go blindly with the low-ball home inspector.

I discuss this mindset in this week’s video blog.
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Subrogation Claims Against Home Inspectors

To the ever expanding list of rent seekers that Home Inspectors have to fend off, please add insurance companies that have paid a first-party claim on behalf of a homeowner and then want to recover that payment from the home inspector through subrogation.

Subrogation is a legal concept whereby one party – the subrogee – succeeds to the rights of another – the subrogor – either by operation of law or by contract. The most familiar examples of this concept involve insurance companies that pay losses sustained by policyholders and then seek to recover those payments from tortfeasors that may be legally liable for the policyholder’s loss. The insurance company by virtue of its payment would succeed to the policyholder’s rights against the tortfeasor.

Thus, if an insurance company paid a collision loss on behalf of its policyholder who was not at fault in the accident, it can seek to recover that payment through subrogation from the driver who had actually caused the accident. Health insurance companies and workers compensation insurance companies who pay medical bills on behalf of their insureds will endeavor to recover those outlays from parties who may be legally responsible for causing their insureds’s injuries.
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