home inspector

Charge More When Client’s Attorney Amends Your Agreement

Charging More for Client's Attorney Removing ClausesShould you allow a prospect’s attorney to line out the requirement in your inspection agreement about binding arbitration or the one that claims must be filed within one year of the home inspection?

Both clauses have value to home inspectors. In this week’s video blog, I discuss the value of these clauses, BUT also detail how you can use the attorney’s/prospect’s desires to omit these clauses as a valuable tool to charge more for the inspection.
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Disclaimers Are Your Business’ Best Protection

I encourage home inspectors to utilize the proper use of disclaimers – and go into it in some considerablTip 24 - Disclaimers Are Home Inspectors Best Friende detail – during my Law and Disorder Seminar.

A knowledgeable home inspector knows that there are many issues concerning a home-buying decision that are NOT going to be uncovered during a home inspection. Unfortunately, your clients don’t understand this fact.

That very real disconnect is the reason why home inspectors should be incorporating disclaimers into their practice. I go through a few examples of proper disclaimer usage during this week’s video blog.
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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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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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Boxers Or Briefs?

There’s a well-developed discussion that attracted a lot of commentary on one of the industry message boards that I visit regularly on what reporting methodology, Checklists or Narratives, is better.

The discussion centers on the question of which one is more likely to provide a defense in the event that a claim eventuates from the inspection. What was interesting to me was that, while the narrative format was by far the preferred methodology, each reporting format had its supporters and both received what I thought were insightful critiques of their respective shortcomings.

In the checklist format, the inspector follows a sequential series of questions about the home and simply checks a box to indicate whether the issue was “Satisfactory”, or “Needs Repair” or was “Not Inspected”. Some forms provide a limited space for annotating the reason that an item “Needs Repair” or was “Not Inspected”.

In the narrative format, the inspector states precisely what was inspected in a narrative form and gives a brief explanation why the item’s condition was satisfactory or not.
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Extinguish All Reputation-Damaging Home Inspector Threats

Extinguish Reputation-Damaging Home Inspection ThreatsBy the time a home inspector contacts me, he or she has already made exhaustive attempts to explain to an irrational client why a leak in a roof six months after it was reported as “near the end of its life expectancy” in an inspection report is not grounds for a claim against the home inspector.

At this point, the client’s Rage-O-Meter is near the top of the “shouldn’t exceed” zone. There is no logical discussion that can change the client’s mind or mission to make you pay. While there may be no logical discussion on your end, the firm and steady end of a competent legal counsel can make that claim disappear.

In this week’s video blog, I discuss how to extinguish all of these reputation-damaging threats.
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