joe ferry

Different Day, Different Mindset: Always Expect a Call

A few weeks ago, I posted on facebook a photograph that I took of some home inspectors who were attending a home inspector training Law and Disorder Seminar – seminarians? – that I conducted in Schaumburg, Illinois about 3 years ago. One comment that the photo engendered was: “inspector average age = 102 years.”

Not exactly, but I do not think that anyone would quarrel with the observation that the profession skews somewhat older than, say, Starbucks baristas, notwithstanding that there has always been a steady influx of young turks embarking on their second-career after mustering out of the Armed Forces or being downsized out of earlier careers. I would put the median age of my seminarians right around 50.

Most home inspectors whose age is above that median can remember a time in America when folks did not run off to the Court House for every little thing. Or even a lot of big things.
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When Clients Attack

A disturbing trend and something that I am seeing much more frequently is the tendency of home inspection claimants to threaten to harm inspectors by making reputation-destroying comments on internet rating sites and filing false complaints with Licensing Boards unless the inspector knuckles under to what are invariably unmeritorious complaints.

A recent case that surfaced out West is illustrative of the genre. The claimants bought a 38 year-old house in the desert and, upon moving in, were shocked, shocked to discover that the home’s described 125 ampere electrical service, which was more than adequate when the house was built in 1973, was insufficient to support the increased electrical loads imposed by modern day conveniences not known or in popular use in the ‘seventies.

Distressed that their starter home did not come fully retrofitted to present day standards, the claimants wanted the inspector to make it so by paying for an entirely new electric service. The inspector conducted a conference call with the claimants wherein he tried to explain as equably as he could that the adequacy and efficiency of household systems is simply not something that a home inspection is intended to determine and that, in the event, he had called out a number of issues with the system and had recommended that the claimants have it evaluated by a professional electrician prior to closing.
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When the Home Inspection Report Speaks for Itself

Since this website launched in early December 2010, I have received a steady stream of correspondence from home inspectors asking my opinion on a wide variety of topics related to home inspections. Frequently, these inquiries inspire an article. So keep them coming.

A while ago, I got an interesting question from a reader about an inspection conducted for a young couple.  The mother of one of them was financing the contemplated home purchase and was a looming presence during the home inspection and the inspector had heard her opine that she didn’t like the house because it was “too small.”  The couple was represented by a buyer’s agent and the inspector knew both the buyer’s agent and the seller’s agent professionally.

Afterward, the inspector discussed the findings in detail with the couple who seemed to find the discovered deficiencies manageable and were allowing how they would go about rectifying them. That was on Friday.
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Home Inspection Claims and the Legal System

If you read home inspection industry message boards with any level of fidelity, you cannot fail to notice a general lack of confidence in our legal system among home inspectors. They never expect to get a fair shake in court. And especially in Small Claims Court.

To someone who has spent most of his adult life upholding the legal system, I find this overarching despondency troubling. And quite unwarranted in my experience. Nevertheless, I completely understand why home inspectors feel that way.

In the overwhelming majority of cases against home inspectors that I have handled, claimants and their lawyers are not only constantly vastly overestimating the level of their damages, they do not even recognize that they do not have a case in the first place. While I am not surprised that home inspection claimants might make those mistakes, I am continuingly astonished that their attorneys do.
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Job Security

If you want job security, it would be hard to beat being an exterminator in New York City. Got roaches? Call the exterminator. Your problem is solved but now your next door neighbor has it. And the cycle continues.

Lately, I have come to the realization that I have pretty solid job security myself. Here’s a small sampling of the vermin that I have recently had to exterminate with extreme prejudice.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my ClaimIntercept™ subscribers consulted me about a claim that one of his clients was bringing after having discovered a bat infestation in his attic, some ten months after the inspection. And of course, the client is shocked, shocked that the home inspector did not manage to notice this when he inspected the attic.
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Is Your E & O Insurance Company Stuck on Stupid?

One of my home inspector clients in California recently wrote to me about a home inspection claim that was being brought by a client for whom he had performed an inspection about three months earlier. The client was experiencing some leaks due to recent heavy rains. The leaks were discovered only after removing baseboard and flooring to do some remodeling. After opening the walls they found that the leaks were due to the fact that the vapor barrier had been torn in several areas.

A review of the inspection report demonstrated that the inspector had noted that “stains were observed at baseboard, dry at time of inspection, unable to determine cause, advise review with seller.” Photos of the area taken at the time of the inspection completely support the inspector’s position.

The clients were quite upset and were unwilling to grasp the fact that, since the defect was not visible during the inspection, the inspector was not liable. They subsequently threatened to file suit if the inspector did not refund the fee.

Since he was clearly not responsible for the clients’ problem, he refused to refund the fee and the client followed through on the threat and filed a claim in small claims court.
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The Theory of Relativity Explained

Every year, Lady Agag and I mark Memorial Day Weekend by taking a day trip to the Jersey Shore. More specifically, Spring Lake, New Jersey, our favorite shore town and one of the toniest in America.

Spring Lake for its part marks the start of the summer season with a Five Mile Race. This year’s race was the 35th Annual and over 8,000 individuals participated. For the last 30 years the event has been staged by my old friend and high school classmate Chris Tatreau who has planned and directed marathon-length and lesser distance races all over the United States.

While major road-race planning is how he keeps his body and soul together, he has long been a savvy real estate investor and when I bought my first house as a 31 year-old bachelor, I sought his counsel on the purchase. And 33 years later, I still remember this advice.

After going through the house, a row home in an area of the city that was home to a lively mix of blue collar workers, cops, firemen, corporate executives, professionals, judges and the future Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, he asked me what the asking price was. I told him “twenty-nine, five” and asked him if he thought I should offer “twenty-eight.”
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Answering The Mail

Recently, I’ve been re-publishing some posts from the archive on LinkedIn and facebook on the theory that many inspectors may never have seen the original posts. It turns out that it was a good idea, at least to judge from the tremendous uptick in the number of unique visitors that the site is attracting since then and the number of retweets and comments those archival posts have engendered.

Doug Zumach, commenting on Monday’s The Kamikaze Claimant post, asked “Joe: Won’t the inspector’s E & O premium rise for defending this case? Might it not be more cost efficient to have someone like you defend this?”

That’s a very good question that implicates one of the two major issues that home inspectors tell me concern them the most: the epic tone deafness of the insurance industry when it comes to responding to the overwhelming percentage of unmeritorious claims that plague the home inspection profession.

When an inspector receives an inquiry from a former client regarding a putative issue with an inspection, he never knows whether it will escalate into a fully-formed claim. That is how the Kamikaze Claim started out. When the inspector went back to investigate the claim, he learned that the roofing contractor had filled the client’s head with a lot of nonsense about what was causing the leaks, their provenance and the ineptitude of the inspector in failing to discover and report them.
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When Claimants Simply Make Allegations Up

Dear Joe – I am a Home Inspector of 5, very busy and successful years, here in [New England], despite the down housing economy.

I have just learned of you and have visited your website. I am very interested in learning more of your ClaimIntercept[™] Program.  Also I would like to know if your seminar titled “ Law & Disorder Seminar” is available as a DVD that I could purchase. I reside quite far away from the areas where you do any public speaking on a regular basis. I am a member of InterNACHI, and watch on their website for any further info about your Seminars maybe coming to [this] area.

Can you send me to any further information about ClaimIntercept?

My other reason for writing is that I am, for the first time, going to have a lawsuit filed against me for a “claimed omission” on a job, which is a false claim by a seller.  I do not feel I am responsible for the situation and that I did nothing wrong; it is the seller’s word against my word, basically. And that the seller is using this situation for his own gain, at my expense – to the tune of $15,000.
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Destiny and Second Acts

Years ago, when I was a member of a boutique litigation firm in Philadelphia, my partners and I would often ponder the question “How did we get this case?” What led this client to choose this law firm for this legal matter? Not infrequently that inquiry would lead to a surprising answer. The true origin would often turn out to be several degrees removed. The prospect had been referred by an existing client who had, in turn, been referred by another client and so on. It was truly remarkable how frequently a huge and lucrative legal engagement could be traced back to a minor favor performed for a person in need.

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