joe ferry

The Cost of Your Lose-Lose Proposition

Tip 37 - The Costs of Defending Home Inspection Lawsuit (Part 2)The county sheriff arrives on your doorstep. Your heart sinks. A home inspection client of yours is demanding you pay for the bad results that occurred months after your original inspection.

Your goal is too be dismissed from this massive claim – which includes you, the seller, the seller’s agent, the buyer’s agent, so on and so on – but that is increasingly difficult when there has already been a substantial calorie burn on the defense attorney’s part.

And it’s nearly impossible to be dismissed once your home inspection insurance company appoints legal counsel because its financial incentive is to settle the claim for your deductible (or offer it as part of the settlement) and walk away.

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Understand Your True Liability and Risk

Tip 25 - Understand Your True Liability and RiskMany home inspectors are SHOCKED to hear that their corporate entities (sub-chapter S or limited liability corporations) do not insulate them from personal liability for doing a negligent home inspection.

These home inspectors say that their attorneys told them about this protection when they formed their corporations. It’s simply not true.

When can a disgruntled client come after the corporation for restitution? When IS the corporation sheltered against charges? I go through the initial myth and more in this week’s video blog.
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The Kamikaze Claimant

One reads a lot of news stories nowadays about people who engage in so-called “self-destructive” behavior. I’m prone to feel sorry for these folks who can’t seem to help themselves, providing that the destructive behavior is self-confined, as well.

Unfortunately, that is rarely the case and the self-destructive behavior invariably causes collateral damage to other innocent bystanders.

I sometimes see home inspection claimants engaging in self-destructive behavior when they allow their perhaps understandable annoyance at the development of some unexpected problem with one of the systems in their new residence to morph into a full-throated and completely unwarranted attack on their home inspector’s level of professionalism.
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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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The Typical Home Inspection Claim Runaround

Tip #42 - The Typical Home Inspection Runaround Claim RunaroundI’ve now been successfully defending home inspectors against meritless claims for a decade now, and with over 1,000 claims under my belt, I feel I’m qualified to describe the typical home inspection claim runaround competent home inspectors like yourself receive when dealing with an “issue” that really isn’t your “issue” at all.

I recently received a phone call from an inspector who was STILL dealing with an issue after two-plus years. The attorney representing him had, not surprisingly, been running up massive legal fees in the six figures without even the slightest desire to terminate the case. Why would he? His interests lied in his own billable hours driving fees as high as possible.
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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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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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