pre-inspection agreement

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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Don’t Get Caught in Pre-Sale Inspections Trap

Pre-Sale Inspection Trap - Tip 34Sellers are encouraged to obtain home inspections prior to listing their house for sale.

That said, home inspectors MUST be aware of exposing themselves to liability to non-client third parties.

Home inspectors run into problems when someone with whom the home inspector does not have a contract claims to have been warned by the alleged negligence of the home inspector.

In this week’s video tip, I discuss why home inspectors like you should not get caught in the pre-sale inspection trap, illustrate how you can avoid it and detail an example from a case I recently handled.

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Everything’s Negotiable!

My recent post, When Attorneys Amend Your Agreement, prompted this question from Las Vegas inspector, Gordy Zorn:

Joe, My question is how can anyone alter a contract except for the company who wrote it up in the first place? When buying a house, you have to sign a contract and you can’t pick and choose what part you agree with and not. You want the house, you sign. You don’t want the house, you don’t sign. Same with a car or any other major purchase. It’s our contract and our rules. They either abide by our rules or the go somewhere else. I don’t know any home inspector that doesn’t use a pre-inspection agreement and for the most part I always thought it was mandatory when getting insurance or at least it’s one of the questions on an application for insurance.

I did have someone cross out an area once on my pre-inspection agreement and I told him it didn’t matter what he crossed out, everything on my contract is still in force. If he didn’t agree with my contract, I wouldn’t be able to do the inspection. He hemmed and hawed but he signed it anyways.
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