Finding A Home Inspector

[Kevin Holt]

Any good advise for picking a home inspector?  Or using one at all?  It seems when a buying or selling recommends one, the inspector will usually OK the property. Are there inspectors that will work for the purchaser (not the agent), actually inspect the property and not just “eye-ball” it and call it good?  And is there any recourse when an inspection fails to identify problems?  I’ve been burned by a bad inspector that didn’t open the electrical panel, flush toilets or test the HVAC.

[Will Fraser]

Yikes, @Kevin Holt, I'm sorry to hear about your shoddy inspection experience!  In my experience a home inspector is demonstrating negligence to say "it's OK" on an inspection.  Unless you have specifically hired the inspector to give you an OPINION on a home, then what they should be doing is "calling out" items of note . . . which are present in EVERY home, regardless of age or condition.

The inspector ALWAYS works for the person that hired them; either the buyer or the seller.  They don't work for us agents, BUT there can be a lot of "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours"-ism in the industry and you could be picking up on that relationship as you observe the relationship between the agent and the inspector.

In general if I don't have a trusted inspector in a market I'll default to using a Pillar to Post inspector, since they have fantastic training protocols and have a much higher bar of excellence than the average inspector on the market.  It's not always a home run, but at least a base hit.

However, don't be cheap!  The people who consistently get burned in my market are the ones using $150-250 inspectors.  The guys I use typically charge between $375-550 . . . for a reason.   These "good ole' boys" doing the cheapie inspections SHOULD be covering the same scope of inspection for their buyers that the full-scope inspectors do OR clearly explaining the difference to the buyer BEFORE the taking the job.  However, the simple economics of it let us know that, to a certain degree, you get what you pay for in inspections like many other things in life.