Commercial PropertyWhat Realtors Need To Know About Home Inspectors
In an effort to reach out to the Realtor community, the National Association of Home Inspectors (NAHI) is educating Realtors about the importance of home inspections and working with home inspectors as independent professionals.
According to NAHI, about 85 percent of home buyers and sellers use home inspectors resulting in about a $1.2 billion industry.
While a majority are recommended by Realtors, increased liability in the home transaction is making many Realtors reluctant to do more than provide a list of home inspectors to buyers and sellers and let them do the interviewing and hiring.
Making matters just as bad are Realtors who try to control the amount of negative findings that may go into a home inspection report, and home inspectors who may rattle buyers by noting information on their reports they aren"t qualified to discuss.
There"s obviously plenty of room to improve the way home inspectors and Realtors communicate and work together on the same transaction without collusion, intimidation, or ego.
"I hear stories in my area of situations where an inspector didn"t know what to look for or breezed through the home and everything was far from great," says NAHI spokesperson Pete Robberson, "or the opposite - where there is so much detail it puts undo pressure on the sale. The buyer thinks the house is falling down. A lot of inspectors feel they need to prove they are worth something - pointing out every dent and scratch."
Robberson says NAHI is working on helping inspectors "go a long way to reveal what is there, yet understand what is meaningful in a transaction."
"A lot shoot off their mouths with no sensibility of the labor involved to get to the point of selecting the home," says Robberson. "The buyers have finally arrived at the home, and gone through negotiations and price, closing date and an inspector can come in with no concept of all that, and nothing is going to make him happy."
And there"s the other side. Many Realtors, due to liabilities where it might be perceived they are attempting to influence the sale, do not attend inspections, leaving buyers and sellers to find out and interpret results on their own.
"Most Realtors who have been in the industry 30 years really have no idea what an inspection looks at and what inspectors consider," says Robberson. He advises that they visit NAHI.org where they can review the organization"s standards of practice, to see what should be covered in an inspection.
Explains Robberson, "An inspector is free to go beyond a standard, and that is where they get in trouble pointing out too many dents and scratches or by performing services like mold remediation that they aren"t qualified to perform, or insured to perform, or pointing out things to solicit value-added business.
Increasingly, suggests Robberson, inspectors are going for "routine inspections but commenting on things not included, such as making a representation about mold after not having done proper testing, or saying there is no mold."
"Eduation is what we want to focus on and we want to create an interface between the real estate community and the inspection community," explains Robberson, "and we want to provide the manpower of volunteers to come talk to real estate offices."
In addition, NAHI.org is preparing a site library with over 500 articles Realtors can review. There is also a conflict resolution procedure that "doesn"t exist in other organizations."
The organization as a whole would like to see the huge disconnect between inspectors, clients and Realtors eliminated. "The inspection is too often used as a tool where the client wants to squeeze another $10,000 out of seller," laments Robberson. "The Realtor is thinking liability, and the inspector is working from either our standards of practice or their own ego. It"s time that changes."