Don't get burned by shoddy home inspection

Herb Weisbaum • Profile • E-mail

You’d have to be a fool to buy a house without having it inspected first. The challenge is to find a competent home inspector who can give you an accurate picture of the property, so you know whether to go forward with the purchase.

Pick the wrong person and you could be in for years of headaches and heartache. Anyone can make a mistake, but when a home inspector misses critical defects, it can cost you a bundle. I’ve seen some of the horror stories, and trust me; you don’t want this to happen to you.

John Shaw and Marlene Koltin are paying the price — in dollars and mental aggravation — for what they say was a botched inspection of the home they bought last year in Seattle, Wash.

From the street, the house looks lovely. But it’s riddled with hidden problems that will cost them at least $280,000 to repair.

“This house was supposed to be a joy,” Marlene says. “Now it’s just a source of worry and frustration.”

There’s dry rot around the windows. They all need to be replaced. And there’s more dry rot throughout the garage. It may need to be torn down.

The most serious problem is under the house. The joists holding up the floor have clear signs of deterioration caused by bugs. These wooden beams will have to be replaced to keep the house from collapsing.

“The inspector was down there three or four times taking a look and hopefully identifying the problems we needed to know about,” John says. “And he didn’t catch this.”

John and Marlene say if the inspection report had noted all of these problems, they would have walked away from the deal. 

How do they feel about the experience? After a long sigh, John replied, “Let down, disappointed, mad, frustrated.”

What to expect from an inspector
You hire an inspector to do a visual survey of the property and structure at that moment in time.

“We can’t see through walls,” says Frank Lesh, president of the American Society of Home Inspectors. “And we can’t tear into walls and look for things. We are in somebody else’s house.”

Even so, a good inspector is trained to spot the warning signs of a problem or potential problem; everything from inadequate wiring to substandard plumbing. But not all inspectors are up to the task.

“There are a lot of people out there doing this who honestly don’t know what they’re doing,” says Alan Mooney, President of Criterium Engineers in Portland, Maine. His company has offices in 35 states and has been doing home inspections since 1957.

Mooney told me, “I would not be uncomfortable saying that 25 percent to 30 percent of the inspections that are done are superficial or inaccurate.”

According to the National Association of Home Inspectors there are no licensing standards or regulations for home inspectors in 21 states and the District of Columbia.

While regulations in some states insure a minimum level of competency, they can’t guarantee that your inspection will be done properly. That’s why it’s so important to do your homework before hiring someone.

Check your state: http://www.nahi.org/public/48.cfm

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