The Home Inspector Conundrum

I don’t know any Real Estate agents (including myself) who would tell a home buyer, you don’t need a home inspection. However I do find most home inspectors put a fair amount of “Self Importance” into their inspections. What I mean by this is, you’re not an engineer, Architect, or even a home builder, you are an inspector and that is what you are supposed to do is inspect. And report to your clients your findings. You’re not there to scare them away, you’re there to advise!

The way you present your findings to a potential home buyer can have detrimental effects to the home selling process. Let me put it this way…

You go see your doctor because of a funny looking mole on the back of your hand, the doctor runs some tests and comes out and says to you;

1)      Yeah things look a little odd with this mole why don’t we just remove it and not worry about it and you can get on with your day...OR

2)      OH MY GOD YOU HAVE CANCER WE NEED TO GET THIS TAKEN CARE OF IMMEDITLY BEFORE IT SPREADS EVERYWHERE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD YOU COULD DIE FROM THIS!!!!!

My guess is we would all probably prefer to have the news presented to us in choice 1. I think if any of use heard choice 2 we just might say Oh My God just cut off my hand and let’s just be done with it, I don't want to DIE!!!  As in everything in life your words and how you choose them matters!

I was also on a home inspectors Facebook page and he had a post “To all my realtor friends... it is NEVER a good idea to have your sellers follow the home inspector around every inch of the house with an attitude. He will loose every time...” First off this inspector is saying that if a homeowner questions his “abilities” and wants to defend his home that this inspector is going to what? Give a bad inspection report to the home buyers? And not sure how a homeowner would "loose", I think he meant “lose” See words matter…

I also find it alarming when an inspector finds a problem that need immediate remediation and they recommend only one company to handle correcting the problem, and oh by the way they just happen to be related to the owner of the company…

So, here is my conundrum… You go and inspect a home, raise all kinds of red flags and basically scare the buyer away or into making such a low offer, it kills the deal. Then what do you do? Charge them again for another home inspection on their next home? Sort of seems like there could be a conflict of interest their? Perhaps we should have a rule that if a deal goes bad the potential buyers need to use a different inspector on their next home inspection? Or they can use the same one but the inspection itself is free.