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What You Need to Know About Pre-Sale Inspections
Reader Gary Baldridge writes: “I have heard many comments on the pros and cons of pre-sale home inspections and what liability may differ from doing a buyer inspection.” Now that sellers are being encouraged to obtain professional home inspections prior to listing their properties for sale, a development that I not only applaud but also…
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Mr. Home Inspector, Will You Pay for My Renovation (2 of 3)
So I wrote a rather lengthy letter to the plaintiffs’ attorney that explained in considerable detail exactly why he would be better off – and his clients would be immeasurably better off – without having the home inspector hammering away at length the manifold reasons why he was not responsible. I first pointed out that…
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Don’t Let Stupid Mistakes Shake Your Confidence
The other day I got a call from a home inspector who was pretty upset with himself for having done “something really stupid.” What he had done was absent-mindedly turn on the air conditioning unit of a house he was inspecting on a day when the outside temperature was forty degrees. It was the first…
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Thoughts on Thermal Imaging Devices and Visual Inspections
Joe – Could we get a legal view on the use of thermal imaging devices during home inspections. A number of guys are touting the relative blindness of those not using them in an effort to promote their new “x-ray vision.” “My opinion? As with any extra-sensory equipment, from electronic induction moisture meters to gas…
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Law of Damages (Part 1 of 2)
Whenever I read the Letters to the Editor of the New York Times or my local newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, I often find myself wondering whether mathematics is still a requirement for graduation from high school. The overwhelming majority of those correspondents appear to truly believe with every fiber of their being that it is…
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Mr. Home Inspector, Won’t You Pay For My Renovation (1 of 3)
When one has consulted on close to 600 home inspection claims, there is a powerful temptation to conclude that one has seen every goofy claim that there could possibly be and I was really beginning to think, back in the summer of 2009, that I had. Then I got a call from an inspector friend…
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Law of Damages (Part 2 of 2)
To be an effective advocate for his clients, a lawyer often needs to call upon skills quite apart from a thorough working knowledge of the substantive and procedural law. And if he practices in the northeastern section of the country, as I do, one skill that he will find to be of inestimable utility is…
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Claims on Concealed Issues at Time of Home Inspection
A few months ago, I got a call from a home inspector in California about a claim some prior client had lodged against the inspection firm for whom he had previously worked and had conducted the inspection in question. This particular firm is exceedingly risk-averse and settled very quickly with the dissatisfied client rather than…
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Different Day, Different Mindset: Always Expect a Call
A few weeks ago, I posted on facebook a photograph that I took of some home inspectors who were attending a home inspector training Law and Disorder Seminar – seminarians? – that I conducted in Schaumburg, Illinois about 3 years ago. One comment that the photo engendered was: “inspector average age = 102 years.” Not…
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When Clients Attack
A disturbing trend and something that I am seeing much more frequently is the tendency of home inspection claimants to threaten to harm inspectors by making reputation-destroying comments on internet rating sites and filing false complaints with Licensing Boards unless the inspector knuckles under to what are invariably unmeritorious complaints. A recent case that surfaced…
