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Report Writing: First Person or Third Person
A home inspector in Connecticut recently asked me this question: Which report writing style is more defensible: writing in the first person or the third person? “I observed the roof to be in poor condition” or “The roof is in poor condition.” I personally cannot recall ever reading a report that called out defects in…
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Myths That Home Inspectors Should Stop Believing
Myth # 1: Only Incompetent Inspectors Ever Have Claims In these next series of posts, I am going to be debunking several myths that home inspectors should stop believing about their profession and the law. One such belief is that only incompetent inspectors ever have professional liability claims. So if you’re a good inspector you…
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The Big Strong Man
My dad was born on January 15, 1898. Yesterday would have been his 114th birthday. To my considerable surprise, he died in 1983. Up until about 1980, I really expected him to make it to 100. For one thing, he was never really sick. For another, he was still doing physically demanding labor even as…
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Tabula Rasa
There’s something about the start of a brand new year that tops off my hope reservoirs and makes me look forward to bigger and better things. Out with the old, in with the new. Not that last year was too shabby, mind you. I got speaking invitations from the four corners of the nation, the…
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New Year’s Resolutions [For Home Inspectors]
The general over-the-top excitement bordering on mass hysteria that surrounds the turning of the calendar from one year to the next has always puzzled me. In fact, so un-into it am I that I am seldom awake when it happens. To me the whole cultural phenomenon is a vast waste of calories that could be…
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How Long Should Home Inspectors Hold on to Written Reports?
The other day, I received a comment from Naperville, Illinois Home Inspector Carol Fisher to a recent post on how long inspectors need to hold on to inspection reports. Carol, who posed the original question, wrote: “The answer you gave is safe. Of course I would save my digital reports, but some of us have…
