SEAN RIZZO
‘Good business avenue’
When it comes to helping first-time homebuyers understand the home purchasing process, groups like Chelsea Restoration have been able to assist Spanish-speaking people through special bilingual workshops that they conduct.
But when it comes to demystifying the home inspection process for non-English speaking homebuyers, Chelsea Restoration has heavily relied on Braintree-based Tiger Home Inspection, the largest independently owned home inspection firm in New England.
“People have a lot of questions on what the inspector looks for,” said Yessenia Davila, program coordinator for Chelsea Restoration, a nonprofit group established in 1977 to train first-time buyers. “Mainly a lot of first-time homebuyers want to make sure they’re not going to be buying a home that needs a lot of work.”
Chelsea Restoration, which offers four homebuyer workshops a year in English and Spanish, recruits a Spanish-speaking inspector from Tiger Home Inspection to give a presentation at the workshops. During the presentation, the inspector talks in Spanish about what buyers should expect from a home inspection, common household repairs and the average life expectancy of major components and systems in a home – including appliances, furnaces, and gutters.
“We don’t tell them about the process of buying a home. We tell them about what’s going to happen at their home inspection and what sort of things they should be looking for,” said Sean Rizzo, Tiger Home Inspection’s vice president of business development.
The American Home Inspectors Society, a professional association that represents 6,000 members in North America, does not collect statistics or information on how many other companies offer bilingual seminars and services. But as the nation’s non-English-speaking population grows, and more immigrants decide to take a stab at homeownership, some inspectors feel that offering bilingual services will be critical.
‘A Great Idea’
“I think it’s a great idea,” said Daniel L. DeStefano, owner of Advent Home Inspections in Boxboro and immediate past president of the ASHI chapter in Massachusetts. “Having the ability to communicate in another language is not only useful for the client, but it’s also a great business tool.”
DeStefano, who has been performing home inspections for nearly 23 years, said he doesn’t know of any other company in the Bay State that offers such services. In an interview last week, DeStefano said it would be useful for the ASHI chapter in Massachusetts to survey its members and all licensed inspectors in the state to determine how many can speak multiple languages.
Tiger Home Inspection has been able to tap the talents of Nico Distefano and Jose Roig, both of whom are fluent in Spanish and English. Distefano has helped many homebuyers in East Boston, while Roig has assisted people in the Worcester area, according to Rizzo.
Rizzo said Tiger first received inquiries about five years ago from various organizations that help low-income people become homebuyers about whether the company could provide home inspection information to Hispanic homebuyers.
At the time, the company didn’t have a program in place. But Tiger employed Roig and Distefano, who had worked with non-English-speaking clients in the past, and who were natural candidates to run workshops. While Tiger officials felt that the bilingual homebuyer workshops would be an important community service to provide, they also saw it as a valuable business expansion tool to reach a significant segment of the homebuyer market.
“Obviously, it’s a good business avenue for us,” said Rizzo. “We offer the services for free and we hope when they [prospective buyers] go to buy a house they call us.”
Tiger has conducted seminars in communities where there is a heavy Hispanic population, including East Boston, Chelsea, Lowell, Lawrence and Worcester. This Wednesday, Distefano will be conducting a workshop for Chelsea Restoration.
In addition to Chelsea Restoration, Tiger inspectors have worked with groups like the Neighborhood of Affordable Housing in East Boston. The company also will schedule additional seminars upon request, although a minimum of 25 participants is required.
In the future, Tiger would like to expand the seminars to reach out to other non-English-speaking homebuyers, including Chinese and Vietnamese buyers.
“We would love to get into the Asian population but we’re having difficulty finding an inspector” who speaks the language, explained Rizzo.
According to DeStefano, the home inspection industry has had a tough time recruiting minorities. Although he couldn’t provide statistics on how many non-white inspectors there are in Massachusetts, DeStefano said he has attended several national conventions for inspectors and typically there’s only a minimal number of Hispanic or black inspectors.
“There’s a need for more,” he said.
