MARY QUIGLEY – ‘Educated decisions’
Most homebuyers want a house thoroughly inspected before investing hundreds of thousands of dollars for such a big purchase. But nearly one-quarter of homebuyers take their chances and skip an inspection, according to a recent survey.The survey, conducted by the American Society of Home Inspectors and the National Association of Realtors, shows that 77 percent of 1,000 recent homebuyers had a home inspection done. The remaining 23 percent didn’t bother hiring a home inspector.
The survey results come just weeks before a law requiring the licensing and training of home inspectors takes effect in Massachusetts.
Under the new law, home inspectors will be required to attend approved training courses and pass a licensing test. The law also requires inspectors to have at least $250,000 in errors and omissions insurance to protect clients in case mistakes are made during inspections.
Whether the new law will encourage even more Massachusetts homebuyers to get inspections is too difficult to predict, some inspectors said.
“It’s too early to tell,” said Richard Clough, executive director of the New England Chapter of ASHI.
Licensing requirements will bring attention to the industry and help build more professional home inspectors, said Clough.
Others, like home inspector Joseph E. Rizzo, say inspections will increase once the law is in place.
Rizzo, president of Braintree-based Tiger Home Inspections and a strong supporter of licensing requirements, said under the new law homebuyers will get a list of all licensed home inspectors in the state.
The list will make homebuyers think twice before deciding to hire a relative or friend to inspect their house.
“I think [the new law] will make them much more aware of the fact that these people have to be licensed. Then they will think, ‘Well, Uncle Bob is a licensed plumber, but he’s not a licensed home inspector,'” he said.
Most homebuyers responding to the ASHI/NAR study said the inspection significantly influenced their purchase offers. The survey polled people throughout the country who had bought homes within the last 18 months.
Among those who had home inspections done, 81 percent had a contingency placed in the purchase contract for the inspection and 79 percent were present during the inspection.
Significant Knowledge
Reasons for skipping home inspections are hard to pinpoint, say home inspectors.
Most survey respondents said they were buying a new home and didn’t feel an inspection was necessary. About 18 percent said they bought a new home with a warranty.
Inspectors say for some homebuyers it boils down to money. Some buyers don’t want to spend a few hundred extra dollars for the inspection. Others probably don’t understand the value of qualified inspectors, while some have a friend or relative who does carpentry or contracting work look at the house, inspectors said.
“They might not be familiar with the scope of services and significant knowledge that a home inspector has,” Clough said of homebuyers who forgo inspections.
“From my experience, home inspectors have very significant knowledge of all components of a home and can quite often detect things that may be wrong with a home that the typical buyer or even seller might not know about,” Clough said.
Many cautious consumers get home inspections for the peace-of-mind of knowing they’re making a sound decision, while others get them because lenders require them before approving mortgages, Clough said.
It’s not just the buyers who are cautious. Some sellers hire a home inspector before putting their house on the market to detect and fix any problems that might slow down a sale.
Inspectors, who charge $150 to $400, check everything from plumbing to roofs to the electrical wiring of a home.
Mary Quigley, owner of Quigley Inspection Services in Ashfield, said some people don’t get home inspections because they’ve bought homes before and “think they can tell a good house when they see it.”
“What we offer is an unbiased but educated look at houses, so that [homebuyers] can know what they’re buying,” said Quigley. “But we have no investment on the outcome of the sale. We are working for the buyer and we want them to know what they’re buying, and then they can make educated decisions about what they’re buying.”
People who rely on non-licensed friends or relatives face several risks, said Tiger’s Rizzo. Those who aren’t trained home inspectors can miss structural problems and other subtle problems, he said.
Friends and relatives can also be “overzealous” in their inspections, forcing homebuyers to spend thousands on unnecessary repairs, Rizzo said.
And homebuyers don’t have any recourse if their friend or relative misses a problem during the inspection, Rizzo said. A home inspector who misses a problem during the inspection is liable in most cases and a homebuyer has some recourse if that happens, he said.
Rizzo recalls a friend who asked a relative to check his home. The relative couldn’t detect certain structural problems, and now Rizzo’s friend is living in a house that is sinking into a peat bog.
“[The relative] never caught it,” Rizzo said.
