Starting a Home Inspection Service

Even in the midst of this economic crisis, houses are still being sold – and before each sale is finalized, the buyer will, undoubtedly, employ the services of a home inspector. In fact, it’s almost a given that in order for the transaction to be completed, a thorough home inspection should take place.

As a home inspector, you are hired to inspect every nook and cranny of the home in question before the sale goes through. You are normally hired by the buyer to perform an unbiased assessment of the property. This includes plumbing, electrical, and structural. You’ll be inspecting everything from the foundation to the attic. You’ll be looking for moisture behind walls, cracks in the foundation, the condition of the furnace, the condition of the roof shingles, and so on. Think of it as a physical for the home.

At the end of the inspection, the customer will get an itemized list of everything that was checked and its condition. Because of the thoroughness of the inspection, this list is normally several pages long.

Because of the nature of the business, it’s always a good idea to have a background in construction or home repair before considering becoming a home inspector. While many jurisdictions don’t require a license, it only makes sense to have a solid knowledge of what you’re looking for and be able to identify what’s good versus what’s bad. After all, the potential buyers are paying hundreds of dollars for a few hours of your time. They’re paying for your expertise in the field, basically.

With that being said, you can pay for specialized training to become a home inspector without previous knowledge or experience. However, take this with a big grain of salt. Without practical experience, your chances of success are limited, to say the least. Check online for some of the best training schools. This training won’t be cheap, but it is certainly something that is, at best, a minimum requirement.

Now, in the real world, the ideal candidate for a home inspector would be someone with extensive experience in electrical, plumbing, heating/cooling, roofing, and foundations. You should also be able to recognize defects the moment you see them. If you lack proper training, you can be putting people at risk, not to mention opening yourself up for a lawsuit. In fact, the number one skill a home inspector should have is the ability to spot defects. In order to do this, you need to know what things should look like when they are functioning properly.

Even if you have extensive experience in construction, this still doesn’t equip you for everything a home inspector will see in his day-to-day routine. Rarely do construction people see items that have held up to years of heavy use. If the only experience you have is building new homes, you won’t be experienced with old style plumbing and electrical fixtures, old leaky basements, and the like.

Therefore, the ideal candidate for home inspector would be someone who does actual home repairs. A jack of all trades (handyman) will have seen just about everything if he/she has been in business for a while. As an added touch, it wouldn’t hurt to take additional courses in electrical, plumbing, and cooling/heating. A background in engineering would also be a definite bonus. Finally, taking all this experience and combining it with an official home inspection course will give you everything you need to be one of the best in the field. And believe me, word gets around in this industry; so your reputation is one of your most important assets.

Once you feel confident that you’ve got enough experience and formal training, you can hang your shingle out and start marketing yourself as an official home inspector. In the beginning, things might be quite slow while you build your reputation and name. After a while, you’ll start getting recommendations from real estate brokers – and that’s where the real money is. Get in with the right broker and you’ll be busy year-round. Of course, a broker needs to make sure that they can trust you to be the absolute best – after all, their reputation is at stake here.

Unless you start a well-known franchise or work for someone, it’s going to be very difficult for you to start from scratch in this industry. While you may get a few jobs here and there, you need to start making connections with real estate people. This business runs almost entirely on referrals. One advantage you can have over many other home inspectors is to become certified by the American Society of Home Inspectors. This is certainly worth doing in order to establish yourself as a certified professional.

Additionally, once you get some money coming in, you’ll want to take out a yellow page ad in order to compete in this industry. Have a look and see what other home inspectors are doing in terms of the size of their ad, and follow suit. If your competitors are advertising on full pages and half pages, and you are only taking out a text ad, you’re going to be losing a lot of business because no one is going to take you seriously Alternatively, don’t overspend trying to overpower the competition by purchasing larger ads.

While obviously not for everyone, operating a home inspection service can be quite lucrative. Once you’ve been doing it for a few years, you’re going to be very efficient – and efficiency means money in this business. It’s not out of the question to be making several hundred dollars per hour once you’ve established yourself and you’ve got years of experience.