Home inspectors seriously?
Look I totally get it that when somebody's spending several hundred
thousand dollars they want some assurance that they're
not buying into something that's going to be
a fixer-upper or worse than a fixer-upper and so that's
why people hire home inspectors to come and do a
thorough inspection of the home so that they can find out if there are
any problems, but home inspectors? So in a real estate
transaction home inspectors show up and they're
they're looking at a comprehensive list of things
to find out if there are any problems with the home that they can report back
to the homeowner, I totally get that and if a home inspector is good and he knows
what he's doing and he's got a background
in contracting or maybe even a specific trade
then that can be a real help to a homeowner. But the heartburn
that we roofers get with home inspectors and probably realtors get this heartburn
too is the fact that they're gosh they're
it just seems like they're throwing everything in that report
and since they don't typically have backgrounds in construction
and they're just going by what they learned
in their certification class then not only are they putting
everything in there that they're finding but if
multiple home inspectors inspect the same home
they may not even find the same issues. So if there's a big problem or
if there's a problem that one home inspector finds
that he says has to be resolved the next home inspector may not even
find that or may not even think that it's a problem. Well so here's why
this causes roofers so much heartburn, is home inspectors since they don't know
what roof damage is you know they might be finding any
little thing and saying oh well you know this needs
to be resolved and quite often what they're saying in
their report is that you need to get a licensed roofing
contractor to come look at this and evaluate it.
Well this is kind of a hot button right now because we've had
calls from two different homeowners whose homes are for sale
and they've had a home inspector come and he said oh there's lots of problems
on this roof you need to get it taken care of
well one of them was the roof was covered with blisters,
well we've had that situation happen once before where a home inspector comes
tells the tells the uh the buying agent who then tells the
buyers that the roof is covered with hail damage and then the seller
needs to file an insurance claim so they can get the roof replaced.
Well we've had that situation where that happened one time
the seller filed an insurance claim the adjuster came out and said
no there's no hail damage on here we're not responsible for replacing your roof
well so what happens? Then the homeowner has
a claim on his record with no benefit, it's called a claim without pay.
So home inspectors please do a little research
do a little bit of study learn what the difference is between blistering
and hail damage and in fact we've got a video we'll link to that right up here
so that way you can just watch that and and figure out what the difference is so
that way you're not telling a potential buyer that the roof
that they're looking at is covered with hail damage.
But then not only that it's just every little minute
detail you know this nail is exposed it needs to be
sealed but here was the kicker of all that we just had last week.
There's a house for sale that has a flat roof and the home inspector
noted ponding on the flat roof and that's just areas
where water collects well home inspectors ponding
on a flat roof is not an uncommon thing and if the roof is done correctly and
the seals the seams are all sealed correctly and
the penetrations are all flashed correctly ponding causes
no issues on a flat roof it's a flat roof okay? So on this particular instance
this was a home I think it's for sale for close to seven hundred thousand
dollars and the deal fell through because of
that so that seller lost the deal
because a home inspector said there was "ponding".
All right now I know this is an aggravation for realtors too I've talked
to realtors who have expressed their aggravation, so home inspectors
please please don't try to inspect a roof don't try to
give a report about a roof if you're going to always
say there's a problem with a roof and say that a licensed roofing
contractor needs to take a look at it hey realtors maybe that's on you maybe
you just need to get a connection with a good roofer and have
that roofer inspect your roofs when you list the house.
So I'm sorry was that too much of a rant? I feel like that was
really out of character for me and for these videos
but anyway if you've got questions about a home inspection report that you would
like to have a roofer come take a look at please give us a
call right up here at our office phone number
719-433-6991 you can also visit our website
right down here homesteadroofingcolorado.com we've got a
ton of information out there lots of other educational videos for you
including what's the difference between blistering
and hail damage and if you like this video please give us a
big thumbs up and leave us a comment, if you've got questions put those in the
comments section down below we read every comment and try to answer
every question and we'd love it if you'd subscribe
click the subscribe button and click the bell icon up there so that
way you get notified when we've got new videos and until our
next video hopefully a lot less ranting going on in
it I'm Tracy Bookman owner of Homestead
Roofing.