Seriously, what good are home inspectors, if they don't look at anything but the

[wildtmpckjzg]

This is pissing me off.
Paid $600 for a "home inspection", they said all is fine.

12 years later, have to do some remodeling & things, and everywhere I open up, I see stuff that obviously isn't up to code at the time the "home inspection" occurred.

Junction boxes that have NO wire nuts, only twisted together, and taped.
Electrical switches with NO ground wire attached to a ground, it is just shoved in the plastic box.
Under side of roof has a 12" x 12" area missing, as in, there is a 12 x 12" cutout, then some black paper(?) covering said hole.
All bathroom fans exhaust into the attic, and one of those fans was covered by insulation.
Attic insulation that is only 3" deep.
Attic wiring that isn't secured near the boxes, and, just laying around, and those *DanG junction boxes with no wire nuts...
Obvious design flaw of a balcony, since it can't drain water anyplace except to bricks?
Blueprints clearly show 2" x 6" studs for joist & trusses, they were actually 2" x 4", and they also show 16" between those, but, they are actually 24".
I could go on...

So, is this the norm for a "home inspection"? How the hell did the guy miss all this stuff?
House was built in the 80's, only had 1 owner that stayed for 3 months before they had to move.

[Don P]

Basically it is one group of marketing con artists spreading the liability around with other con artists. You paid for the care and feeding of their in house seal of approval.
I don't know why anyone hires one. I also don't know why anyone would perform the task, or officially offer to. I've walked through houses with friends just looking for obvious trouble. There's way too many things for me to say that I'm looking at a fine house or a money pit. At one walk through I was friends with the realtor and the clients. I pointed out really obvious moisture problems and structural deficiencies and told them it was not a good house. Obviously no sale that day. Well, if I were in the inspections business no realtor would ever call me again. It also opens up a can of worms for the realtor, she learned about things that she should probably disclose from then on. I doubt a realtor is going to call or refer a stickler.

There was one home inspector around here with stickers on his truck claiming builders hate him. I got to know him long enough to agree, but not because he was a good, honest or competent person. I could see slapping a few stickers on the county inspectors truck while we're at it  :D.

[sawguy21]

I knew an inspector/appraiser that offed his services to mortgage lenders, they wouldn't approve one without his seal of approval. I went with him a few times and just shook my head at the shoddy work I saw. One new home was so bad he could only recommend an engineers report.

[Southside]

Had one of those jokers look at a place we sold this spring.  Claimed the septic field had failed, "standing water in the pipes" and needed to be replaced.  I knew something was up as the buyers made an over full price offer, sight unseen, and we knew the place was too small for them since they had 5 kids, then this happened.  So I call a friend in the septic business and he went to look at it for me. I told him where the tank was and to look for the fresh dirt from the cover being removed since he had a camera in there.  Oh guess what - could not find the fresh dirt from removing the cover, it had never been pulled.  So I called said inspector and asked him what he saw and how he saw it.  Tells me he put a camera in through the toilet and his magical camera was able to get past the distribution box, the tank baffle and out into the drain field which had standing water.  Great - nice claim - except when I asked him how he got by the outlet filter in the tank, you know the one with 1/16" slots for water to get through?  "It has a filter?" was the response.....  Yup, what I thought, he was paid to get the clients out of the contract.  My buddy pulled the cover and the filter, ran his camera down and said all was fine.  Scammers gonna scam, scam, scam.

[Andries]

My wife is a broker in the real estate business and rolls her eyes at the mention of home inspections.
Many houses are a historical collection of renovations done by talented and some not-so talented tradesmen. How much time would it take for an honest inspector to peek into every nook and cranny of the house to see all the details? It would take some x-ray vision too.
Our kids have followed their parents' lead and have been buying or renting out homes as they move along in life. My son and I are pretty good at spotting the "money pits", but prolly not nearly as good at it as Don P.
Trusting a stranger to take on the due diligence effort in real estate is a sucker bet. Sorry wildtmpckjzg, but that $600 wasn't a huge % of the property value, and it was a painful 'learning moment' that a lot of us have gone through.
Once is enough.

[Jim_Rogers]

To me it sounds like the original wiring inspection was not done. Or that inspector was very lacks in his enforcing the rules.

Also, same with building inspector if the plans show one thing and the build shows another.

Venting moist air into the attic is asking for mold to develop.

Does this guy who inspected it have a license? I guess a complaint to the licensing bureau could help if he does.
Or the local Better Business Bureau where his business is located.

Jim Rogers

[Texas Ranger]

My daughter bought a house two years ago  and mortgage company required an inspection and suggested an inspector, he came, charged $500 and said every thing was fine in a 40 year old house.  within a  year she ended up spending $60,00 of mostly insurance money to bring the housed to code and repair old stuff that does what old stuff does.  In other words a $500 rip off.  Bad pipes, bad electrical, bad sewage drain, bad this that and the other.

[KEC]

As far as I know, if an inspector fails to note problems that they should have noted, you can hold them liable. When I did wildlife control work I got calls from homeowners who were given a good report on a house that they recently bought. I'd often find problems that were not reported by the inspector. They rarely go into attics unless there are stairs to it, saying that there were "inaccessable" spaces. When people apply for a loan and are going to use the house as collateral, the bank will send an inspector to look at the house. It may consist of a "drive-by inspection" !  Sellers are very good at not disclosing problems that they know about, even if they are legally bound to give a buyer a disclosure statement and the problem is on the list of items on the disclosure form. If you want an idea of how honest someone is, find out that they are selling a house with an attic full of squirrels or something and see if they disclosed that on the disclosure statement.

[Sod saw]

.


A few years after we were first married (we still are), in the mid 1980's we purchased our first house.

My architect father and I (electrician) looked throughout the structure and found no major issues so we decided to place a purchase offer.

The bank required a "home inspection" which was done in a timely manor.  While reading thru the inspection report and comparing it to the banks requirement for flood insurance, , , , things just did not add up.

As it turns out the "home inspector" could not even locate the house let alone inspect it. 

What gave it away was the fact that this house (farm) that we did buy was located on the top of one of the highest hills in the county.  Food insurance?  I don't think so.


.

[Don P]

Most home inspection contracts include a limit of liability clause. This limits the inspectors liability to the fee or something like up to double the fee. However, that is a state issue. Some states will uncap that for gross negligence... missing something that a peer would not have. That does not sound like a cheap fight.

[Tom King]

People stopped asking me why I do everything myself a long time ago. It seems like everyone has these experiences these days.

The last time I had an inspection, the inspector told me, "This is a Lot different than what I normally look at".

When I was building new spec houses, I had one Savings and Loan company that would finance one of my houses without even coming out to look at it unless they just wanted to see it anyway.  I could send a potential buyer to them and they would come back with an approval right away.

[Stephen1]

I have not heard to many good results about home inspections. My son and 2 daughters who call me in, just go for a walk thru, Ill look in the attic,  and if the house has "good bones" it seems to be a well built house and no blatant problems. Buy It. My comment is you will always have to spend money on a used anything!

[TroyC]

Similar experience here. SIL called in a home inspector before purchase. He was told by the inspector " I don't do underneath." Well, guess where the main problems were.

I once hired an appraiser. When she pulled in the driveway, she asked me what I wanted the property to appraise for. I informed her that I wanted an accurate appraisal. The property sold for 2X what she appraised it for.   

Tom- I agree. I may not do it perfectly/pretty as many on the forum but it will be good enough to last and work properly. When renovating my house I was shocked the inspectors would pass really crummy work but be a real stickler over code stuff. As long as code was met it didn't seem to matter if it would work or not.

[KEC]

Definately, a problem is that inspectors do not want to be the fly in the ointment that kills a sale. And word gets around in realtors' circles. Another is that inspectors are lazy and don't want to get dirty or get cobwebs in their hair. So they go through some of the motions (not many) of performing the inpection to trigger a charge/ching ching. It is very important during real estate transactions to understand that there are those who represent the interest of the buyer and those who represent the seller. A buyer should get their own inspector, not one reffered to them by the seller or realtor. And then there's no garauntee of a perfect outcome.

[barbender]

I've actually had some very good experiences with home inspectors, but I can see where there's room for a bunch of duds.

[LarryW17]

Not sure where you live, but there was most likely a series of inspections done (or should have been) when the house was being built.
Check with your municipality, to see if this would have been required.
I am a building inspector in WI (not a home inspector) and here all new houses have to be inspected.
That rule came about because of houses being built in smaller communities (under 2500 pop.) where there were no inspections required and problems with construction practices were being discovered.
You may have some recourse for corrections if you can find this information out, or can find out who the contractors were when it was originally built.
Whether inspected or not at the original construction, the contractors were obligated to build to the code in effect at that time.
Good Luck!

[LarryW17]

Following up...
Beginning January 1, 2005, the Wisconsin Department of Commerce will require all new homes in Wisconsin to be inspected to ensure compliance with the state's Uniform Dwelling Code (UDC). This is a change in state law, which previously exempted new homes from inspection requirements if a home was located in a community with a population of less than 2,500.

The change was made in response to complaints from numerous rural homeowners who, after finding major defects with their homes, discovered that their homes had not been inspected. Under the exemption for small communities, an estimated 10,000 homes per year were not inspected

[Den-Den]

I have not used a home inspector myself but a friend did to sell a home recently.  The inspector flagged the breaker panel because some of the neutral wires shared holes in the neutral bar.  He asked me to help fix it and while working on it, I noticed that the ground wire was not connected to the ground rod.  It seemed silly (and lazy) that he would complain about two neutral wires in a connection that was made for that and fail to notice a disconnected ground rod.  The idea of independent inspectors seems like a good idea but they are responsible to only themselves, making the whole thing into an illusion of competence.