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Home Inspection Business Plan & How To Become a Home InspectorHome inspection businesses usually fail because the owner of the home inspection business wants to Becoming a home inspector and not a business owner. The two require a different skill set. I firmly believe the easier skill set is learning to inspect a home and that is complicated enough. In order to properly inspect a home one must go to the best home inspection school one can find and make sure it conforms to any requirements your state may have or be enacting. The best schools are taught by experienced home inspection business owners who have performed not less than one thousand home inspections. Yes, that is correct a minimum of one thousand home inspections. Sure that is a lot of inspections. One thousand home inspections means the inspector has not seen it all yet but has a real grasp of the type homes in your geographic area and a real feel for telling you what you should expect and what is expected of you. Becoming a good home inspector is not easy as becoming a bad home inspector. Before you even commit to going to school (this one may be obvious) call the instructor and ask to go out on a half dozen home inspections with him or her and offer to pay for their time. Many instructors will not charge you at all. Most (like me) will charge a small fee ranging from buying them a cheap lunch to $50 per inspection. Is the fee charged to make the home inspector rich? No, however I found when I charged nothing the perceived value of the service I provided was much less than when I charged for my time. Why go out on inspections before one goes to school? I have found many students who spend money on schooling and spend weeks in a classroom finally get out into the field and discover very quickly they do not like being a home inspector at all. Many students do not realize home inspectors have to climb on ladders, crawl through disgusting crawl spaces, endure hot attics, walk roofs with no net to catch you if you fall, encounter hostile home owners, hostile realtors and negotiate through a virtual mine field of liability issues. Home inspection business owners face dozens of other items to learn about. After you go out on a half dozen or so home inspections sit down and try to write a report. No, I am not kidding. Yes, your first reports will be a disaster because you do not have the knowledge necessary to write the report yet. The idea is for you to see how difficult the job is. Expect the first report to take quite a while to write up. Give that report to a friend or spouse and ask them to read it and see if they understand it. My guess is they will pick it apart and you should expect them to. If you survive going out on the half dozen or so inspections with your instructor and the report writing exercise and still want to be a home inspector sign up for the class room and be prepared to learn more than you ever thought you would have to know about every single aspect of homes. Do not for a moment think home inspection is like any other construction career, it is very much different. I have performed inspections for engineers, architects, plumbers, electrical contractors, attorneys and just about every other occupation. As an inspector you must be 100% sure everything you do, say and write is as close to 100% accurate when viewed by an expert. When you remove the electric panel cover you will have no idea what the occupation or experience level of your client is. Miss an electrical problem with a client who is an electrical contractor and he or she will have absolutely no respect for anything else you tell them that day. While you are going to home inspection school keep going out on home inspections with your instructor or another home inspector. Sure some home inspectors will not want to take you out with them. That is why you have to sit down and be prepared to call a few dozen home inspectors outside your immediate area and ask nicely for them to take you out on inspections and offer to pay for their time. It is vital to have field and classroom experience. I have found getting both at the same time to be more beneficial to one at a time. After you finish your schooling you should take your state exam and one or more of the "National Tests" I have participated in the development of the National Home Inspector Examination. I feel it is one of the better ones out there. At least once a year they fill a room full of the most experienced home inspectors they can find representing all regions of the USA who spend two or three full days discussing each and every question on the exam to weed out the questions that are too easy, too hard or have more than one correct answer. Most states have licensing requirements of one type or another for becoming a home inspector, find out what the requirements are and make sure you conform to them. Becoming a home inspector Plan Part I Becoming a home inspector Plan Part II Becoming a home inspector Plan Part III Becoming a home inspector Plan Part IV Becoming a home inspector Plan Part V
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