The High Cost of Inexpensive Home Inspections
If you thought our inspections were expensive …. wait till you have to pay to fix what the cheap inspector missed.
Just because a home inspector graduates from school and gets his or her home inspector’s license doesn’t mean he or she is going to do an excellent job. It just means that they have graduated from school and are ready to find out what the job really entails. It takes a lot more learning than just being in a classroom before a new home inspector can do a job that will actually suit their client’s needs. They need field experience and must learn to deal with complaints from clients in order to find out what clients really expected of the home inspection. A number of newly graduated home inspectors have just barely passed the minimum requirements in order to get their license. New Jersey home inspectors can be licensed with as little as three weeks of classroom training and only one week of field training. They need not have even had construction experience. Inexperienced inspectors often charge less in order to buy your business while they gain experience, sometimes at your expense and peril.
It used to be that home inspectors did not require a license – now. two thirds of the United States require them to have one. This does not mean that just because they have a license they will do a perfect home inspection. If you are looking for a cheap deal on having your prospective home inspected, you can always opt for the home inspector that charges the lowest rate – sometimes they have just graduated from school or perhaps they are just starting out and have only done a few home inspections. Many home inspectors do not have adequate training and experience to meet all of your expectations. This is not to say that they will fail to do their best to please you, it simply means that it is a learning process to become a good home inspector.
Perhaps the property you are willing to invest in has a few problems and that the new home inspector did a good job when inspecting the property. Or it could also be that you find out later on that he or she had overlooked certain significant things and you are the one who is going to be paying for the repairs. That would mean that you could lodge a complaint against him or her; then follows the litigation where you must pay for a lawyer to sue them and get the money back for all the things that he or she missed. This might place you at the end of the line of other clients who have had the same issues. Even if he or she did have insurance, chances are that you will wait quite some time to recover the cost of the damages you paid for in advance.
If you were to look for the best home inspector to do the job, then rest assured that, although he or she charges more for home inspections, the fee would be nominal by comparison with the thousands of dollars you might be investing in your new home. The risk that he or she has missed out on finding problems is minimal. Take the time to get the best home inspection done by finding the inspector with the most experience.
