There has been a lot of discussion lately over the terms we use in the home inspection industry to express an individual’s competency. Certified, Master or in some states, Licensed are terms commonly used. The first two can freely be used to describe anyone while the later is regulated and awarded by city or state government.
Unfortunately anyone can use the term certified to describe someone who has taken a test or complete a course. There is no government standard, which defines the level of competency, experience or rigor necessary to pass a course or test. So in essence the term “certification” is like ChapStick or Kleenex, a generic term which is the crux of the problem we are facing. In a search of the Internet, I identified twelve organizations other than National Association of Home Inspectors that offer certifications. With the shear number of certifications and huge variation in qualifications, our challenge is to differentiate credible certification such as NAHI's from the other organizations. The simplest way is identifying the Internet based organizations. These organizations deliver their training and testing online. If I use these criteria it eliminates all other organizations with the exception of NAHI and ASHI.
Both ASHI and NAHI have spent years developing and implementing tests that are legally defensible. In other words, we can show how we created a profile of competent home inspector and developed a test that could only be passed by this type of an individual. We can also show that we only deliver this test in a supervised environment and individuals do not have any outside assistance during the exam.
I belong to the National Association of Home Inspectors. To become a Certified Real Estate Inspector a member must have 250 verifiable inspections and pass a proctored exam to achieve CRI status. In comparison, most “Internet Certifications” do not:
* Require a verifiable 250 inspections.
* Test in a proctored environment – recently a TV reporter took and passed the NACHI exam. He had no inspection experience but was able to research the answers while taking the test.
* Identity verification - With Internet exams, no effort is made to verify the test taker’s identity. One individual could take the test for everyone within a company.
* Require and track continuing education requirements - organizations only require a member to log continuing education but have no means to audit and verify compliance
Internet Certifications and the organizations behind them are bad for the industry. They allow inexperienced inspectors to use credentials such as certified and master inspector that imply far great experience and training. This can erode consumer confidence and potentially can expose all involved in the transaction to liability issues. The short-term answer is to educate the real estate community about the phony Internet certification versus genuie certifications such as NAHI’s Certified Real Estate Inspector or ASHI's NHIE exam.
Rick Bunzel
Pacific Crest Inspections
Affiliate of the Year 2006-2007
WWW.PacCrestInspections.com
360-588-6956
Fax 360-588-6965
Toll Free 866-618-7764
;)
;)
