I have enough construction experience to do it myself.
When you are buying a new home you are, as the owl in Bambi says, "twitter-pated". You have searched high and low for the perfect house. It is easy to not look for the flaws with an objective mind. The lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. The doctor that gives himself a physical ends up a patient. If doctors and lawyers are smart enough to go to a colleague for an objective opinion then shouldn't you do the same when buying a house?
My best friend is a contractor and he will do it cheaper.
First let me clear up the legal aspects of this. Only a licensed Home Inspector can perform a home inspection for a fee. This does not prevent a contractor from acting within the bounds of his license. A contractor is within the bounds of his license to perform an inspection and offer to repair or replace anything he finds. It is not within the bounds of his license to get paid a fee for that home inspection. The Arizona Board of Technical Registration rules state that a home Inspector shall not perform, or offer to perform, for an additional fee, any repairs to a structure that has been inspected by that inspector or the inspector's firm for a period of twenty-four months following the inspection. The contractors motivation is inspecting a home is to build a relationship of trust with the client and find work to do on the home. If work is not found then the client will likely refer their friends. The best time to have a contractor look at the home is when you already know there is something that needs to be fixed and you want a price to fix it. There is very little motivation for a contractor to be as thorough as the standard of practice for home inspectors requires. Most contractors have never read the home inspection standards of practice. The small things like opening every window & door, operating every faucet, putting a tester in every outlet, and checking the automatic garage opener functions are very low on their list of priorities since the inspection has to be free.
The best person for the job is the first one that returns my phone call at 9:00am on Sunday morning.
Home Inspection requires integrity. It is not acceptable to let serious defects go just to please a referral source. The last time I checked Sunday is still considered the Sabbath day for the vast majority of people in the United States. If it is ok to miss church just to be right by the phone to potentially make a buck then what else is it ok to compromise on? My grandpa operated a small grocery store in Safford Arizona for many years. Everyone told him he could not survive unless he opened on Sunday. He wouldn't compromise his values to make a buck. He raised 10 kids and they never went without. Just last year he gave every one of his 100+ descendants a bag with 15-20 coins. Most are lady head dimes, buffalo nickels, solid silver coins and wheat backed pennies. All of those coins were saved from that store. Each bag is probably worth less than $15 right now. If saved for another 30 years they could be very valuable. For all those naysayers that say you can't get to the top without working on Sunday, just try to eat at Chik-fil-A on Sunday. What is the bottom line? Integrity matters.
I can send an email to the listing realtor and expect them to respond in a timely manner with the lock box code.
Responses from emails should not be expected back in less than 24 hours and never over the weekend. It takes a phone call follow up to make sure the email was read. Many people get their email on their phones and many don't. I use these general rules. If I tell you on the phone that an email is coming then I expect you to read it as soon as you get to a computer. If I don't tell you the email is coming then I don't expect an answer until the end of next business day. The best time to verify that the utilities are on and get the lock box code is the day that the contract is accepted. That way it is taken care of well in advance and there are no rushes at the last minute.
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