Report or Opinion?

A recent issue with a home inspection report has me sighing! Now understand, one of the hats in my closet says: “Appraiser”. And when I do an appraisal report, it has facts, and opinions, which are supported by facts. The quickest way in appraising to get the underwriter riled is to have unsupportable adjustments (opinions) in a report. In this case, a sale, I’m the seller’s agent. The buyer’s home inspector opined that the weather vane had “rotted off the roof”. Really? Actually, the sellers had removed it and installed it on their new home. He opined that the refrigerator was probably going to need to be replaced within 5 years; ditto for the range. Really? The refrigerator is less than a year old; the range less than 3 years old. Here’s the interesting thing about appliances—I knew from somewhere that the serial number of appliances contains the date of manufacture.  I Googled “How can I tell how old my appliances are?” and got thousands of hits—and yes, by simply entering the serial number, you can find out who made it and when. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if you wanted to be “expert” you could dig around in the Consumer Reports archives and find out the performance rating on that particular make and model.

            Now the big zinger the home inspector had in his report was that the roof was “original to the house” and “needed to be replaced” because of “hail damage”. Hmmmmmm…half the house roof is less than 10 years old; the garage roof is less than 8 years old, and to the sellers’ knowledge, they’ve never had hail damage. Can you say: “No credibility with my clients”?  So my point is this: this guy needs a remedial class in fact vs. opinion and also needs to learn how to couch opinions so they sound like opinions. I’d have rather read: “I don’t know how old the appliances are and can’t estimate when they will need to be replaced” than his opinion, which appears pretty lame.         This guy isn’t on “our list”—you know the list we give clients of competent service providers. He’s still on the other agency’s list, but perhaps that will change. When you blow a bunch of stuff in a report, even the stuff that make have validity kind of gets lost in the shuffle.  I don’t know the condition of the roof (I don’t hold myself out as a home inspector) I do know that my sellers did not represent it was a new roof; and in my state (PA) we have language in our Agreement of Sale regarding home inspections which says: “The fact that an item or system is at or near the end of its useful life does not constitute a material defect.” This report does constitute a material defect!