Paul,

Good post! I hope that the legislature passes a law this session. I think the senate has it worked out now so it is a good law. It took about three years for them to get that far. It will provide some standardization in the field and there is not much now -- or so we hope it will provide that.

Personally, I feel that when push comes to shove, the quality of the inspection depends more on the dedication and work ethic of the person doing the inspection, along with the knowledge base, than with any one organization. At Bellingham Technical College we, the inspection instructors by our public presence, see a number of local inspections, often at the request of upset buyers. Of the four BTC instructors, two are ASHI (one ASHI and NACHI) and two are NACHI. My experience is that the consumer complaints are very evenly spread among ASHI, NACHI, NAHI members. I have seen some good work, and bad work, from all of them. It all boils down to the integrity of the person, there seem to be shortcuts some people manage to take, no matter what the initial qualifications or the intitials of the organization they belong to. And, by law right now, any working inspector had better have the WSDA structural pest inspector license. People try to get around it but many of those people have been fined or put out of business by WSDA in the past few years since they cracked down on illegal inspections.