I got a phone call from an agent the other day, he said he has a copy of one of my reports from about 2 weeks ago. It was on a house that the buyers were having loan problems with the VA... imagine that, and the deal fell through! So now, 2 weeks later, they have another buyer looking to purchase the house. I think they got my report from the previous buyer that had given it to the listing agent, and the listing agent must have been waving like a flag.... "I can save you money on your Home Inspection, it was just done" I told the agent that the report was owned by the client I prepared it for and that it was not transferrable. Besides, that was 2 weeks ago, things can change, things can break, things can leak... etc.
This new agent representing the buyers, asked me if I could check the things I wrote up in the first report for them. So basically what they are trying to do is save a couple hundred bucks on a 345K sale. I get trying to save money, but on a purchase as large as 345K, you get excited about saving maybe $250? That's a big investment Mr Buyer... is it worth it?
The main item was the roof. I wrote a blog about it a while ago, here. So I went to my fellow inspectors inspection forum and asked everybody's opinion.
In my 11 years as a Home Inspector, I have never run across this scenario. I got plenty of suggestions from "They were going to pay for a Home Inspection anyway, why shouldn't it be to you... lol, funny, to tell them you'll do it verbally with no report for $200 an hour. The one I chose, and can live with is to "Have them sign a full release and only do a verbal reinspection with nothing in writing to them." Thank you Glenn Fricke for the suggestion.
I think this is a good solution, I can live with this. Have you guys ever run across this type of thing... and what did you do?
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