I'm still sitting of the fence on whether I want to participate in this program. When I first heard about the passing of this bill, I was excited and thought "cool, more inspection work for us". As of September 1st 2008, the Texas Residential Construction Commission began policing rural construction of homes built outside of jurisdiction of city municipality building code inspections. The house bill that passed this new enforcement was meant to require inspections to rural homes and remodel projects exceeding $10,000. Before now, if a home was built in rural county areas, no inspections were required since the home was not located in any city to have the proper permits and inspections that are required when a home is built in city limits. Builders and remodelers will now have to register the homes and projects with TRCC and three phase inspections....pre-pour of the foundation, framing and mechanical and a final inspection, will have to be performed to pass the home.
   But one problem I see with these home inspections is that the builder or remodeler are the ones that hire the inspector from a list of registered inspectors. As with all professions, there are good reputable builders and not so honest ones and I see a large potential for abuse of the system due to the fact that inspectors will feel a need to be easy on these inspections and not cause problems or the builder has the right to simply call another inspector until he finds one that will be easy to work with. If an inspector performs inspections to proper codes and cause problems for the builder....something these people are not used to, then the builder may not want to use that inspector again and move onto the next one on the list. In my opinion, to be fair and effective, TRCC should assign the inspector to the project on a rotation basis to help avoid conflict of interest.
   I am registered as one of these inspectors, but am having second thughts about participating. It is certainly not a perfect plan, but is a step in the right direction to help build better homes.

Kent Keith
Fort Worth / Dallas Home Inspector