Sonoran Property Inspections- Reducing Agents Liability

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When selecting a home inspector for your client, you should bear uppermost in your mind that the home inspector is your first line of defense against a meritless negligence claim.

Top Eight Ways You Can Sharply Reduce Your Professional Liability Exposure:

Insist that your client hire a professional home inspector to inspect the property, and strongly recommend that the inspection also include ancillary inspections for the presence of wood-destroying insects, and such harmful pathogens as mold and radon.

Take the time to manage your clients’ expectations of what can reasonably be discovered by a limited visual inspection of a property that is full of furniture, carpets and stored items that further physically limit the scope of an already limited inspection.

Be sure to carry your own Professional Liability Insurance to protect yourself from allegations that you should have independently verified that the property was defect-free.

Review the inspector’s Pre-Inspection Agreement to make sure that it contains a Notice Clause that requires the buyers to notify the inspector within no more than 14 days of the discovery of any defect for which they believe he is responsible.

Avoid conflicts of interest.  Never recommend an inspector who participates in preferred vendor schemes.  All major inspector associations prohibit participation in such undue praise-purchasing schemes.  You have a fiduciary duty to recommend the very best inspectors based solely on merit, not money.  And it goes without saying that you should never recommend any inspector with whom you have a close personal or blood relationship.

Recommend the high-value inspector, not the low-price inspector.  Good inspectors charge accordingly.  Trying to save your client $100 on an inspection could cost them $10,000.

Only recommend inspectors who adhere to a strict Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice, such as members of InterNACHI.

The above is from a article written by NACHI and can be shared by all agents. Sonoran Property Inspections thought this is worth passing along and thanks NACHI for writing a great article that should help agents reduce their liability.