Selling a home in Minneapolis? You're required to have a city-approved inspector conduct a Truth in Housing inspection, and they will charge you at least $175 to do it. They claim it is to "improve the housing stock" in Minneapolis. I say it's a bunch of Hooey. If Minneapolis wanted to improve the housing stock, they would perform actual inspections of homes prior to establishing an "estimated market value" which is how our property taxes are assessed. These inspections would be on a regular basis of each and every home in the city, not just on those that are being put on the market.
As it stands today, one of the most common required repairs is for the home owner to place a backflow 
preventer and all outside spickets and the laundry tub. Now, if the city of Minneapolis were really trying to improve the housing stock, why would they let homes that are 80-100 years old sit without these backflow preventers until the time the homeowner wanted to move?
Nope, I'm convinced that these backflow preventer manufacturers are in cahoots with my city officials. The US Census estimates about there are about 171,000 housing units in Minneapolis. If, on average, these homes have two outside spickets and one laundry tub that require backflow preventers, that's 513,000 backflow preventers. They average between $5-$10 per piece, so let's compromise and say at $7 per piece, that's $3,591,000 for the backflow preventer manufacturer. The city of Minneapolis 7% sales tax would net the city over $251,370 (and I'm not even including the $21,375,000 the city would get at $175 per inspection).
Think of what we could do for the Minnesota economy if we made other requirements for home owners prior to the sale of a home. We could require Minnesotans to buy a Ford truck (could we save the Ford Plant in St.Paul?) or buy a Northwest airline ticket, or bring your car to a Northwest Mechanic for an oil change. These changes would be more effective ways to protect both consumers and our economy than the current Truth-in housing evaluation.
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