Home Inspections and NC Standards of Practice - Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High-Point, Chapel Hill, Burlington

A recent pre-listing inspection I performed for a homeowner this week reinforced just how little homeowners know about inspections in general and how much we inspectors have to do to educate them.

Before I tell this story, I want to relate what my aunt told me regarding what she wanted in an inspection. Her gripe was along the lines of this:

'I don't want to know about the broken lock or the door that sticks, I can see those myself.  I want to know if the furnace is working.'

All very well and good. Just the big issues I can't see for myself.  But let's look at this typical expectation, and why it needs to be addressed:

• First, many homeowners don't notice these small things when they are being shown the house, and when they do notice them later upon buying and moving in, who do you think they will beangry at when they do discover them on their own ? (The inspector, homeowner, Realtor ? All three ? yes ! )
• Second, the inspection report provides legal documentation that can be used, and often is, to negotiate a lower price at the closing table.  Without full documentation, leverage is absent. Furthermore, even though everyone may have been aware that the lock was not working, the new homeowner ( in a Buyer's inspection) may claim ignorance when his home is broken into later and sue for non-disclosure.
• Third, some states, like NC, have Standards and Practices that govern exactly what an inspector is supposed to report on.  It doesn't matter if the homeowner may or may not notice these things him/herself, or if the homeowner thinks these things are significant or not.

So, at the end of the pre-listing inspection, I went over some of the items with the homeowner in person.  Several times I informed him that a majority of the items we found might seem insignificant to him and were easily repaired by an average homeowner with little cost or skill.  These items, however small, fell within the scope of the Standards of Practice that NC Home Inspectors are required to operate under.

I also emphasised that these same things would show up on a buyer's inspector's report and how smart it was to address these things in advance so there would be less to haggle over at closing.

He nodded and seemed to understand..........

Later however, in a conversation with the listing agent, I found out that the homeowner complained about how some of the findings seemed insignificant to him, as if they should not have been included on the report.

( Just think how frustrated he would have been had he been presented with this list of repairs 10 days before closing, when his only option was to either fix them in a short period of time, or discount 2-3x what it would have actually cost him to repair them ahead of time!  Or lose the sale ! It happens ! )   

The agent had not fully read the report yet, so she was only sharing what the homeowner had said.

At this point I assured her (and I hope she assured him)  that we had conducted the inspection in accordance with the NC Home Inspector Standards of Practice, and that even if the item seemed minor, if it fell within the parameters of the Standards, we were required to report it. The section that I referred to speaks to broken items or those not functioning as intended. Here is the section below with the pertinent sections in bold/Italics:

SECTION .1100 - NC HOME INSPECTOR STANDARDS OF PRACTICE AND CODE OF ETHICS