The title of the post and the question itself probably seem a bit silly. Everybody here on AR is in the same business whether they're a Realtor, Inspector, Mortgage Broker, Stager. Quite often though I see people confuse industry with job. A good example was this last Friday.
I was taken by surprise during one of my inspections Friday, of a Clarkston WA house. I had an exchange with a Realtor from Lewiston ID that went something like this:
Inspector: So, have you been keeping tracks of the changes in the home inspection side of things?
Realtor: No. Why should I pay attention to your industry?
Huh? Since I didn't have a ready answer, I think she had a point. And in my usual way, I thought of all sorts of good answers - hours later. Before I arrived at those answers though, I had to think it through. So now I have an answer, of sorts. Why should you pay attention to my industry? Because we're in the same industry and what affects me affects the Realtor as well.
Washington State is in the process of licensing the home inspectors that work here. This is a fairly large change and, in SE Washington, not well recognized. Washington currently requires inspectors to have Structural Pest Inspector licenses - only three inspectors out of a dozen here carry that license and the others work with a degree of impunity. Clarkston and Pullman are 400 miles from Olympia. In terms of attention, we're pretty well ignored (except the Department of Revenue!)
The changes that are coming though are going to make it more difficult for Realtors to avoid the licensed inspector for their preferred inspector (and please, I am not bashing the Realtor here - the unlicensed inspector is a different story.) Inspectors working in Washington will have to include their license number on the report. Brokers will be looking for those (or should be). Without it, they place themselves in a position of legal jeopardy. There are literally dozens of other things that will be changing.
The Realtors don't know it. And it is completely my fault.
I haven't communicated the changes to them. I keep up with what is happening in the various aspects of the industry. I am always curious as to what is happening in somone else's neck of the woods, what problems are they facing, what can I learn, who can I help? To spend hours with my head in a code book or online reading Russel Ray or Steven L Smith or online journals is second nature and, quite literally, a pleasure. I'm even worse with college basketball.
It's part of my job to help the Realtors by keeping them fully informed of things that can adversely affect them and their clients. Usually, I do that by giving them the best inspection I can (shameless plug here: I'm a pretty good inspector!) but sometimes I can accomplish more good by working with the Realtors than with our clients.
We share the same goal - to help our clients find homes that they will be happy in for as long as they choose to stay there. That's our industry. We all have a part to play in it.
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