Home Inspection Questions You Should Ask

Questions You Should Ask Before Hiring a Professional Home or Commercial Building Inspector and how our company answers these questions

Exactly how many professional inspections has the inspector made and how many years has he or she been performing professional inspections that will actually be at the property making our property inspection?

Our answer is EACH and EVERY inspector looking at the property will have made over 15,000 professional inspections since 1973. Not the accumulative number from many inspectors in the office or the national organization, franchise. Remember your inspection will only produce a benefit to you and a result that is directly proportional to the experience the inspector on your inspection has under their the belt. How many houses or commercial properties have they inspected? For how many years? Have they actually designed, built, engineered and serviced residential and commercial buildings off all ages, from the oldest to the newest homes, building and projects, are they currently getting their hands dirty doing it everyday as we are? And do they have current construction management experience? Good home inspection takes experience and plenty of it, it takes many, many years of hard earned learning from the many mistakes we and others have made in the field to better serve you.

What is your educational background?

Our answer is we are engineers, certified in construction technology and the owner and inspector has a degree in adult education. Many inspectors will market themselves by saying they are "degreed or degreed structural engineers" or the such. Just because they are a degreed engineer or even a Professional Engineer with a license dose not mean they have the experience or working knowledge to properly inspect a home or building or produce a comprehensive and detailed inspection report or to advocate your best interests to the maximum they can be. Home Buyer Advocates have coupled our formal education with 28 plus years of field education while actively working as builders, engineers, architects and service pros. We are engineers and IF our sole qualifications were JUST that we were degreed engineers with some inspection experience we would know based on our 28 years of working experience and day in and day out working knowledge installing servicing and repairing all home and most commercial systems we would not be properly qualified to inspect any property to the high standards and level that you deserve.

What makes you think you are qualified to inspect residential and commercial new construction?

We are also working area designers, builders and engineers getting very dirty everyday actually DOING the work, supervising crews, servicing HVAC, electrical and plumbing equipment, project management, allocating materials, estimating, remodeling, building custom houses and light commercial projects of all types and we have been successfully doing it since 1973. We know what it takes to build and service professionally and what the current new industry approaches and standards are, emerging technologies, the alternative methods and materials used and what the manufactures specifications on use and installation are. If we don’t know we have the contacts, resources and take the time to find out to better serve you. We have also made many thousands of inspections on new construction during all stages of builds and have successfully managed many thousands of upgrades and repairs by builders as your advocates on your behalf.

Since you are working builders, remodelers and service professionals don't you think this could be a conflict of interest since you are also professional inspectors finding things wrong that may need, repair, service or remodeling?

We never mix the two professions in anyway that would present any kind of conflict of interest. We feel it would be infact a large unethical conflict interest if we sold our build, remodeling, and service work while inspecting properties so we do not do this, nor would we accept a job correcting problems we found during an inspection of ours. However we do fully utilize our unique daily exposure and long term experience (28 years) actually building homes and light commercial buildings, designing and servicing them, and this current knowledge base and all the related skill sets to uniquely better serve our inspection clients.

What type of a report do you produce?

Unlike most other inspectors we research what we find by calling manufactures, their engineering departments, our contacts at testing laboratories, and by consulting our extensive staff of Professional engineers, architects, electrical, plumbing and HVAC pros or by accessing our national data base developed over the last thirty years of manufacturing, product, installation and safety standards. We then provide you with detailed and comprehensive information and report as to what we find, what the industry standards are, how to remedy the problem and how much it will cost. You simply cannot do this with an on site computer generated or hand written checklist report. You receive our report the next day.

Can we see a sample of your report?

Yes, samples of some of our recent actual report summaries can be viewed on line at this web site. The summary is part of a full 36 page or larger comprehensive report containing, safety information, Inspection specific graphics, maintenance information, and industry standards used to evaluate this property.

Do you guarantee your inspections?

YES 100%

How do you obtain new inspections and exactly how do you market your self or your business? And do you rely on or market through Realtors in any way?

The vast majority of our new inspections come from word of mouth referrals from satisfied customers we have inspected homes and commercial buildings for in the past, some from professional affiliations, a small ad in the phone book and of course, our internet site, but under no circumstances have we ever marketed through, relied on in any way or accepted referrals from or been affiliated with Realtors or their associates for new business to better serve you. We and the vast majority of our customers feel this is a conflict of interest and does not serve our clients best interests.

What training do you or your staff participate in on a regular basis?

Along with the required Educational units all Licensed Illinois Home Inspectors are required to have 
We Professionally Train Home Inspectors. Unlike correspondence courses, seminars, or weekend or weeklong certification programs, or even testing only, we train through field training on actual home and commercial building inspections ( by far the best way to train a professional home or building inspector, an experienced inspector is always at the inspection with the trainee) plus classroom study and testing while we prepare home inspectors to perform professional inspections, manage the business and be successful at the upcoming Illinois and Wisconsin licensing exams. We also regularly attend BOCA training seminars and other professional training and development nationwide given by Universities, private industries, organizations and manufactures.

How do we contact you for pricing, to schedule a home inspection or any other questions we may have and what is the necessary lead time?

When you call us the Master Inspector will answer, not a receptionist or machine. If we are on an inspection we will call you back at our earliest convenience after the inspection to provide the information you are looking for and provide a rate quote and schedule your inspection usually within 24 hours.

Email:homecheck1@aol.com