As a small business owner and licensed home inspector in your district, I am asking for your support forSenate Bill 704 and specifically bar code amendment 810350. This amendment removes the unfair trade practice that currently exists in F.S.627.711 regarding wind mitigation inspections. Currently, licensed contractor and engineer business owners can utilize unlicensed employees to do wind mitigation inspections while licensed home inspectors, licensed building code inspectors, and licensed architects cannot utilize unlicensed employees. As a small business owner, I have been negatively impacted by the current language in F.S 627.711 and the unfair market advantagethat the language provides for contractors and engineers. Barcode amendment 810350 removes this unfair trade practice by allowing all licensees to utilize employees and levels the playing field for all licensees authorized in statute to conduct wind mitigation inspections. Please support Senate Bill 704 and specifically bar code amendment 810350 for the benefit of many small business owners in your district and throughout thee ntire State of Florida.
No only we have NOW many incompetent Home Inspector underbidding and low balling the real cost of a Home Inspection and other services. And now we are trying to pass an amendment to allow for licensed home inspectors to send “qualified employees” with no license to conduct wind mitigation inspections. BS!! Maybe we can charge $25.00/inspection. It is better than $7.25/hr.
Now that is really BS. I should send my cat and my dog to do inspections. How about my neighbor kid?? This BS is getting out of hand. Licensed proved nothing.
In order to be a HI you do not need a College degree in many cases no training and no experience just read some books and take a test and wallah you are done. All you need is to figure out how to obtain a licensed, buy a flash light and a step ladder and there you go. For report you can use whatever… Funny. We need to pay our lobbyist more money… so he can help us maintain our proffesion… Yeah right!! How about starting a raffle.
[FONT=Verdana]In my neck of the woods some of my competition were car salesmans a year ago wow! That makes a great Home Inspector. Many pay the REALTORs a fee to be in the prefer vendor list. Others, they offer Home Inspections for $250.00 including a wind mitigation and will beat anybody’s price by 10%. Others will drive over 150 miles for a $250,00 inspections regardless of the size of the house. Yeah, the business is getting better by the day. Funny, funny… And NOW lets find some help to do wind mit with no state license. Way to go Russ “unfair advantage” Everybody should be an Engineer and Building Contractor. Why go to colledge? lets get some one to go to Tallahassee and convince the powers to be that we can be anything we want to be. How about a Medical Doctor? I want to be a Lawyer and use my yard man to go to court a represent my clients, yeah why not.
[/FONT]Go MEEKER get them.
I never once saw a Home Inspector stating they are thinking of doing wind mitigations for $50, only a licensed contractor…
John you seem to always be against things. What is your input besides negativity? Do you have something to offer? Do you have ideas besides Meeker for president, and that statement alone speaks volumes…
You seem to be full of negativity and foul thoughts of the profession. Provide some constructive ideas. I am willing to listen.
One thing for sure I would do what I feel is best for our Country as a whole. I wold not play favorites, I would only look out for Americans and what is right.
I agree with Steve. All inspectors should be required to have the same training and the reporting methods should be standard quality- Period. The license means sqwat. Experience and proper training are the only necessary qualifications. The recent tsunami of new inexperienced inspectors is as bad as the equally inexperienced and unqualified re-inspectors in our market. Its almost like a sick circle of retards running around. I think adding more fuel to the fire is a bad idea. My recommendation and support would be behind removing all employees and increasing the training/report requirements.
Your 100% right. I will always have my thoughts and actions on the profession and those who professionally represent it. Wait, this is a home inspection organization site right? My agenda is for my brothers.
Russel,
I would be for an amendment that everyone performing a wind mitigation inspection should be licensed.
Of course, if I were to call on my conspiracy theory…fast forward two years in the future…
Press release from the OiR…“Today, due to multiple misunderstandings, widespread fraud, and improperly filled out 1802 wind mitigation forms, we are eliminating all wind mitigation discounts effective immediately”.
By that time, I am sure that Citizens will meet their goal or be close to it, by eliminating half of their clients, and insurance rates will probably have doubled by then.
That has actually been my concern for awhile now with all of the uneducated /unqualified inspectors and poorly done and fraudulent inspection, that they would eliminate the inspection altogether. I believe not matter what education requirements should be raised and those should be the same for everyone.
Now with all the the uneducated inspectors? This problem occurred when inspectors could NOT do them. The re-inspections program was installed BEFORE home inspectors could do wind mits.
I would also prefer that everyone be licensed and trained. But that is not the facts of life. The facts of life is that there are small businessmen that have an unequal advantage. That is against the law. It had to get changed one way or another and from several contractors I heard, contractors will never give up the hiring of employees to do them.
So then how do you level the playing field? Maybe this is a step for failure that will lead to ALL people being licensed and trained. I don’t care as long as it is even rules.
But this is a just a sign to all the people who say this and that cannot be done. It is done, if it passes is another thing. Getting the bill into legislature is awesome! Getting it voted on within 24 hours of its implementation is even better.
When this was happening I did not see the contractors calling the contractor boards asking them to limit the wind mitigation inspectors to only the license holder with proper training. Maybe I am wrong, but did the contractors call their boards about this? Let me guess, no. So level the field we cannot alter another profession as easy as we can alter own own.
So with all the Stuff people are saying the dual license holders are going to call their respected legislation representatives and ask them to remove the employee clause from their license and to only have the Div 1 contractor with proper training to do the wind mitigations?
I think that you are playing into the contractors hand. Once home inspectors are allowed to hire unlicensed people for wind mits then it won’t be long before contractors will want to hire unlicensed people to perform home inspections. I think that you are opening a door that will be very hard to shut.
I hate to break the news- but it has always been the intent of the insurance industry to kill the wind mitigation program. Citizens alone has approximately 4 billion $ in wind discounts out there. It is a staggering amount of money in play in wind mitigation discounts and they want that money back. Everyone talks about the complicated form. Here’s another news flash- the form is complicated by DESIGN. Has everyone noticed that there is NO Standardized training for ALL licensees completing the wind mitigation form? All by design to INCREASE the error rate and confusion so that the insurance industry can then go back to the legislature and claim failure of the program to kill it. We ( and I mean ALL licensees completing the form) are the “useful idiots” and ar being played by the industry. They are pitting each licensee against the other licensees (divide and concur principle). Do anyone of you have any data that shows that the “lowly licensed home inspector” is the group creating the “high error rate”. Do anyone of you have any data that shows the godlike Div.1 contractor group has a high error rate? Until the infighting stops between us useful idiots and we get together to push for standardized training for all licensees as well as ALL underwriters reviewing our work- we deserve what we get.
Have a good day out there. Oh, and be sure to get your picture of a Zircon MT 6 stuck up against a truss.
I have to agree…a better amendment would be to eliminate the provision that allows those to hire unlicensed personnel
I will support sb7 but I will state that a better amendment would be to eliminate the provision that allows the hiring of unlicensed personnel to perform wind mitigations
Be careful. The next thing OIR will demand is a wind mitigation inspectors license.:roll: Then we’ll have three more years of confusion, fees, fingerprints and finally no wind mitigation inspections. As said before, by design.
The home inspection profession is not a “trade” this is what happens when home inspectors are lumped in together with 'trades" people. Contractors are the reason home inspectors exist, if they had been true to their trades in the first place the home inspection profession would have never come into existence.
The question becomes when anyone can perform home inspections… market forces will adjust the price in accordance with the perceived value. The $99 Florida home inspection special draws ever closer.
Whole thing is a bad idea. No one should be hiring unlicensed people to perform these inspections.
Regardless, this is the bigest waste of time. State of Florida is very specific about the type of licenses that can hire employees to work under them. HI licenses are not that type of license. It is a distinction that goes down to the core legislation that these licenses were legislated under.
This is a bad idea. Contractors have to test for business, accounting, and law. Home Inspectors have no such requirements and should not be allowed to hire people to perform insurance inspections.