Very good advice. Thanks.
Shawn,
You don’t have to justify anything to me or anyone here. I merely wanted to mention that experience is so important in this line of work. I hear the words “fairly handy” fairly often. Many people outside the profession (not you 
) think that inspecting homes is child’s play and easy money. I wish it were; I’m still looking for that easy money.
Gary,
Pick a different occupational example if you want to scold me. There’s no comparison with the schooling a doctor receives and the mandatory experience under mentors he/she must receive during residency. Don’t be ridiculous.
In Texas, we have a brand new law that says besides schooling one must show proof of experience to become an inspector. Or along with some schooling, one can intern under an inspector for a period of time. Whether or not you agree with home inspection regulation, can the lack of experience be a good thing?
Sorry to break the thread, Shawn. I’ll step back.
Bruce
PS Gary, did you “ding” me on the reputation gauge for stating my opinion?? wow.:shock:
No. I am sure you ticked off so newbies. I only give out greenies.
I actually really appreciate the comments. That why I posted here and asked for advice. Maybe I did get a little defensive:mrgreen: . I think this was one of my first lessons, as I’ll have to do better in the future when trying to make a potential client feel comfortable with my abilities.
In a down market place like what’s going on now, the key to be able to market yourself effectively. Primarily, most of the business comes from referrals from RE agents for newbies. If you don’t spend the time to market yourself on a consistent regular basis, your chances of surviving with part time work is not good.
No one will call you if they don’t know you. If you don’t pound the pavement visiting the RE offices, realtor’s meeting, etc., no one will even think twice of giving you work. I’d also doubt that any established home inspector will refer work to you because there isn’t that much to go around now. Everybody is seeing 40% to 50% drops in the number of inspections in CA compared to last year.
I’d suggest that unless you have a lot of established realtor friends who will refer work to you, think twice about this.
Shawn,
I admire your motivation to make a change but you need to keep several things in mind:
==As somebody who is breaking in, you will only get the opportunities when the “first choice” is unavailable and the client dials the second or third choice.
==As a service business in the real estate market, you schedule the appointments based on your clients schedule or the realtors schedule not when YOUR available.
==Realtors tend to remember the bad things not the I bent over backwards to help you thing
In short what I am saying is that in a down market its going to be tough breaking into this business, trying to do it part time increases the difficulty. As it is more than 50% of the NACHI inspectors (of the recent NACHI poll on number of inspections a week) are doing less than 3 inspections a week. Now one would think thats that about $3600 a month (300 x 12) but thats gross, after subtracting insurance and other expensives that really more like $1500 a month and most are full time.
Consider this a dose of reality. Many inspectors jump in and do just fine but the mortality rate is significant…
//Rick
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Rick Bunzel
Pacific Crest Inspections
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As someone who is also considering inspecting part-time, I’m just wondering what is considered full-time. Since most NACHI inspectors are doing less than 3 a week with an average inspection of about 4 hours each, then they are inspecting less than 12 hours a week, right? If they go back to their office to write up the report for about one hour each, then that’s another 3 hours. Does “full-time” mean it’s your only job, even if your working 15 hours or less a week? Is most of the remaining 25 hours of the standard 40-hour work week spent marketing your services? Is a lot of time spent just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring? I hope not to offend anyone, because I am just wondering how a typical day is spent.
Don’t put too much stock in the polls you see here as they represent a very small portion of the membershhip of NACHI.
Interesting that a NAHI inspector would issue NACHI Inspector ‘statisics’ without having all of the facts. However…it’s good to know I’m WAY over what he says is 50%. Of course, the whole post has grammatical and spelling errors - maybe an indication of the quality of NAHI Inspectors…
IMHO
Now, Now, let’s play nice. Having an non-NACHI post in the forum should be inviting, and polite. Since that seems to be the reason we don’t exclude people from our forum like other HI organizations do, we like people of all levels.
imho,
tom
Amen.
Hey Shawn 
Here my 2 cents :-;;
Starting a part time inspection business in this incredibly slow home market may play into your hand. Inspectors are quitting in droves so if you can at least establish and maintain a marketing presence now, your hard work may pay off during the next growth cycle. Breaking in during a hot market is often difficult.
Yeah, I agree. What IS uncalled for is an inspector from another organization coming here spouting unsubstantiated statistics as if they were accurate. Just brushes against the grain.
Doug :mrgreen:
okay now that I have completed cert training and downloaded my certs how do i get me cert number for CA
WOW! It took you 8 years (age of this thread) to get that done? :shock:
You don’t get a “CA Cert Number,” you get (and have) a NACHI #.
Yours is NACHI15082723