I was helping a fellow inspector by reviewing a report with his new software (brand not important - let’s not debate that here, PLEASE) and I found it too complicated. I think a lot of us think our clients think more about us (and our reports) than they do.
Real world, (assuming client is at the inspection), the client relies on what we say and spends 5 mins? 10 mins? 20 mins? reading the report afterwards? I’m betting it’s closer to 5 but maybe I’m wrong. If the client isn’t at the inspection maybe they spend 10 minutes reading the report?
Of course, we all love to think that every client reads every word we type but I think we’re dreaming. I guess my point is… as it’s always been in this biz… get to the point in the reports!!! Nobody is combing through paragraph after paragraph of our BS. I’m putting my money that the average client spends between 5 and 10 minutes reading the report.
My initial thought was that you meant too “wordy (verbose).” Then I thought about it a little and surmised that you meant too technical. The problem is often the words we use can lead to different assumptions by the reader depending on their background and education. We don’t have access to that information so my goal is to be concise.
The three words most important in any SOP are inspect, report, and describe. The first (inspect) may or may not include one of the other two (report, describe). Describe may be a singular major descriptor such as a color a location or a type. Report should be for the defect that needs an explanation.
When someone asks you the time they do not want to know how to build a watch!
How long does a client spend looking at a report? Only long enough to view the pictures!
I have noticed a definite shift in the mentality of my clients. It wasn’t that long ago that I was able to interact with my them, and they would willingly participate. My policy “was” to send emails or call to followup to be sure they have the information they need. This was typically at least twice after the report was delivered (1 day/3 days+7 days or longer, as needed for a particular home/client).
The last few years has been difficult at best to get clients to even reply back to the first followup inquiry. Many claim the inspection was great and the report was exactly what they hoped for, but they claim they are just so busy, blah, blah, blah.
I had a client last year that I inspected five homes for in two months. Saved them many a nightmare and lots of money, when booking their next inspection, they always raved about how happy they were with my work. During one of my followups after the second home, I asked for a Google Review. They promised to leave a glowing review once everything settled down and they moved into their new home (moving from out of state). Well, that review never happened.
Anyway, I always listen to my clients reactions to how they are taking the information at the walkthrough, and again during my followups. I notice the degree and quality of the questions they ask changing. In a nutshell, many of these people should stay in apartments! I have even instructed a few clients to (literally)… when they receive my report, “look at the photos first” as the significant issues will always have a photo(s), then go back and read through the text of all the narratives. This method will help them sort out the complexities of the concerns, and refresh their minds of the discussions we had at the home during the walkhrough. Appearantly this is working, as the questions have improved to be more focused on the important issues, and not loaded with minor crap!
Yes, times they be a changing, and it definitely takes constant monitoring and adjustments.
Good luck!
I once had a client (first time buyer) ask that I only send the summary and thought to myself that their agent wasn’t giving them any due diligence since the agent had made the same request, saying “the client only needs a summary of health and safety issues.” After the inspection I met the client at a coffee shop to go over everything and I had to reiterate to the client that not everything will be in the summary and being brand new to home ownership, they would benefit from reading the entire report as I will include a bunch of home maintenance information for them. I mentioned several times how this information would NOT be in the summary.
I ran into that client a few months later at the grocery store, and they started asking me all kinds of questions about home maintenance. Many of the items were covered in the report. Long story short ,they never read the whole thing and only read the summary…
Some people buy homes like they are buying a new vacuum. I recently purchased a carpet cleaner. I opened the owner’s manual and went straight to how to put it together and how to turn it on. The manual is now in a file folder.
My software tracks individually if and when the client and their agent views the report, even giving me text alerts when that happens. I can say with a high-degree-of-confidence that the vast majority open and presumably read the report. After that, it is hard to categorize clients. A few will read and question everything barraging you with emails or phone calls. However, most you will never hear from again. My conclusion is that most have already made a strong decision to buy or sell the house, they are just looking for anything major that would impact the deal.
That said, we still need to write full reports. At some point, something expensive is going to fail (after the sale) and that part of the report will likely get scrutinized.
50% glance at it
10% never actually even look at it.
30% read most of it
8% read every little detail
2% call and complain it wasn’t even longer with more details and hence why most of our reports end up as long as they do.
I agree with whoever said, “They look at the Pictures”, if the pictures clearly communicate the issues.
The Summary! May be they read that. The Realtors do. That’s where I highlighted the negotiable items!
Someone said it right! The customer and everyone else will dig in deeper into your narrative if they find something in the dwelling, even much later, to try to nail you down to pay for the repair.
For this later reason, I recommend you write clearly about what you saw and did not see (observe-note-report) and for that you may have missed, make sure your contract spells out the SOP limitations.
I have been a consumer of home inspection reports, of sort, for the last twelve years. I spent nine years prior to that writing them. As a consumer, I find most of them full of fluff with little useful information and I blame the tendency of inspectors to believe that they can cover their butts by what they report when, in fact, their vulnerability is what they contract to report.
When a slow leak in a pipe within a wall cavity is discovered after the buyer has moved in, they will open and carefully read the plumbing section of their report (often for the first time) to see if the inspector reported it. Finding he did not, they will think they have a case until they (or, more likely, their attorney) reads the contract and finds that the inspection they paid for excluded “hidden defects”.
Tiptoeing through a paranoid description of the condition of a home using fancy software and ambiguous language in lengthy paragraphs that say nothing will not save a home inspector from a lawsuit. It will be his contract and his advertising that does that. Pedro’s got it right.
If I were to suggest what is and isn’t negotiable, I think the realtors, buyer & seller, as well as my fellow veteran home inspectors here in Internachi would advise me to stay in my own lane.
I don’t get involved in deciding what is negotiable on someone else’s contract to buy a home.
I think you had it right when you said
Maybe stop there and be happy with a job well done.
How long they spend looking at a report isn’t an inspectors concern. An inspectors job is to report on safety issues and system and major component defects that could affect their client’s physical or financial well-being. Report content should provide that information clearly and without too much digression.
If the client is too lazy to read the report, that’s on them. If they aren’t educated well enough to understand it, or if their English isn’t very good, then their agent should be responsible for helping them That’s why agents get the big money.
We will have clients of all types and trying to tailor reports to individual understandings is more work than it’s worth. Do your job, keep it simple.
Here in FL, like a few other states, insurance really drives the transaction… they can’t buy it if they can’t insure it. I’ve found lately that buyers and their agents look to see those issues that will make the house uninsurable more than anything else. If they can satisfy insurance - “I need to have 5 years’ life left on that roof!” - they’re happy. And those issues are all that are looked at.
Check out page 3.
It asks Remaining useful life (years)
Used to be acceptable at 3, then 4 now 5 years.
Whatever I answer I say for instance 7 years estimated.
No one has ever rejected that. If they do too bad I’m not taking that word out.
Could you elaborate further upon what the complexity was for us, please.
Reporting Template?
Was it how the report was laid out by component?
The amount of reportable components for each section?
Was it the Observation section, the Recommendation section, or the Limitation section, or the Summary section?
Was it the Canned narratives, or lack thereof? The length of narratives.
Imbedded Links?
Looking forward for your response.
As for how long do my clients take to read the inspection report? It takes many of my clients hour upon hour to review my reports. Yes some made up there minds and have purchased the home long before properly assessing the report to it fullest while many more return with a phone call to review the report in full. I have spent on average 1 hour per section with my clients on the other end of the phone as we review the summary section of the report first, then we cover the important issues more extensively. Many of my clients take there time and negotiate, in good faith, prior purchasing the residence.
I might be old-school but I just like a report that reads top to bottom… like a book. This particular report had “boxes” of issues that went side-to-side and top to bottom along with tabs along the side to hop around the report and tabs on the top to toggle between various information. Just too much going on. I was left feeling like I could easily miss parts of the report. It turns out there is also a PDF version that I could have clicked on and that’s more traditional.
I agree with some of the other responses, Summary and picture captions.
I sent a report Friday night, received an email notification report has been opened, 5 minutes later received call from buyer that he read the report and had a couple of questions. I’m guessing that 97.675% of all reports are read at this rate of speed.