I am curious

How many of you make your living doing home inspections, and how many of you make your living doing insurance inspections.

Me more with insurance inspections but I do both.

I personally prefer insurance inspections.

I do not need to deal with Realtors nearly as much and there is much less hassles with scheduling.

Home inspections are always needed yesterday until I rearrange my whole week to accommodate the person with the problem then the morning of or the day before it gets canceled do to a problem with the bank or credit or some other bullsh-t.

I would not mind Verbal walk thru consultations but home inspections are a hassle that I do not enjoy and the pay is no where near what it should be.Oh Yeah Realtors, Realtors, Realtors i never have seemed to care for most of them to much even way before getting into the inspection industry. I have always found a great many of them to be quite annoying and aggravating. I have never really seen the need for them.

I imagine some of the reasons i do not do to many home inspections is I seem to charge much more than most for them and I am not willing to work screwie hours or on MY weekends. I also do not advertise them as I get most by word of mouth. People who see Internet advertising for home inspections are usually only concerned with obtaining the lowest price.

I put 4 points in the same category and I would rather not do them. I never do them alone for less than $125 and never for any reason less than $100. I hate them, it is the only inspection that the person paying you hopes you do a crappy job and they normally are pissed when you do an accurate job. My opinion is that the insurance companies should have to be the ones paying for them. If I were to invest in a property then i would have to pay for an inspection not the owner of the property and it should be no different for the insurance companies.

I really do find these forums to be quite good for venting. It feels good to say the truth and not to care what others think :slight_smile:

Home inspections. The insurance inspections are considered extra income for me and if they were done away with, I wouldn’t care.

Explains a lot! Too bad I didn’t save this before the edit.

Yes, believe it or not, insurance inspections are Nationwide (pun intended), and I perform them often. (Amazing how a tornado does the same or more damage than a hurricane, and more often).

I am with Eric on this. Home inspections are the bread and butter, insurance inspections are the frosting on the cake.

What edit is that dumbass?

Home Inspections by far. Insurance inspections are filler (gas money). I’d never make it if I had to count on them for my income.

We have one full time insurance inspector, two part time insurance inspectors and I keep my schedule full with just home inspections. I am currently looking for more help. I started with the MSFH project and never looked back now we do only retail inspections.

Insurance inspections are not worth doing one at a time. An add-on to a home inspection is a must. IMHO

I Offer both, and do very well with insurance inspections.

I can make a very comfortable living off of Insurance Inspections alone if I had to.

But John is absolutely correct. It’s a volume business.

Honestly, if your doing well in HI’s and only performing WM as part of a Home Inspection, it probably isn’t worth trying to tap into the fulltime insurance inspection end of the business. That is, unless your a multi-inspector firm.

Too many of the price shoppers (which seems to be the majority of buyers today) are now being coached to only go with the cheap inspector who will throw in a free Wind Mitigation inspection. That is now the second question out of their mouths when you quote a price to them. “Does that include the Wind Mitigation inspection?”. “My Realtor told me to only go with the guys who give a Wind Mitigation inspection as a bonus.”

You can try and explain to them that this may not be the best time to do the Wind Mit until you are blue in the face. I rarely find any homes that have the needed opening protection installed or available for the homes. We still find people who think masking tape will protect their windows, or worse, duct tape. These are the same people who buy a couple of big cans of beanie weenies, a pack of D cell batteries and a gallon of drinking water for hurricane preparedness. They are also the ones you see in the news after the storm singing the blues.

I tell them to ask their Realtor to take $150.00 off of their commission to cover the charge! :mrgreen:

I actually tell the perspective Client that if done properly, the inspection can save you thousands of dollars and if not, you will be calling me anyway to straighten out the mess that the “throw everything in for free” inspector created!

WOW!

Who would have thought that in the last 60 years, Minnesota has averaged 27 tornadoes a year!

You learn something new every day!:wink:

I don’t even waste my time anymore with them. I tell them then they definately need to go with the cheap, inexperienced inspector. I manage to get enough work from people who know what the hell they are doing and know what an inspection is worth. There are dry periods but they always seem to come about the time I need a break from the stupid farm anyway. I occasionally get a call back from them when they get their report from their “cheap” guy and it consists of four pages of notebook paper, no pictures and comments like, “Garage…yes”

Yep… and days like this really make it interesting…

Greatest Number of Tornadoes in Minnesota (1950-2010)
One Year 113 in 2010
One Month 71 in June 2010
One Day 48 on June 17, 2010

http://climate.umn.edu/doc/historical/tornadic.htm

Note to self: Avoid trip to Minnesota in the month of June!
The good news, dolphin are running here so I’ll be out fishing in my boat!

So are the kings. Smoked fish dip is in the process. Went shopping and came home to 2 kings on my dock in the shade with ice on them. The beauty of the water.

Just checked the steaks and they are doing nicely. I added a little more soaked mesquite and am good till i take them off the heat.

A little rotisserie chicken here.

Little… you ain’t kiddin’! Looks like a pidgeon to me!!! :shock::wink:

Since it was for the wife, my son and myself, it was plenty. We also had chicken salad for lunch today.

Here are some “small” ribs.

Some small steaks and lobster

A small roast

Some small Chicken Nachos

And a few lobsters caught by me in one trip.

Enjoy!:mrgreen:

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