About one hour ago I sat for, and thankfully passed, my National Home Inspector Examination.
The scoring system used to grade the test is scaled between 200-800. A score above a 500 is required to pass. I scored a 647.
Background on me: I worked in the HVAC controls field about 15 years ago and since that time serve as a Facilities Manager for a school district. My limited background in construction probably had minimal impact on my passing.
About 2 months ago I attended a Home Inspection Training Institute in Canton,Ohio (Homespection Training Institute). It is an 80-Hour, hands-on class that includes actual home inspections as part of it’s curriculum.
I also joined InterNachi shortly before that time. With Internachi, I worked through all of their pre-licensure classes, passed their certification exam, and worked through all of my continuing educations classes with them.
The additional things I did to prepare for the NHIE included using the 2000 practice test questions provided by InterNachi AND purchasing the 2 study guides available on the National Home Inspection Exam website. The 2000 practice questions on InterNachi were helpful. The two study guides purchased through NHIE were only moderately helpful. My biggest beef is that there were a significant number of questions on my exam that had content NOT covered in those two study guides available through NHIE. Conversely, I studied a lot of things in those textbooks that, although is good information for me to know in this field, the test never touched upon, even remotely.
I guess my biggest piece of advice for anyone who is going to take this test is to use MULTIPLE resources to prepare for this test. InterNachi, The International Building Code, any schooling that you can, any background experience you can lean on, and possibly, but not necessarily, the NHIE study guides. I made a computerized list of flashcards using the Brainscape App that I drilled on over and over, almost like a video game that I played continually.
The usual advice for testing is applicable here of course, too. Read slowly, take your time. I took 2.5 hours of the allotted 4 hour time limit. I found the test to be moderately difficult, but not horribly difficult.
There were a few questions, less than a handful, that involved identifying things in photographs, where I personally, had a hard time making out the photo.
It’s doable. Again, I have a slight construction background which helped some but not nearly to the degree that my bookwork studying helped.
Thank you to InterNachi for the wealth of information that was a huge factor in my success.
Congratulations and thank you for the info!! There is not a National Exam requirement here in Hawaii, but I have been studying and planning for taking the exam in the next couple months. Great info!
I recently took the NHIE exam for the first time and felt compelled to share my experience. Despite thorough preparation, including studying exam questions on the InterNACHI website, reviewing resources from the ICA School website twice, and attempting numerous quizzes related to the exam, I found the preparation to be ineffective.
To my dismay, the materials I utilized contributed only about 20% to my performance on the actual exam. The questions presented during the exam seemed to employ a vastly different strategy than what I encountered in my preparation. This disconnect resulted in my failure to pass the exam.
The frustration I now feel is compounded by the regret of the time and money invested in this test. Unfortunately, it appears that my efforts were in vain, and the exam did not adequately align with the resources I utilized for preparation.
This experience has left me disheartened and questioning the efficacy of the exam preparation materials provided by reputable sources. I would caution others considering the NHIE exam to thoroughly investigate the alignment between preparation resources and the actual exam content before investing time and money.
In summary, my first encounter with the NHIE exam has been a disappointing one, and I hope that my feedback serves as a cautionary note for others navigating this process.
That statement right there should say where the problem lays. Most everyone that fails, faiuls for the same reason… they don’t fully understand the subject matter, and think they can get away with memorizing content to pass.
All the “resources” that everyone says are ineffictive are wrong. Thay all provide subject information, but if one can’t process and understand it, it is useless to pass the exam.
The NHIE is designed to make the ‘potential’ inspector differentiate between valid information. If you don’t understand it, you won’t get it right without WAGing it!
This has been stated many, many times, but many just do not want to listen, thus another reason they fail.
You’ve read on the forum for 23 minutes. This is your first post. Your first post to the forum was a Karen style complaint. I think it’s safe to say if you had any questions on your studying, you did not use this forum to answer any of your questions.
Sometimes you get out of this world, the effort you put into it.
You have learned a valuable lesson that memorizing the answers to questions is very different than knowledge on the subject matter. The InterNACHI training will only get you so far, it’s up to you to further your studies.
Food for thought. Others have used InterNACHI training and passed the exam.
This is a duplicate post of the one above that you recently started. This line of posts sounds more like a reasoning tour to explain why you did not properly prepare for the NHIE. I will say the same thing here as I did in the other post.
Congrats! And I love that you described the NHIE books as “moderately helpful”. I took a practice NHEI test ($25), and I couldn’t make out what the photos were showing either, so I’m glad to hear that you did not encounter many in the actual test. From the practice test, I can also tell that this exam was made up by people that aren’t good home inspectors, rather some “experts” in each field. I’m taking my test in a few days. I’ve passed every InterNACHI base course and Ohio-required course, I’ve been taking the 2000 practice questions in my free time, and I’ve been watching A LOT of YouTube content on individual concepts to better understand them. We’ll see how it goes!
