Licensing forces you to spend money on the license, insurance, and the dues to a professional organization.
Without licensing, the fact that you choose to spend time and money to belong to such an organization means (to your customers) that you’ve made a commitment to what you do.
If you choose not to do it, your business may suffer, but at least that’s your choice.
After licensing, it just becomes a matter of price. Without being able to choose how we run our businesses, we’re all the same.
It must be nice to live in a place where people care about things like experience and knowledge instead of only price shopping.
Most people around here don’t.
It also does one other thing, it forces education… and there is a ton of educators who would benefit directly from this… just ask the educator (has been HI) in Leavenworth, KS… which by the way he wrote the first couple of drafts for the KS law so Molly Barnes and Lukie would look good… as a side note - I and several other HI’s witnessed the first couple of drafts in a KAREI meeting back in November of 2004 and they refined it again it 2005… and 2006… and so forth…
If I remember correctly in a separate meeting this same individual spewed his venon in a NACHI Chapter meeting back then as well - Dan, Paul Sabastos, Blaine Wiley (visiting), John Bowman (visiting) and several others were there as well at that NACHI meeting… quite a discussion I must say…
I suggest to MO Inspectors (against or who are neutral) and what I am currently doing is getting to know who all the players are in MO and get some kinda of feel what they are all about… best to know the enemy per say… I am planning on going down to Jeff City the middle of next week to visit my reps and senators to politely discuss the errors of their ways if they support this bill…
Sorry you weren’t down here in KS or MO for the licensing antics. You have me confused with someone else like maybe Jeff Barnes. Missouri realtors talked friendly legislators into introducing the 1st Bill to license home inspectors back in 2002. Kansas followed in 2004.
Myself and about 4-5 other inspectors were the main voice that have kept unfair and unneeded licensing back over in Missouri for 10 years AND held it back for 6 years in Kansas until in KS they got a realtor in charge of the legislative committee and a friendly ASHI inspector that he worked with to talk other HI’s into “Well there’s too many to fight, we better cut the best deal and go with it”.
There will always be some people that are to stupid and naive to care about quality that is true for any business in any location. When you do your marketing to prospective clients it is at that point you need to inform them that you have no interest (financial or otherwise) if they buy the home or not like their real estate agent does. You only agenda is to perform a through inspection and report on the good, bad and ugly and they need to know the truth about the condition of the property and not all the fluff their agent shovels them with. If they have an IQ more than a sack of rocks they will like that and be willing to pay a bit more for an independent TRUTHFUL inspection rather then a bunch of junk from their Rea’s recommendation.
You need to educate the public on the truth and not the junk the agent shovels to them.
ASHI and everyone else who are pushing these laws in Missouri will suffer themselves.
In Kansas since home inspection rules and regulations were placed into law, dozens of inspectors have gone out of the business. The KHIRB has lost so many members that this year, 2012, they threw-out the $200 annual fee, as to not lose any more that they already have.
These laws will be basic, level the playing field, allow for $199 inspections, and will not properly inform home buyers of home defects. RE’s now brag this to home buyers, and say “home inspectors no longer do the job they have done in the past, and now by law, do limited basic reports. So, Mr./Mrs. home buyer, save that money by not getting a home inspection”.
RE agents throughout Missouri want to control, or put us, out of their way of their transactions. This will happen with these laws in Missouri in play, as it has happened in Kansas, and other states as well.
It is amazing to me that California has no inspection laws, and they operate just fine. Why Missouri and Kansas lawmakers make RE associations control them is beyond my understanding.
Gary do you feel Oklahoma is out of control? Most inspectors there could care less about the license requirment. Why is that? What is so different from them and MO or KS?
BTW: The InterNACHI School is going to offer the required classroom courses across Missouri for any member who doesn’t get grandfathered.
In the end, the only thing licensing accomplishes is to create inspector demand for approved education and marketing. Or put another way, the only thing licensing accomplishes is to create inspector demand for InterNACHI.
All home inspection licensing laws establish a basic, minimum requirement. Most home inspectors, especially the “ones” who promote home inspection laws, welcome these minimum standards. Why? Because they will not have to work as hard, and will please their RE agent buddies. These new procedures will be used by most all inspectors, especially the new ones, and the RE agents will love them because they are limited, allowed by law, and will not alarm the home buyer. The $199 home inspection will be the norm. The veteran inspectors who perform proper home inspections, inspect all electrical outlets, windows, switches, doors, instead of just one per room, write detailed reports, charge higher fees, will no longer be in demand.
Do you want to properly inform your client of home defects, or do you want to just abide by the basic minimum requirements?
Any home inspector in any licensed state must decide how they want to serve their clients. Do you want to feed your family and side with the agents, or offer detailed, in-depth reports, and starve?
You must have a herd of unethical agents in your area, I don’t find that problem here. The few realtors who do recommend my companies to their clients are very ethical realtors, they want to know what is wrong with the property so nobody is suing anybody.
We also have basic minimum standards. We test-inspect everything we can get at. If vacant everything is inspected.
We have $250.00 home inspectors, and $700.00 home inspectors for the same size-age property.
Furthermore, by diversifying, one can stay very busy. Residential, Commercial, Thermography, etc.
Not being dependent on realtors in any fashion for business.
Cheap reins here. Price is the #1 concern when any home buyer calls an inspector, and the first question. I know where they get that from. If you are at $199, you get 10 to 12 jobs a week, At $400, maybe one or two. Termite inspections are free with any exterminator, and radon testing and mitigation, if needed, are free after closing.
Sad here for the consumers.
And, you have to pay most offices to be on a “preferred vendor list”, whether or not you do the job.
No, home buyers just are misinformed. I have many good RE’s that I do business with, but only a very few. Dan B., who is not a state licensed inspector in Kansas, will tell you also. Business just goes to the cheap guy.
It gets up to 110 here in the summer. Most inspections I do here deal with a basement, and in AZ, are few if any. Would be a vacation for me.
First thing everybody needs to remember, Nick has already agreed on this message board that he will support whatever the members of Missouri wants when it comes to licensing. This decision of his came after the fiscal In Kansas.
As far as NACHI (the world’s largest inspection organization) ever having a say in what goes on a A$HI home inspection board will not happen if this bill passes. It has never happened in the past in other states, so why would it happen now.
Also as this licensing bill insuring home inspectors get the proper education, just looked what happened to the Missouri’s residential sewer inspector licensing and the termite licensing. The CEU requirements for septic and lagoon inspectors were reduced down to the amount that real estate agents are required to complete, which is not enough by the looks of all the complaints Realtors get filed with the State of Missouri. The termite licensing CEUs (which I have recently completed) amount to sitting in a class and listening to instructors talk about Powder Post Beatles and bedbugs, there was no instruction given about termites; the prior years licensing lecture was about bedbugs and the mating habits of wasps.
Anybody whoever agrees with Missouri licensing is not looking out for the industry or the unknowing consumer.
Of the 6 licensed states that share a common border with Missouri, InterNACH’s free, online inspection courses are approved and used in all 6. Click on the states below:
Do I need to remind you when it down to it, you formed an alliance with Jeff Barnes, who claimed his dog Molly passed the NACHI test, but got screwed over by that same dog’s owner. :shock:
Oh I haven’t forgotten James. There was a time in my life, when I lived in Philly, where I would have let personal feelings get the best of me, placed a call from a phone booth, and scumbag Jeff “I issued myself license #1” Barnes would be missing his knee caps… but I’m older, wiser, and have to think of the members who entrust me to put those personal feelings aside and accomplish what they need to have accomplished. Hence: http://www.nachi.org/kansas-approved-inspector-education.htm
Besides, its more fun beating them in the free market place.
