I inspected for a client today that had an inspection prior to purchase. She booked an inspection with me and I inspected the home and found many defects. Notably two walls that are completely decimated by old wood destroying insect damage. Lots of unsafe electrical and the list goes on. So my client is going to seek some sort of restitution. They mentioned suing the inspector that inspected prior to me. I’m not a big whistleblower. I do want to be a highly ethical Inspector. Some direction is needed here. I would rather just serve my clients and be a good Inspector, but if I’m supposed to do anything to retain my ethics, I’ll do it. I’m hoping there’s some experienced guys here they can lend me a little help. Thank you very much in advance.
Some quick suggestions.
- Be careful not to comment on the ability, fitness, etc., of the other Inspector. In this case that will be for a court to decide. Any comments you make may give the client an erroneous thought line/impression. It may also open you open to action from the other Inspector regardless of how bad they may have done an inspection.
- Be careful what you might comment on with regards to what the other Inspector found/missed and what you found. The other Inspector may well be a useless dreg that missed lots or there may have been latent issues that at the time of their inspection that they might not have been able to detect/find.
- Be careful about offering any type of “time table” for deterioration that you might have noted. Not that you have them but we have the nasty Formosan termites here that if the colony is large enough can do massive damage in very short order. Other unsafe conditions or issues might have developed or progressed bad enough to detect between the time of the other Inspectors work and yours. Giving any timelines to support the client’s agenda might come back to bite you.
- Offer your client guidance on who to contact for second opinions and estimates. Let the tradesperson make all the derogatory comments about the last Inspector. The tradespeople have no real skin in the game but you have a whole lot in the game!
- Provide your client with all the technical information and resource links/sources they need. All references should be from authoritative sources and not someone’s Blog post somewhere. If you can’t find any authoritative sources uses extreme caution handing out links to other than that. The more they read and learn on their own the less they may come to you for answers which means the less chance you have of saying something you should not.
- Hopefully your report is detailed with plenty of pictures as that helps prevent you from having to make an appearance in court. If not I refer back to the previous tip of technical information.
- Document everything you do with this client. Try to have communications via email or other recordable means. This keeps both you and the client honest and prevents any claims you told them something damning about the other Inspector that you did not. It may also help to some degree to prevent you from being called in as a witness in any litigation they start.
- DO NOT STRAY FROM YOUR REPORTED FINDINGS! It should all be in your report and anything you say past that can come back to bite you in one way or another.
From the sounds of your situation you were called in to refute what the pre-purchase Inspector did or did not do with the potential of your findings leading to a civil litigation. Hopefully your contract had/has a caveat/disclaimer that they paid you for your work on the day of the inspection and any further work is an additional fee? In that way if you are called in to testify and can charge them. Make sure they are aware of that when you first find out they want you in.
Beyond that don’t worry and don’t try to be the savior for the client as that almost invariably winds up putting you in a bad situation.
My generic response is “I don’t know why the previous inspector did not mention some of the defects I observed. I’m confident in my observations and report therefore I encourage you to act upon my recommendations therein.”
As far as litigation, that’s between y’all.
Inspect, report, move on.
Keep the guessing games out of everything, as has been stated, you have no first hand knowledge of anything that was done before you.
If they ask your “opinion” about other matters, you can simply state that your personal findings (that are in the report) are all you can accurately discuss.
I agree with others, stay at an arms length away and don’t get caught up in the middle of the dispute. Leave any “testimony” be from the experts that you recommended in your report.
At most, I would recommend that the client check the pre-inspection agreement, carefully read the report for any disclaimers and to contact the inspector as soon as possible.
Maybe they offer some silly little gimmick to buy the house back. 
Unless you’re going to represent your client as an expert witness in court, your job is finished. As others have already stated, it’s best just to move on and if your client does consult you, answer only questions concerning the specifics of your findings.
The house was probably full of crap and there are limitations when inspecting a house that is occupied. He probably did not miss anything, probably the seller had those areas blocked from view by the inspector. Never assume anything. Did you read the other inspectors report? And view the photos of these areas in their report?
I’m not sure what your “whistleblower” part in this would be. You performed an inspection for a client. You didn’t have anything to do with the prior inspection. What do you mean by “whistleblower?”
That’s “PC” for ‘tattle-tale’!
IMO… do your damned job to the best of your abilities, and let the chips fall where they may!!
Kinda sorta like…
Morning, Joshua! Hope to find you well and in good spirits today.
Don’t do anything illegal! Read your COE.
Whistleblower? How can you be a whistleblower? I think you are confused. No worries.
Did they use the previous report to purchase the home or did they use yours as well?
Why did they retain you?
Awaiting your reply.
Client had home inspected by said Inspector this past October. She had me inspect and shared the report with me. I thumbed through the summary and was discussed at the things that were overlooked and not inspected. She hired me because she knew that things were overlooked, and she wanted those things documented so that she can seek some legal form of restitution. She’s located pretty far off of the beaten path. In my area, there are a lot of rule clients that tend to get buffaloed out of getting things remedied. Generally speaking, I don’t run into these types of problems closer to the bigger cities. I could go on and on about the things that I found. It probably isn’t indifferent from your experiences. My problem is I’m sort of sick and tired of seeing people get taken advantage of.
Looking at your partner with disgust.
Because warm air rises, you bend down in your chair until the offensive smell dissipates.
Light up a joint, stogie or cigarette.
Light a scented candle or use an air freshener to mask the odor.
Hope that helps if/when you eat out in restraints with a cone of silence tables.
Get off that horse! It’s surely a bummer that those things happen, but you have no control over it. It was your client’s choice.
I have clients who chose another inspector who brushes over a lot of things. I have clients for radon testing who use a mitigation company that generally does a poor job. I had the same thing happen when I was in construction. It’s part of the free market and market regulation or lack of. It’s your client’s choice, made for many reasons, be it ignorance of the shoddy work, unaware of the bad reputation, or price. Raise your price $100 or so for those clients. They want you, they trust you, and you already are not being paid enough. Stay within your role as home inspector.
You “thumbed through” a “summary” and through “conjecture” you “assume” (break the word down for its full meaning) that the Inspector should be crucified. Now I will use “conjecture” since I was not there and I can not see your report or the other Inspector’s report to expect (never “assume”) that with what you have already posted you are already way to deep over your head and are quite possibly headed for trouble from one side of this or the other.
Did you actually read, digest, break down, crosscheck, and truly analyze the actual other Inspector’s report to see if you are even partly correct or not that the other Inspector “overlooked” and/or “not inspected”? A “summary” is typically only of the issues found and not a total repeat of the report (excluding Texas and their requirements for a summary). The full report verbiage may well describe why some things were “overlooked” and/or “not inspected”. The other Inspector’s verbiage may contain explanations for these issues you claim but may not be how you write and hence not fully understood by you.
We were not there nor do we have access to both reports so all we can use is conjecture regarding what happened on site. Conjecture may be acceptable for our discussion here but not for the whirlwind that might be coming your way.
Also it is not “discussed” it is “disgusted”.
I totally understand and hate to see people ripped off as well, but as home inspectors, it’s really not our place to denigrate the other inspection or inspector. Unless we were being hired as an expert witness to testify against them in a court of law, and even then we need to stick to just the facts, it’s best to just let it go.
Personally I wouldn’t have wanted any part of that. But that’s just me.
Hey man I know it’s been a few days, so hopefully things are going okay with this. Did you know going into this inspection that you were hired because they suspected the previous inspector missed a bunch of stuff? Or did you only learn about that motive after you did your inspection?
Everything is great. I submitted report to client, no noise, no problems. Thank you sir!
I’d never knowingly walk in to this type of situation…. I’ve been informed after my inspection what was going on and felt somewhat misled. My reasons are split about evenly between not wanting the potential hassle with legal things and not wanting to be part of tearing down one of my colleagues.
Unless we are there the same time and same day as the previous inspector it’s irrelevant to compare the findings.
This profession just has so far to go to be respected the way so many of us know if should. I’ve spent a lot of time around doctors in professional and private settings and can’t remember a single instance of one talking bad about another. So many inspectors are so insecure about their abilities that they can’t wait to thump their chest when they find a skewed doorstop the last guy didn’t mention. Sad part is it’s not going to change anytime soon…. if ever.