Jeff you are ever so right. Regulation has different impacts in different jurisdictions. It a bit like a flying into a storm in a helicopter.
You look at other peoples experience, and it doesn’t sound favorable. Here you are in a machine made of a million parts rotating around an oil slick waiting for something to go wrong.
You fly into the storm, and you get bumped around a lot. But if you are properly trained and stick to the correct operating procedures you come out of the storm unscathed but wiser.
A wild ride but educated beyond belief at the other end. Some people fear to go in there. Me I’ve had more than my fair share of rotor flap, and lived to tell the tale.
But each new venture tells me that at this point in time, I don’t know everything, and there’s always an experience that might make me change my point of view.
Licensing with the Home Inspection profession is a process not an instant fix.
The same applies to all regulation. You are always going to get the anomaly.
The point of regulation is to immediately remove unqualified people from the profession and then gradually whittle out those anomalies. Initially I suspect you will see a lot of poor inspections and complaints. As they are removed from the system, the profession will gradually tighten itself up.
This has been the experience in every other profession that has been regulated.
It can NEVER get rid of bad inspectors completely, because initially for every one you remove, another one will creep in under the wire. It is only through a process of improvement that we can change the ratio from 1:1 to 2:1 then through to 10:1 and so on. Will we ever get to ∞:1? Unlikely.
Licensing hurts veteran inspectors who have built up market share over the years only to have a government agency come along and give a newbie who got his license yesterday the same government-issued credential as the veteran. Once licensing is adopted, everyone goes back to square one and it becomes an all-out marketing race. Best marketer wins.
Licensing doesn’t permit inspectors to command hire fees. Texas is the hardest state to get a license in (440 hours of classroom training) and also has some of the lowest fee structures. Why? Read my next paragraph.
Licensing harms the consumer slightly because it makes it harder for the consumer to tell a good inspector from a bad one as they all have a license. It also tricks the consumer into thinking all licensed inspectors are good, which causes them to only shop price. When they do that, and they do in licensed jurisdictions, they get screwed more often then before licensing. Licensing commoditizes us which generally harms consumers by tricking them into comparing only price. Remember, after a year or so, having a license is meaningless. It’s like having a nose. Every inspector has a license and a nose.
Licensing is good for InterNACHI of course, everywhere it is adopted, because InterNACHI provides the best courses which are always approved everywhere and because InterNACHI provides inspectors the best marketing products and services which become very necessary once licensing sets everyone back to square one.
Licensing is good for insurance companies assuming the license requires insurance. Unfortunately, once a home inspector suffers a claim or two, even for something that isn’t his/her fault, the insurance companies either raise their rates or drop the poor inspector. Insurance companies share claim info with all the other insurance companies and then the poor inspector can’t find insurance and loses his/her license over something that wasn’t his/her fault.
Overall, licensing is probably a slight negative for both consumers and inspectors, and a big positive for InterNACHI and insurance companies.
I was a licensed contractor for years and then added the Lead Rule License to my business/ the RRP rule.
I had a 2 million dollar liability insurance and bonded when required.
One thing licensing assured me of was lower priced competition who did not have the overhead I did. I learned to market where business was good for me.
I learned:
Not everyone is your client
Not everyone should be your client
There are always the lowest price buyers
There are always buyers willing to pay more
Market to your segment, mind your own business and you will be fine
I am not in favour of licensing coming to Ontario in contrary to the opinions raised by some. It will benefit some associations (maybe not all) but certainly will not benefit all H.I.'s. The exact fall out will not be truly known until it actually takes effect. I think at that time some opinions may change… maybe even mine.
My experience with licensing goes like this.
When it was first introduced we had many inspectors, good and bad, close up their business. This made it better for everyone when it comes to increased sales. Now that we have been licensed for 5+/- years I see a ton of new guys staring up with no actual experience in the field.
The other issue is that we have increased our liability and our insurance rates have gone up exponentially.
To me licensing has done more harm than good for our industry in my humble opinion.
I kept in touch with Vern during licensing.
You guys worked hard but some spread rumors still.
Cam Allin and another ex INACHI member as well.
Too bad.
So sad.
Love to see business regulations.
Been saying that for years.
Robert, You seem to be under the mistaken apprehension that provincial regulation and the CSA standards are mutually exclusive. They are not.
Please re-read the recommendations given to the government for regulation of the profession “A Closer Look” and more specifically page 23 “Development of a Standard of Practice for Ontario”
I think once you read carefully you’ll realise that it’s not a matter of backing the wrong horse.
It’s about the inability to read and correctly disseminate information presented in a published work, and the assumption that everyone thinks like you.
It’s not necessarily “either-or”, it could as equally be “both” or “none at all”. Only time will tell. I have my suspicions which way it’s going to go, but I wouldn’t bet on it either way.
That proved NOT to be the case in Alberta and B.C. Nick. In fact the number of Inspectors has only recently got back to the pre-regulation levels of a couple of years ago. Now it appears many in B.C. and Alberta are leaving the profession because regulation has made the liability way off-balanced to the service provided.
Inspectors in these two provinces have become scapegoats for anything that is deemed to be wrong in a home-sale.
The Provincial governments had a knee jerk reaction to bad press and have swung so far in the opposite direction to their original stance, they’ve all but put the nails in the coffin of the Home Inspection Profession out west.
Some protection of the consumers that turned out to be. We can learn a lot from their mistakes here in Ontario.
Contrary to opinion from the libertarian side of the aisle, governments typically do not want to do more enforcement, it costs money and requires more work, both are scarce resources. Someone once pointed out that every law on the books, even the most asinine, such as not being able to water your giraffe in the City Hall fountain were passed because some idiot did water his giraffe in the fountain and refused to stop when asked politely.
So, why would a provincial government want to license home inspectors?
