I have had 3 real estate agents here in the Philadelphia area telling their clients that a home inspection can only be performed here by an ASHI certified home inspector. The clients have already scheduled appointments with me and then ask later on if I am ASHI certified. I explain to them that ASHI is simply a trade association and there are others out there which are better. I still lost an inspection becuase the client decided to listen to their agent. Managed to salvage the other two.
I just got off the phone with one of the agents that was only recommending ASHI inspectors and he told me that he didn’t realize there were other associations out there. The reason that he was recommending ASHI was because he was using it as a generic term for any qualified home inspector out there who can perform inspection in PA. Apparently there has been a problem in his area with a general contractor who is slow on work doing home inspections for unsuspecting clients. He is not qualified according to the state inspection laws and his inspection reports have been contested by the sellers and real estate agents.
We have an entirely new crop of real estate agents here in the area since the market crash last year and most of them don’t know a lick about home inspectors or the different associations out there. I think it is time for NACHI to start sending out their newsletter to agents again to help educate the new ones in the market about the bigger and better association out there besides ASHI.
What really gets me pissed is when real estate agents try to explain the home inspection laws here in PA to their clients and screw it up sooo bad the clients don’t know what to believe. I have recently gotten into a couple of BLOG wars with agents and brokers because they think they know the home inspection trade better than a home inspector. I was at the stakeholders meeting that took place a little over a year ago dealing with the proposed home inspection licensure bill presented to the State Senate. The work that I put into letting all the home inspectors in the state know about the changes and gathering suggestions how the Bill could be improved was incorporated into the most recent draft of the Bill. I think I know a little more about the subject than some real estate agent.
Let one more real estate agent spread false information about home inspector certification requirements in the state and I am going to file a complaint against them with PAR and the State Attorney General’s office.
Having operated a successful inspection company in Philadelphia, PA (where there are many ASHI members) for many years I can honestly say that I used ASHI’s diploma mill, just come-with-cash-and shazam-you-be-an-inspecta,30-second online application to convert every old agent that asked about ASHI into an agent that never ever dared breathing the word* ASHI* again.
Pretty simple when your competitor gives you the sword to kill them with.
My inspection company had a packed, overflowing schedule for the 5.5 years that I owned it and I saved (after feeding my family modestly) nearly 1 million dollars in the bank (back when banks used to pay you to save). If you add that to what I sold the company for when I left, I personally saved over 1 million dollars in just 5.5 years. Three crews, not one day off (except Christmas) in 5.5 years.
If someone asks you if you are a member of diploma mill ASHI, answer “Certainly not!” Then go on to explain why they should pay a little bit more and hire you.
Recommending that a home inspector be a member of either ASHI or NAHI over any one of the other reputable trade associations out there is no different that telling a client they should hire a Realtor over any other qualified real estate agent. It is also just the same as telling a client they should only hire a Keller Williams agent over a ReMax agent. Discrimination of qualified professionals based on professional trade association membership is not right and is not in the client’s best interest. There are other home inspection associations out there that have more stringent entrance requirements simply than writing a check such as the association that the original author is employed by. I would suggest that if you copy and past an article, that you do your research about the associations and get the true facts instead of the hyperbull that they like to spread around to unsuspecting real estate agents hoping it will disseminate to the unkowning home buyer market base.
