Pointing out potential major defects

Read your Standards of Practice and Code of Ethics…

General Exclusions.
(a) Home inspectors are not required to report on:

  1. Life expectancy of any component or system;
  2. The cause(s) of the need for a repair;
  3. The methods, materials, and costs of corrections;

Memorize these “Standards” so you do not have to ask these obvious questions in front of the public or not know the answer to a client or Realtor question.

There is a report of a law suit on this issue just this week.
HI reported wrong repair price…

if a person nis capable of doing the repair him/herself than you could essentially take the labor cost out. a new roof would cost $5000 to someone not willing to do the work or $1200 to someone who could do it. I wouldnt put the dollar value in the report. i might discuss it with them but it’s not going on paper.

Good point.

I find, around here, that the so-called “Standard Contract” (and there is really no such thing) states that the contract can only be negated if there are defects found that total at least $XXX. Different contracts, different agencies, different dollar values. They seem to include this so that the deal doesn’t fall through.

What are these clients thinking when the sign these things!

I refuse to put a dollar value to the problem. Depends on who they hire to fix it. Licensed, insured and professional contractor or the ledgendary 2 Romanian guys in a step van.

Don’t let the agent make you part of their contract of sale requirements game. You never signed ity and are not a party to it.

Hope this helps;

Lots of good points in this thread, here are more…

The dollar amount in a sales contract may very well refer to the TOTAL amount of repairs needed NOT one item.

A major issue includes something that may seem minor today but be advancing towards major in the near future. One example of this is elevated moisture in a floor system on a newer (1-3) yr home, it will get worse over time and should be reported as a major issue.

Contractors can charge whatever they want, its called bids, estimates and quotes and a non-contractor has no business guessing at what someone else will charge. The $200k lawsuit discussed on here involves repairs that could easily be done for around $100k but were inflated for personal gain and other reasons and there is nothing the inspector can do about it.

The weak link in the home buying process is the failure of the buyer or their agent to obtain proper quotes to make the repairs that are listed in the inspection report from professional contractors. When issues get worse later they want to blame someone other than themselves. These estimates can typically be obtained for free and they still omit that important part of the home buying process.