so hopefully this is a long story short. I subcontract for a national mold company to multitasking that’s all fine and dandy but I’m going to do it on a rental property at the behest of the renter. And while speaking with the river on the phone before I go out to do the tests next week she asked me if I did regular home inspection. Which I responded yes I do and then I questioned her as to why she needed a regular home inspection and she went on to tell me a very long tail about All her landlord issues and how the place is falling apart and you know the whole sad tale. I truly do believe that this place is becoming run down I looked at the outside of it and it’s pretty rough. But I don’t wanna get drug into court and have to get a testimony and not get paid for doing that. But I don’t want to leave any work on the table because my company is too new to turn work down. So I’ve gotten a lot of mixed messages from a number of other home inspectors on online forms and I really need to know how I said legally approach this before I send this lady a quote for my inspection along with the mold inspection. Any help would be greatly appreciated .
Do the mold inspection and get paid. Price the home inspection out of reach. Tell her if she has issues with the property condition to contact the local authorities you don’t do landlord / tenant mediation.
I don’t do them. I tell the renter i need the owners permission. Usually the owner calls me and says i do not have permission to do the inspection.
I didn’t do them either.
I always told them to get an attorney that specializes in landlord-tenant disputes and follow the attorney’s instructions.
I can tell you from experience that I did a home inspection for a tenant once, when I was young and hungry. Luckily I didn’t get brought into court, but I did field a phone call from an angry owner (on the first day of my vacation no less) who threatened to do just that. He accused me of trespassing (amongst other things) and did everything he could to get me to incriminate myself on the phone. I spoke to my lawyer afterwords and he assured me I had little to worry about, as I was invited on site by the tenant, but the whole ordeal had already rattled me to the point that I didn’t enjoy the first half of my vacation. Learn from my mistake, only perform an inspection on a rental property with consent of the owner. You’ll learn, as we all have, sometimes its a good business decision to pass up business.
Yes these kinds of inspections (any) that are outside the norm can get sticky because of the parties involved and what their motives are…and you can get stuck in the middle. Good that you are asking these questions on this forum, it will save you some greef.
When you are new at the inspection game you will learn a lot. And a lot of what you learn will be from mistakes…Take it from me…I’ve learned enough just from my mistakes that I should be a Genius.
LOL! …Larry! 