Thanks for changing the word “mere” to “solely”.
Oh…and thanks for your permission. I fully intend to do so. While it does not fit at all into your marketing plan for me to do so, it is the best thing for me and the profession.
We will remember, when things improve, how you abandoned us.
Things won’t “improve” for those who offer home inspections only. Licensing and those who financially support no-entrance-requirement diploma mills like ASHI, have forced most home inspectors to add ancillary inspections to their list of services… www.InspectorLocator.com
Adapt, migrate, or perish.
What you are saying is simply untrue. False. A lie…spoken in support of your present marketing plan for the new direction you have decided to move NACHI…for no other reason than that is where you feel you will find your steady supply of new members.
You are looking for newbies to invest in your unproven ideas…your foolish SOP that will instantly qualify them to risk lives with chimney inspections, for instance. Selling bacteria for their johns…anything that you can provide a vendor for, you think they can create a need and sell it in their various markets.
You have no real data (meaning numbers that come from anywhere other than your own head) to support that chimney inspections and bacteria for the family crapper can compensate for a reducton in home inspections…or anything else that you publish.
Home inspections are no less viable or necessary…and home inspectors need to be spending this time improving their skills and marketing them as home inspectors.
There are more houses for sale today than at any other time in history.
80% to 90% of both home inspectors and real estate salesmen will turn over from 2007 to 2011. This is the period in time where we can be solidifying ourselves and building our strength — shaping our profession and honing our skills.
Instead…you have abandoned home inspections and…in their place…encourage people to sell warranties for your company, pay you for training videos for ancillary training in which there has not even been a market developed.
How many straw bale homes do you think Joe Farsetta can inspect in New York?
You have abandoned the profession and those of us who are home inspectors.
NACHI could have been better than this.
What you are saying is simply untrue. False. A lie… spoken in support of old, dying, ways and an old, dying association (ASHI). There is a reason ASHI switched from calling itself the “largest” to calling itself the “oldest.”
I don’t sell septic bacteria, I don’t sell straw bale inspections, I don’t sell anything. I’m just explaining to my members that it has all become an “inspection” industry… and no longer merely a “home inspection” industry. That’s why we spent a fortune buying www.Inspector.org Don’t shoot the messenger.
You can be technically stronger than your competitors. You can be stronger at marketing than your competitors. But if your competitors make more money than you because they get more home inspection work from agents who don’t want to schedule with 3 or 4 separate inspectors when your competitors can do them all in one day, and if your competitors make more money than you from homebuyers who are concerned with mold and so hire your competitors who offer mold inspections as well, and if your competitors make more money than you because their average inspection includes 2 or 3 additional ancillary inspections, and if your competitors make more money than you because they upsell ancillary inspections, products, and services, and if your competitors make more money than you because they can afford to buy infrared cameras, afford additional training, and afford to run more ads and do more mailings… then eventually… they will bury you. It all ads up.
Try being a pick-up truck dealer who only offers base models, painted white. No 4X4’s, no SUVs, no warranties, no bedliners, no leather packages, no 6 CD changers.
Good luck.
That is not true. It is simply the way you see things, now that the endless supply of new home inspectors for NACHI membership has declined.
Your desire to create a need for the training and vending support that you provide for such a market…does not create the market. Nor does your desire to provide a new “ancillary inspector” pool mean that there exists a market to sustain them.
You can write as many SOPs as you want, but when someone wants their chimney inspected…and only their chimney inspected…they are calling in the pro. You know, the guy that home inspectors have always referred their clients to for a class II chimney inspection recommended by the NFPA who has years of experience and training. Not some newbie NACHI member with his sharp pencil and SOP.
“New inspectors” !!! Uh, where have you been Jim???
InterNACHI is the largest educator in the inspection industry. We have more educational events, administer more exams, administer more quizzes, and have more courses approved and accredited www.nachi.org/education.htm than the entire rest of the industry combined.
… and you won’t find one… not one… pre-licensing course: www.nachi.org/education.htm
This has nothing to do with newbies like that other 35-second, online application, just come with a valid credit card, diploma mill that you financially support: http://www.homeinspector.org/join/application/default.aspx
Licensing increases the number of home inspectors, not ancillary inspectors. Most of them go out of business because they rely solely on “home” inspections instead of diversifying: www.nachi.org/ancillary.htm
Like it or not, ancillary inspections are part of our industry. Try doing a home inspection in the state of Washington without a WDO license.
It’s another in a long line of examples as to how NACHI has moved into a direction that is one of complete abandonment of what Nick calls a “mere home inspector”.
Exposing yourself to increased liability for decreased fees is what he and his vendors suggest.
Why?
Home inspectors who do not follow his lead are “doomed”.
IMO, NACHI is doomed for it has decided to write SOPs and recruit participants for a market that has yet to be validated.
Nick wants us to believe that there are more people willing to pay you for inspecting their chimney than inspecting their house…that the market is greater for packages of bacteria to flush down your toilet than home inspections…that the market is greater for fire safety inspections (being done, today, for free by fire marshalls) than for home inspections.
When he thought that the Kansas HI Inspection Board might embrace his desire to provide his on-line courses, the Kansas HI Law was the most inspector friendly law in the country and publicly sided against his own members engaged in fighting its spread into Missouri.
When the Kansas licensing board refused his requests to serve on their committees and remarked that they would not recognize on-line courses for CEUs…he committed himself to join the fight the against the law and then…and only then…offered to assist us in fighting it.
NACHI is moving in the wrong direction and this thread represents but a small example as to how.
NACHI could have been better. I hope that, someday, Nick will return the Executive Director position to the ranks and end NACHI’s role as a mere vending machine.
We now work in an unprecedented period of time for our industry…where we are down to the bare bones in home inspectors and realtors. We, as an association, should be helping to form the future of our industry as we prepare to enter a time when this glut of homes for sale actually begin to sell.
Our associations…and we…should be building up (not tearing down into ancillaries) the role of the inspector and his need. We should be building our independence from, not on, the realtor.
We will never have this opportunity again, in our lifetimes. What has Nick decided to do with it? Sell toilet supplies and chimney inspections until times are better. That is not what we need.
Those of you who will be members of NACHI tomorrow…and the days after…will have to fight him to move this association back in the direction that made it – at one time – a relevant player and influence in the home inspection industry.
Do it.
Again, I don’t sell chimney inspections or septic bacteria… but perhaps some members are considering it. Considering it is a prudent thing for them to do.
Just like providing SOPs for inspecting fireplaces and chimneys and providing online TV shows about septic bacteria is a prudent thing for InterNACHI and NACHI.TV to do.
And as for moving away from REALTORs and getting out from under dumb legislation… offering ancillary inspections (mostly unlicensed) and offering related products and services (completely unlicensed) helps do just that.
I’m not saying that you should to jump right into some septic bacteria pitch on every inspection, but members might want to consider offering this product or some home safety products or the Happy Homeowner Manual or annual inspections or whatever, on their websites.
Every InterNACHI member’s website should be their local market’s source for home information, related products, and various inspection services (aside from merely regular home inspections done for conventional real estate transactions).
There is absolutely no reason for any American to ever worry about lighting their fireplace, invest in a defect-ridden commercial building, pay high heating/cooling bills, have their home contribute to harming the environment, suffer from lead poisoning, live in a former meth lab, breathe unhealthy indoor air, work with a sleazy builder, overpay a remodeling contractor for poor workmanship, get cancer from radon, live in a home that isn’t inspected annually, be forced to replace all their stucco, have their home destroyed by termites, get sued for failure to disclose, or drink contaminated water… when there lives an InterNACHI member in their own neighborhood.
It’s an InterNACHI world… and you’re living in it.
A basic principle of wealth:
Your income can only grow to the extent that you do.