Should a warranty managment company be HI licensed?

No, don’t see the need.

I’m not surprised you disappeared from this thread, Mike. The contradiction is obvious.

I haven’t disappeared. I just don’t have a lot of time to hang out here fencing with you.

I have no problem providing what I see to be a definition, but I have no intention of debating board business here on this site with someone who comes to a board meeting and appears to be pretty polite and civil; and then, as soon as he gets onto this site, where he apparently is looking for cheerleaders to back up his position, begins embellishing and distorts things so as to enhance his own position.

I’d pulled an all-nighter writing a report the night before that meeting and was damned near comatose without a coffee pot nearby, but I still think I have a better memory of what went on there than you do.

I thought you’d give an honest portrayal of the boards position. Since I don’t think you’ve done so, anything else I have to say about this subject will be said at board meetings.

Guess you’ll just have to wait until June 7th to know what that’s going to be.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike O’Handley, LHI
Your Inspector LLC.
Kenmore, Washington
Wa. Lic. Home Inspector #202

I have distorted nothing. If you remember correctly how the meeting went, the board asks for public opinions at the beginning of the meeting. I read the proposed verbiage about 30 seconds before I had a chance to speak. I spoke what I felt, which, at the time, was somewhat neutral. Once the meeting went on and I realized the extreme bias that was being applied to my company, I didn’t really have much of a chance to talk or give any sort of rebuttal. I then came on here to ask for opinions on this, very important, issue. If I could have gone back and forth with the board at the meeting, I would have. But you don’t allow that do you?

It’s all in the audio, Mike. Once it’s up, you’ll see it was Deb and not Bruce that asked me if I had a license. I assume, when I link to the audio, that you’ll be quite embarrassed to find that fact.

Huh? It’s all in the proposed verbiage. It specifically pinpoints “quality control contractors” and says nothing of other companies inspecting WA state SOP items. The board even went as far as specifically saying “maintenance companies” who use “Property Inspection Checklists”, that contain multiple items from the SOP, should be exempt. Why is only my company’s category being pinpointed while others are getting exempted?

It’ll be interesting to hear a reasonable, logical explanation why the board is wanting to pinpoint regulation on a specific category while exempting others performing the exact same functions. I certainly haven’t seen a good answer on this board.

BTW, you were happy to bring up the discussion about handymen. Why not answer my question? Are you, all of the sudden, not discussing this issue because you see the fault in your argument?

Kevin…

O’Handjob and Co. are in this strictly to use legislation to limit their competition. They tried and failed when they fabricated a need for home inspectors to be licensed WDO/WDI inspectors and carry E&O.

When this was exposed as a sham, they passed a bill for home inspectors.

Joe Hagarty has hit the nail on the head. You are not a home inspector who requires a license under this law if you are inspecting for a builder.

Your State Attorney General is the one who would ultimately be enforcing this law against you and is your final source for valid info. These nutjobs on the committee will do their best to nail anyone they can…but we all know how little “protecting the public” has to do with it.

Go ahead with your business until someone proves that you are in violation of a law…and show your local media how, during a time of recession, this board is all about putting people out of work and increasing the fees they plan to squeeze out of consumers.

So Jim,

Are you saying that builders in the State of Washington are not required to hire licensed electricians to perform their specific work? Or Hvac techs? or plumbers? Some of these trades have had licensing for years. They are all sub-contractors, not employees. They are not working for the builder, they are performing work for the builder as an independent contractor. Big difference.

So if the builder is required to hire licensed trades to perform work that is within that trade’s specific purview, if someone is performing work for the builder as an independent contractor inspector, why would that be any different? An employee can do the work, a hired sub cannot without being licensed just like all the other licensed professionals that are hired as part of the building process.

When someone comes onto the property to check if cabinets and drawers are functioning, doors and windows are functioning, screens are in place, furnace is responding to controls, windows, doors and access points are caulked as needed, siding is completed or damaged, faucets are functioning and not reversed, drains and stoppers are functioning, carpet is stained or torn, electrical outlets are functioning, … what exactly would you say they are doing? Sounds an awful like a home inspection, doesn’t it?

I am not saying that one cannot fabricate an argument to support their desire for the law to require it…I’m just saying that the law, as it is written, does not require it.

Read your law. Particularly, read the definition of a home inspection and a home inspector.

Stephen, as stated in post 77, why the bias toward my company? If the actual intention here is to regulate those that inspect SOP items, why pinpoint my company? Why not make a blanket statement and include all companies such as handymen and sub-contracted superintendants?

Maybe if Mike decides to join back in, he can answer this or Stephen, since you were at the meeting, maybe you can. What exactly is this proposed verbiage suppose to do? I know the board can’t change the, already written, law. So, where is this verbiage suppose to be implemented and how does it correlate with the actual home inspector law? Can the board just create and enforce anything they want because they want to? Maybe I’ll submit my complaint to the AG prior to the next meeting just in case.

I think what the Board is doing is looking into whether what you are doing does or does not cross into the Home Inspector statutes. If they were to make a recommendation, it would be in the form of a change in the WAC’s. It would have to go up for a public hearing before anything could take effect.

Unfortunately, I did not arrive until the end of the original discussion on your situation and I have not had time to listen to the audio yet. The Board does not make law or interpret law. They make suggestions to the Director of the Department of Licensing who in turn must go through all the hoops of hearings before implementing new additions or changes to the WAC’s.

In regards to the definitions so everybody knows:

“Home inspection” means a professional examination of the current condition of a house.

“Home inspector” means a person who carries out a noninvasive examination of the condition of a home, often in connection with the sale of that home, using special training and education to carry out the inspection.

To punish you, they must show a violation of a law.

Read the law.

What is it that an inspector inspects? A “house”. I understand you to say that you might be looking at cabinet doors, drawers, furnace, AC, etc… Not a “house”.

Secondly, if you will do something “invasive” in your inspection…just any one little thing like removing covers from a representative number of switches and outlets…it no longer falls under the law, by definition.

Use of the state SOP is not required unless it is a noninvasive inspection of a “house” so I wouldn’t worry about complying or not complying with it, either.

This law is so poorly written you can drive a truck through the holes it leaves.

Ask the AG office and ignore your board on this one.

Not here in AZ it dosen’t sound like a HI at all , but then we do Pest Inspections like the rest of the Country too… :wink:

It does.

But I don’t believe that is what Kevin is doing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but he doesn’t goin in looking for defects. He is the liason when a homeowner reports a defect - going in on behalf of the builder to see if ther actually is a defect, rather than just taking the homeowners word for it. More like an adjuster than an inspector.

Rick, that’s true of my “walk through” and “warranty management” services, however, I perform internal quality checks for builders as well. That’s what the board has a problem with.

If I remember correctly, that is one of the jobs that Kevin is offering and warranty management is NOT the issue being discussed here. That is after the home has been sold and he does not perform any inspection but merely takes claims from the home buyer and facilitates the repairs for the builder.

This is different. This is performing the described tasks in the previous post. Tasks that we perform as home inspectors and are included in the State SOP that are in the Washington Administrative Code as implemented by the Department of Licensing by recommendation of the Board. The Board takes their direction from the RCW (the actual law) and gives input to the Director of the Department of Licensing where further hearings are held in accordance with the RCW.

The AG does not take requests for interpretation of the law from the public. If I remember correctly, a Department Director or higher are the only State entities that can ask for interpretation of law. One can choose to ignore the Board in which case even the best arguments could fall on deaf ears and thus cause more grief than it is worth.

I think Kevin just needs to change his wording.

The law lives. Investigations have already taken place on some licensed and unlicensed inspectors. Life goes on.

As usual, Jim Bushart can’t make his point by being truthful, so he is lying. Based on the number of lies I’ve witnessed him tell on this forum over the years, I think it would be interesting to see some of his inspection reports - I bet those are kind of interesting in their inventiveness too.

Fact: Myself, the rest of the board and the folks in the coalition that helped usher in licensing here had nothing to do with the law that required home inspectors to also be pest inspectors. That law was passed in 1991 and was pushed through by pest inspectors. The ones who pushed it through were also instrumental in forming the Washington State Pest Control Association (Now Washington Pest Management Association).

Pussfart is right about one thing - I think it was meant to eliminate competition; but it wasn’t home inspectors trying to eliminate home inspector competition here, it was about pest inspectors who outnumbered home inspectors here 3 to 1 at that time who wanted to stop the influx of home inspectors who had decided to throw in pest inspections as an additional revenue stream.

The bug guys needed a way to stop the many newbies who were jumping into the then still relatively new and completely unregulated home inspection business, who were taking business away from them. They figured out that by marrying home inspections to pest inspections and requiring expensive E & O insurance that they’d be able to discourage many potential inspectors from entering the business, thus giving themselves more time to establish a solid client base and referral network.

Where they failed was in enforcement. WSDA just didn’t have the time or money to police the system and many new home inspectors opened up their doors anyway without getting a bug license.

In January of 2006 we home inspectors formed a coalition here to try and separate home inspectors from the bug inspectors and to institute specific education and training requirements. The bug guys were invited to participate and had a seat on the coalition. The bug guy tried to influence coalition members to maintain the status quo and endorse the requirement for a bug license; but, when the coalition members rebuffed him, the pest guy eventually quit the coalition when it became clear that his efforts wouldn’t be successful.

The coalition’s aims were simple; get home inspectors separated from bug inspectors again and get every home inspector licensed and have everyone home inspector prove that he or she could do what he or she claimed to be able to do - inspect homes.

There was no ulterior motive like trying to eliminate anyone’s competitors or to make gobs of money off of educating inspectors as Bushart has so often alleged.

It’s now more than two years since passage of the bill and not a single one of those in the coalition or those who sit on the board has opened up any training schools. One fellow who sits on the board is the designated education provider that the law requires be on the board. He was not a member of the coalition or instrumental in the law’s passage and he was teaching before the licensing initiate even began. He is not allowed to be on the education committee because that would be a conflict of interest.

The only other member of the board that teaches anything to do with home inspections is myself; I teach a 30 hour introduction to home inspections course every fall as part of the real estate program at a local community college. My students are primarily appraiser students, realtor students, realtors, investors and propery management professionals. The aim of the course is to try and bring an understanding of what we really do to other real estate professionals in the hope that it will improve our image. I’ve been teaching the course for nearly 6 years and I make about $2000 for 30 hours of my time. Wow, I sure am getting rich! Want to guess how many Saturday jobs I’ve had to turn down to teach that class over the past six years and what that cost me in lost income?

As far as I know, so far, nobody’s business has been shut down who was able to pass the NHIE to become licensed. In fact, except for those who’ve already been issued licenses, DOL hasn’t got any reason to shut down anyone until after the July 1st deadline passes. More to the point, the board doesn’t have the authority to put anyone out of business - that’s the Director DOL’s exclusive authority.

The bottom line here is that Jim Bushart is a bald faced liar of the worst magnitude. It’s sad that so many of you here consider a known liar to be credible.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike O’Handley, LHI
Your Inspector LLC.
Kenmore, Washington
Wa. Lic. Home Inspector #202

Stephen, with all due respect, you just accused Bushart of playing word games and at the same time encouraging me to play word games with the state. I’m not interested in changing my wording to try and skirt the law. I stand by my services. Yes, my quality walks include looking at SOP items. If the state wants to regulate this part of my business because of that, there’s not much I can do but object at the board meetings. If, in the end, the ultimate decision is that I have to be licensed to perform quality checks, so be it. I’ll either tweak my services or stop performing that specific function. I’m sure as hell not going to get a home inspector license and ensure every future employee of mine gets one. We’re not a home inspection firm.

By biggest beef is the bias of the board. I want a reasonable answer why this is pinpointed at my company and not others that perform the same functions.

How does the WA law define a home inspection? Therein lies your answer.

In Illinois it is