Hello. My name is Mark Lewis. I am a CPI thru Internachi. For the last 32 years, I’ve been an HVAC tech. In Va. I am working on starting my own home inspection business and fading out of full time HVAC. I’m a little nervous about starting something new after all this time but, excited too. A few questions I have about getting started. When you have a potential home inspection, do you email the client the contract, have it signed and returned with payment before stepping foot on the job? That’s what I’ve been told. Also is there a favored report software to use? And what’s the best type of insurance to get for your start up business? Sorry for dragging this out. Just want to start off on the right foot. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
The answers and opinions on those answers are at several locations and forums at the InterNACHI website. Best practice is to email the inspection agreement out for esignature prior to the inspection. If you use InterNACHI’s agreement, it set up to do that as is the agreements with nearly all software reports. Some inspectors get or try to get payment prior to the inspection, but I’ve always got paid at the inspection if the clients are there or get payment before delivering the finished report.
The single biggest thing in my barely humble opinion at this stage is setting expectations about what the inspection is. In my 23 years, barely a dozen clients have read the inspection agreement. So, you should set expectations verbally in person or over the phone prior to the inspection.
Most inspectors come from some trade. HVAC is great trade to come from. Now get up to speed on the rest. Good luck.
In my opinion, the first thing you should do is get E&O + GL insurance. Do not go by price alone. Call a few different places and interview them. The right agent will step you through the process of the pre-inspection agreement and payment. I chose Aaron Menlove from Inspector Pro simply due to him taking the time to speak to me and walk me through everything rather than telling me to simply fill out an application online and they will email me a quote. In my opinion, it is the best decision that I have made since starting, 16 years ago.
Try out a few different companies for inspection software and see what you like. The major players all have free trials. Practice on your own home with each of them and see what you like. My first software was an AHIT word document. After a few years, I chose Home Inspector Pro simply off of the fact that the owner spent a significant amount of time on here answering questions. Everyone raved on how reachable he was. The personal touch of the customer service has gone down since he sold out to Porch. My only concern with it is that Porch has been rumored to sell customer information. I do not know if this is true or not. Other software companies are in this same boat. I think I figured out a work around to prevent it.
To expand on the selling of customer information. As a new inspector, you will more than likely be lured into add on service. These include warranties and recall checks. They may claim that your customer’s information is protected. I ran a test and created a fictitious customer, address, & email address just to sign up for these. Sure enough, after a few weeks, the email was filled with spam for everything that has to do with home ownership. Just be careful with what you do with your customer’s information.
Check out ISN - goisn.net - It does all the contracts, payments, report delivery and keeps a database of all your past clients and agents. It’s affordable $5-$10/job. There are also other/similar services tied to various report software so ISN isn’t the only one… just the first and the one I’ve used. There are also some negatives as the original founder sold the company and there are some pretty legitimate suspicions about the company stealing clients’ data. Do your research… I mention it mostly to give you an idea of what’s available.
Most everyone here uses Spectora.
What Lon and Jeff said above is all good and well, and all important for you to look into…
BUT…
IMO the very first thing you should do is… get all the information together for what your State requires for licensing… then work on meeting those requirements FIRST!
Nothing else that anybody recommends doing will mean anything if you can’t get your license to operate!
Now, if there are no requirements, go back up to Lons and Jeffs posts to proceed.
Good Luck!
Trying to earn your $pectora commi$$ion again? 
Got bills to pay.
I am curious if that is true, seriously. It certainly seems popular. But then again, I never really heard much of it until you came along. Hehe 
I use it. Shrug. I’m new. I wanted the best integration with a mobile device and Spectora seems to be best at it.
Since it already has the scheduling, billing, credit card payments and all that ancillary stuff built in, it’s a fit for someone like me. I owned my own computer business 35 years ago, and all that stuff was a pain, to have it seamlessly integrated and have the reports be pretty…shrug. Not particularly cheap though and somewhat of a gamble if you’re going to have enough business to justify it.
I doubt it, lol. But I would be willing to bet that Spectora has a larger market share than anyone at the moment.
Not expensive either though when you compare it to other offerings with similar capabilities. Some will say they own their software outright (from 20 years ago), but they do all the admin stuff manually or pay ISN outrageous rates for what Spectora has built in. And those using 20-year old software are producing reports that look, well, 20 years old.
@ruecker are you taking notes? ^^^^^^^^
Who was it that said “they look like auto part store receipts?” I love it!
I don’t remember. But all of our reports look foreign to other inspectors who are accustomed to their own format I suppose, lol.
Well, for me, it paid for itself by the 3rd inspection in February. If I was 6 months in and no inspections, I would start to worry. I paid for a year just for the discount, but someone starting doesn’t have the resources I have to throw at new thing, so it might be a little more painful.
I ran my own computer business from 1991 to the end of 1995. Everything was manual. I even had a credit card machine that I’d have to go home and use to charge people since I didn’t have a brick and mortar location. I created invoices in word, printed on an ancient Okidata printer and kept a log book of everything. This? Wow, it’s all done for me. Awesome!
I think you may have misunderstood. He was referring to the “old school software” looking like auto part store receipts.
This is probably true, however, anyone who’s used any kind of modern web based software will look at Spectora vs some of the older ones and see “new”, not 2005.
I’m not saying the information isn’t there in those reports, but I FREQUENTLY do inspection repairs and work off Homegauge and other reports and frankly, most of it is hard to follow and isn’t particularly reader friendly.
I’ve done ONE inspection repair on someone’s Spectora report. The inspector made liberal use of the “orange” recommendation choices and I found it a bit off putting.
I have all but eliminated those unless it’s for a few very specific categories. It either needs fixed or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t it generally doesn’t make the report. Cracked driveways and walkways are one exception. I take a picture so they can compare it next year and see if it has changed.
No it didn’t. You paid for it by the 3rd inspection in February.
Really? Youre comparing a 30 year old method with ONE of todays offerings?
Got news for you, even Brians “Auto Parts Receipt” beats the hell out of your 30 year old method!!
What other Report Software have you used… for a FAIR comparison?
Ryan has never used anything other than Spectora, so he is a wee bit biased. I suspect you are also.