Hello everyone. First time on here and looking to get into the home inspector business. I live in Houston and saw some training classes online and some in person by some locate places.
I am a little confused and wanted to reach out to see if anyone can help.
Texas requires 194 hrs including the 40 hr Texas Practicum.
Does InterNACHI have all this in the Master class? Does this mean I can sit for the test and become a license inspector? If so, is there any additional cost other than the memebership? The classes I see are about $3k.
Thank you in advance. I have been looking to get in this industry but worried about it being over saturatted.
There are two types/names of courses TREC uses; core courses for initial licensing, Continuing Education Credits (CEU) for license renewal. INACHI provides numerous CEU classes but TREC does not recognize any of their courses as Core for the initial license. TREC has a list of training providers on their site whose courses they recognize for Core course training.
I can put your worries to rest and confirm that it’s WAY over-saturated. Year to year pending sales (which is when we get the call) are down 30-40% in most markets. Keeping in mind last year (the “good” year in the comparison) was not all that great due to low inventory. Now there’s high interest rates and prices stagnating or dropping which all leads to waaaaaay less houses selling in most markets. Honestly, getting into the profession now may not be the worst choice as there are likely many abandoning it. Just don’t plan on making any money for a couple years… or longer.
On a regular basis I used to pull the Inspector license list from here, put it in a spreadsheet, and sort it by various data pieces to see how many were in the area I serviced High Value Data Sets | TREC . On average we were running about 2500 licensed Inspectors for the entire State with around 600 - 650 right here in my service area. I stopped doing that years ago as it really changed very little from month to month and year to year.
I tried the RE Salesperson/Broker list a few times and was really surprised how many they are. The last time I did it there were over 110K throughout the State.
Different markets are, well…different, but in general, there are plenty of home inspectors for the number of inspections being performed. And in this market of diminishing sales, therefore fewer inspections, around here, there are inspectors trying to be the low bidder for the inspections being done. Understandable. Many will argue that even a tiny piece of the pie is better than no piece of pie.
Over the years, I have seen and heard inspectors say that whenever they raised their prices, their business volume increased. My experiences were similar, but not anymore. I am wondering if my pricing has exceeded the willingness to pay of the current crop of home buyers. I am losing more inspections than ever to lower bidders. My experience and gravitas are not impressing many compared to some inspector who is a $100 less.
I have never been the most expensive inspector around here and interestingly; I’ve heard from a couple of the more expensive guys that their phones are not ringing at all. Mine is still ringing, but I am converting only about 80% of the calls into jobs. In the past, I converted 98% of those into jobs.
So, I think it is a tough time to get into a real estate related business. My daughter is a mortgage company processor and closer, and her company has had so many layoffs, that she is almost by herself. One local multi-inspector company, laid off 7 of their inspectors back in October. It kind of reminds me of 2008-2012. Those were tough years as a home inspector.
I have taught home inspection for years and my observation has long been that out of three classes with a combined 16-18 true newbies, two will try and only one will succeed as a home inspector. And of course, there are always a few newbies who become extremely successful. Our last class had only one true newbie, and the other “students” were working inspectors who were interested in advancing their knowledge or getting education credits for their state license.