Why is that if they are not “Certified”?
I even go as far as to Advertise my AZ Cert # on my web page… 39975. 
Hi. Nick, and yes that is a given, but the question is, how many are actually Certified Home Inspectors and how many are Certified Members of the Home Inspection Association.
That is the question that seems to have a difficult answer.
Are most Members of this Association calling themselves a Certified Home Inspector falsely using the term, in an unlicensed State?
Is it fact that we are Certified Members and not Certified Home Inspectors with all the prerequisites fulfilled?
This caveman needs to know. :)
I don’t think it matters anymore, everyone certifies home inspectors. Even diploma mill ASHI certifies home inspectors for merely passing the beginner’s exam (NHIE) used by many states to license newbies fresh out of school. ASHI is such a diploma mill that it doesn’t even require it’s members in states that use the NHIE to pass it again. “Oh, you passed the beginner’s exam you had to anyway, to even operate in this state? Shazam!! You be ASHI certified!”
When known diploma mills like ASHI start certifying inspectors for doing nothing more and fulfilling no additional requirements (above the bare minimum required to operate legally)… it goes to show that every home inspector is a certified home inspector nowadays.
We did Certified Master Inspector](http://www.certifiedmasterinspector.org) to distinguish veteran inspectors from all the other certified home inspectors.
Every state has minimum standards to go by to be a licensed inspector in that state. Remember, minimum standards. To many RE’s and buyers, being licensed is something special, but actually it is not.
Being a member of an orginization and being certified by the same orginization should mean something different, when in reality, it is not, unless that orginization enforces their rules and regulations. Many inspectors, especially AS**, use many designations to impress RE’s and clients, when actually they mean nothing.
In my years as an inspector, your reputation, the way you do your job, the way you explain and take care of your clients, means the most. IMHO, being a CMI should be the utmost home inspection designation, and Nick should work to keep it that way.
One thing you forgot to mention is that ASHI “Certified Inspector” comes after 250 inspections are verified and they actually have you submit reports for audit and verification that they are done according to SOP. That’s a little more rigorous than 4 mock inspection reports:p:p:p
Perhaps.
When I joined ASHI, I had a few ASHI members provide me some “tips” on quick and easy certification.
At each juncture…be it at the 50 or 250 inspection level…you will submit the names of the clients you inspected to ASHI. According to my advisors, rarely are you asked to send in any reports. Both of them were raised to the next level by simply providing names. If you are asked, you are asked to submit 10% (5 of the first 50 and 25 of the 250) by name, which you simply take 5 or 25 of your best computer generated reports and change the names to meet the names that are requested.
Both of the fellas advising me told me that neither had been asked to turn in any reports.
I thanked them for the information, but asked them why they bothered. ASHI “membership” costs XXXdollars per year and the next level, which provides nothing but logo usage, costs xx dollars for the review, and xxx+50 dollars per year. The level after that…where you call yourself an ASHI certified inspector…costs additional money for the level increase AND XXX + 75 dollars per year.
At the first level, you can say your an ASHI member to any idiot to whom it would make a significant difference. Why pay the extra cash?
They agreed.
Bottom line…ASHI does NOT review inspections for all of its members and those who had a review were only required to turn in 25 to 30 reports.
It means nothing more to belong to ASHI than to any other association.
OK;)
Funny side note…one of my advisors told me not to worry. If I needed to send in 30 reports, he would “give” them to me. Simply changing his name to mine…and the client to whatever name I was asked to send.
It made me wonder how many “certified” ASHI inspectors there were still waiting for their first inspection.
Linas, in a day and age where all reporting forms sold and all reporting software packages sold, produce nothing but SOP-compliant reports… it becomes impossible to produce anything but an SOP-compliant report, so that diploma mill ASHI requirement means nothing. It means less than nothing when compared to www.nachi.org/membership.htm
Nice to see we made it to the ASHI part of our discussion.
Now…I’m gonna pick on Nick.
Of the long list of membership requirements, do you track and record (by inspector) who has accomplished what?
Isn’t that also on the honor system?
All the software I have seen needs to be tweaked/modified to produce a SOP Compliant report here in AZ…
On a semi off topic, and yet somewhat on topic note. As a non home inspector that has dealt with a lot of home inspectors, the ones I know that are members of multiple organizations all have one thing in common to say about Nachi, they get more leads from Nachi than any of the others. So either Nick has done a heck of a job of marketing the brand, or realitors (or others) see Nachi in some higher regard.
JJ
Somewhat Jim, However…
- We provide an individual online CE log for members to use;
- We provide accredited and approved online CE so that members have no disincentive to stay educated.
- We alert licensed states to every CE hour completed by members in those states and the states, in turn, tell us when a member must be made invisible because they lost their license or are behind on their CEs. and;
- We audit 1/12th of all member’s CE logs every year.
We of course can’t verify that any member is applying anything they’ve learned on their inspections anyway, so the whole world relies somewhat on the “honor” of inspection professionals.
I ask this question, not to condemn NACHI, but to illustrate that membership (no matter what the requirements are reported to be) is not a “credential” in any home inspection association.
As Nick illustrated, CMI is created to be a credential, and serves itself accordingly. Membership in an association is NOT, in and of itself, a level of proficiency.
Jim is basically correct in stating the difference between a certified InterNACHI member and a Certified Master Inspector](http://www.certifiedmasterinspector.org). One is a membership in a trade association, one is the inspection industry’s highest professional designation.
Don’t ever remember getting one from here…
You told us earlier that a CPI is a professional designation given to all members in good standing???
Marcel and others, on another thread, were expressing dismay over the fact that many newbies rely upon their “certified membership” status as a “credential” and use it to call themselves “NACHI certified home inspectors”.
They felt that, since all NACHI is actually certifying is their membership, these guys might be in trouble should they be called out on their “certification” as a home inspector.
What would you advise a newby…still waiting to get his first home inspection client to call him to schedule an inspection…who wants to call himself a “NACHI certified home inspector”?