Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: And we are live. Hey, guys. We are back with another episode of Real Talk. I'm Heather with Head in the Clouds.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: And Andres here with Charles Sin Filtros.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: And this is Real Talk. Today we have a special guest with us, Stephen Ming. He is a home inspector with home Team Home inspection Services.
And we are streaming live today. You can either go to our website and watch us there, or you can watch us on Facebook and YouTube. Sometimes we're on Tik Tok and Instagram, but today it's just Facebook and YouTube and TikTok. So let's jump into it and find out a little bit about Stephen and his backstory and how he got into home inspections. So, Stephen, do you want to tell us a little bit about you and your background and what led you to being a home inspector?
[00:00:47] Speaker C: Sure. First of all, thank you for letting me have let me be on your podcast. Andreas and Heather really appreciate you guys having me on here.
So, yeah, I'm a home inspector, and I actually got started a long time ago when I was in high school.
I worked for a builder, home construction, and it was my job to follow around the superintendent, and we found the issues that the subcontractors didn't complete or didn't complete properly, and we fixed it or we called them back out. So I did that for about a little over a year.
From there, I went off to college, Went to college here in Atlanta, got a degree in IT of all things. And I was in the IT industry for 20 years.
And most of my job was identifying problems. Identifying problems and finding the appropriate people to fix those problems.
I had to work for four different companies doing similar jobs.
I found myself kind of pigeonholed in similar roles and didn't matter how many certifications and qualifications I got. In addition, it was hard for me to move into other roles. And so it came. I was. I had to go and reinvent myself. I need to do something different.
So I leaned back on what I previously done in the home industry.
And as I, you know, I can do home inspections because I think there's a demand for quality home inspections and people who know what they're doing, people that have a good eye. And I've been doing it for 20 years for it and awesome home, so I can do it.
So back in Covet of all times, I got started with this here. So home team is actually a national franchise. We have over 200 locations across the country. Across the country. And I'm one of the owners here in Atlanta. We have six of them here in Georgia.
But yeah, I've been doing this now for four and a half years and I enjoy it. I like it because I feel like I add value to a person's experience when they're purchasing their home.
Not only do they get to find out more about their home, how it operates, they also get to find out what some, some things they need to be worried about, what could be potential issues in the future, and also in some cases, well, it gives them enough information to know that they want to walk away from this particular house.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: That's, man, that's awesome. That's great to hear. And, and just like we were talking before the podcast, Steven, Heather and I are both professionals in the real estate field, but also want to, I want to dive into some of these questions as a consumer perspective.
What is a home inspection exactly?
[00:03:33] Speaker C: So a home inspection is a report on the current state of the house.
So when the home, when the home inspector arrives on site to time, he leaves.
What is the current state of the house?
So whatever we see that's not working right, report or whatever we perceive as a danger or a problem, we're putting the report, the report is not going to tell you in five minutes after we leave, this is going to collapse or this is going to break because we don't have crystal balls, you know. But it is a current state of where the house is. So you can make a decision on if it's something, if it's a, literally a risk you want to pursue in purchasing a home.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: It's if, if you don't mind me asking, is that homes, the tents in the house, are they under normal operation conditions or is it something that, that let's say somebody just fixed and you can tell from a home inspector experience that some adjustment have been made in order to make that operational or is that just a normal operational.
[00:04:48] Speaker C: So as a home inspector, I've gone all types of houses, whether it be vacant, whether it be occupied, old, new, flipped.
You know, a person who is an owner that claims to be a handyman and, and tweak this and tweak that, which honestly scares me.
But when we, when we get there, we, we, we're, we're looking at every house in the same manner. There's a step by step process the way we evaluate the house. And if something doesn't meet a certain criteria, we, we write it up. And it's important to know that we're not code enforcement. So the stuff we write up, we're not going to quote a code that says, the code says X, Y, And Z, we're just looking for safety and proper function, which doesn't necessarily mean it's not code, but it just means that we're going to make sure that whatever we're looking at is functional like it's intended and safe for occupants to be around it.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: Thanks for the clarity.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: Oh, sorry, Andres. I was gonna say, just so our buyers know where the home inspection falls on the whole journey of home buying process, typically when we put in a offer on a house and we go under contract on that house, you ask for what's called a due diligence period. And during that due diligence period, you want to schedule your home inspection immediately. So if you have a seven day due diligence period or you have a three day due diligence period, due diligence period. I always tell my buyers, get on the phone right now, call Stephen, call your home inspector, get this home inspected. And what we use that inspection report for during the due diligence period is to do something, what's called the amendment to address concerns. So, Stephen, many times we have done this. You'll go out, you'll do an inspection, you send me the report, and then I'll go through that report with my client and we decide what things we want addressed. And then we send over our document called the amendment to address concerns, which I call it. You go. It goes by attack. I call it attack, which I think is hilarious since you're basically attacking the house. But nobody tends to find that funny except for me.
[00:06:52] Speaker C: I'm laughing.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: I think it's hilarious that the acronym for it is called attack. When you're literally sending over a list of things that you're like, this is wrong with the house.
Makes sense you would send over your amendment to address concern during your due diligence period. And that's when the negotiations of who's going to take care of what and if they're going to fix that goes underway. So that's where the home inspection would fall in the grand scheme of the home buyer journey.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: So in that essence, why would a buyer need one? Exactly. I know you mentioned a lot of things there, but why would the buyer need an inspection? Exactly.
[00:07:30] Speaker C: It's. You're trying to. Well, when you're buying a house, thousands upon thousands of dollars more money than most people spend on anything else, and you want to make sure that you're not going to throw away good money on to a house that is going to have unforeseen problems.
Every house degrades over time. For the minute it's built to the time it's torn down eventually at some point by mankind, it's degrading. And we're giving you an idea of where it is in that degradation and how it currently sits. And you need to know what you're getting into so you can make correct decisions.
I don't assume how much a person has as far as income, their money, what they desire to do with the house. I try to figure out what they want to do with the house. If a person's renting the house versus they want to move into it or their forever home, you know, you get a different idea about what they may want to do with the house.
But taking all that into account, we're here to make sure that every house we look into systematically and find out what is, what could be a potential problem, so they can make sure that they are aware of it and they can fix those problems either before closing or they're aware that they can fix it afterwards. And that's part of the negotiation process.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: I was going to say, if I may, Heather, funny you say that because just as I mentioned before, before the podcast, I read on Facebook multiple posts of people saying, hey, I just purchased a home a month or two months ago, my agency not recommended an inspection, and now I'm finding all these issues.
What did you say to, to those type of things? Question like.
[00:09:19] Speaker C: Well, I, I would love to expect anything.
It makes me run, you know. And quite honestly, I'll be real honest, if you call me, that's wonderful. It's great. You call somebody else, it's wonderful, great.
But it should be inspected, period.
Every real estate agent should offer two or three inspectors on a regular basis.
Want to do more than one.
I, I appreciate if you love me, you want to have me, that's great and wonderful, but no, you should always have more than one because the liability purposes, because any inspector that gets pigeonholed to be that one inspector for a person or hey, you have to use my guy, this guy. If they were to miss something, that becomes a liability for the agents.
So we always recommend having multiple people on there. If you, if they have one they prefer, you can always tell them that. Yes, but the thing is you should have multiple for your home as a, as an agent, for your own protection.
But yeah, they should always have an inspection done.
And if they don't have an inspection done, the realtor or the client decides they don't want it. The realtor should make sure they get that sign that they were warned to get inspection, protect them after the fact. So when they find something or hey, why didn't my realtor asking to get this done or get this checked out, you're covered because hey, you want them to get it done.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: What's the benefit of using a home inspector such as yourself as opposed to like if somebody goes, well, you know, my father in law or my next door neighbor is a contractor, so they can just come through and look at the house and tell me what's wrong. What would be the negative of using that as opposed to the benefit of using a home inspector?
[00:11:03] Speaker C: Well, I'll just say that's cute.
It's just like, hey, I have a uncle that's a painter. I'm gonna have him look at the house. You know, that's, that's great. But you know, if you're, if you're going, if you're having heart problems and you happen to go see a dentist tomorrow, you're not going to ask your dentist, hey, I'm. My heart's doing some weird things. What do you think it is? Because that's not their realm as a home inspector.
We're not experts in all the systems, but we know enough about everything to know how it should work. So we're generalists, not specialists, in other words.
So we're here to find stuff that's just generally bad or not. Right. So it can be addressed.
If you were to get, say, okay, you have an uncle that's a plumber or a friend that's a plumber or whatever, or electrician or anyone that trades people to come in.
Am I saying they couldn't do a good job?
No, not necessarily. But they're not going to be nearly detailed.
It would be very heavy on whatever trade they come from. Naive. They are a plumber person. A plumber, they would be hyper focused on plumbing. If they are efficient, they're going to be hyper focused on issues.
They might find some other things, of course, but like I said, it's what their realm, their expertise is most inclined to point out and find.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Do you. How about new properties? So now we talk about properties as they are. Do new properties need a home inspection?
They're brand new.
[00:12:48] Speaker C: Absolutely, absolutely.
So this is about a month ago.
Month ago I did a new home inspection. This is in area and one of the things I noticed was the lot is sloped towards the basement.
And when I got inside the basement there was water and the floor was wet in the basement. Basement was unfinished, but the concrete floor was wet.
I saw around the sill plates, you know where the slab meets the wood. There was water there.
Wood sheathing around the floor wasb. It was wet. It was dark.
And I can also see some of the salts coming in from the brickwork through the wood and depositing right there. So it had been coming in for a while. Mind you, it's a new construction, so we were getting a lot of rain lately, so that's quite very easy to happen.
Upon further investigation, I took a step back and look at all the Os paneling along the walls and had olive green blotches all over the place.
Olive green because it's mold.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:14:03] Speaker C: It was bad. No.
So the thing. Let me tell you this thing about mold. So as a home inspector, we can't really say, hey, it is mold, unless we get tests for it.
As a home inspector, I can say there's organic growth or something that looks like mold. And only after and when we test it can we say definitively it is mold.
On this particular case, I told the client, I say, it looks like we have some organic growth. All the water coming in needs to be looked at.
And he asked in point blank, well, what should I do with this? It says, if it were me, I would make sure that the builder takes care of it. And if you get any type of pushback, I would get out of the contract.
Mold is not something you want to play around with. People can be very allergic to it. It can mess with people.
Depending on your own physiology, for one person, it might be fine. For the next person, it could darn near kill them. So that's something you have to take into account.
That's just one instance.
There's another new house. This is probably about two years ago.
I was downstairs. The client was there, the buyer, and she was up there. I hadn't been upstairs.
And she said, hey, Stephen, have you seen this? I said, I haven't been up there.
I walk up there along the ceiling. Where the ceiling meets the wall, there's a big old stain where water had been dripping.
Oh, okay. Interesting.
And I saw the ladder for the attic, and I pulled that down, go up there.
So here's a condensation line for the air conditioner going drip, drip, drip.
So apparently the pipes, someone didn't glue them together.
Oh, wow, it's dripping here. So what type of problem that caused? Well, there's a huge stain on the wall.
The smoke detectors in the hallway were rusting from the water coming through the electrical system for the bathroom, the Jack and Jill bathroom, a bedroom, the hallway and the stairwell didn't work. Because the water got an electrical system, swollen doors that didn't want to open and close.
And then I pulled out my thermal scan. The ceiling a good 10 by 12. 12 by 12 area all blue, just soaking wet.
So all that has to be replaced. That's thousands dollars worth of work new construction.
So all because someone failed to put glue together on a pipe. I think inspection yeah, absolutely.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: Definitely. I think something that, that because it's new construction people tend to overpass that is that this construction, especially if it's a large builder, they're building multiple properties at a time and they're getting done within four to six months. I very fast pace.
So there's going to be a lot of little details that could potentially be missed.
Small details that over the long term could be something much greater. So, so important to having that additional inspection done before moving in, before getting the whole process started to identify some of these things. Right.
As you mentioned those you're looking at every details and just like that water on this, on the ceiling, just from a single drop, it turned into something much bigger.
[00:17:32] Speaker C: Right.
It's important to note I'll tell people is that homes are made for from natural and manly products by on hot days, cold days, wet things, dry days, by people who having a good day, a bad day.
And all these factors come together and have to be perfect.
And if any one of those are off it could have a domino effect for everything else. And so we're dealing with so many factors to be darn near perfect for it to be just right.
And so it's important to know that people are on the same page when the house is being built part.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: Are there other things that you offer besides just like your standard home inspection?
[00:18:21] Speaker C: Yeah. So let me first tell you what's in a regular home inspection. Kind of just give you a qualified. So a standard home inspection. How we pursue it is when first arriving on site, I'm gonna look at how the house is situated on the property.
We're going to make sure the land is scoped away from the structure. We're gonna look at the outside of structure. We'll look for deterioration holes, places where critters can go in, water can get in the house.
We're going to have a look at the air conditioning unit. We're going to make sure it's level, it's clean, that's going to be operational. Look for any damage on it. We're going to check out your the deck, make sure it's properly secured, not too water damaged. And everything that we're going to put your patios. We're going to look at the roof. We're going to look at the chimneys and flu systems.
From there we go inside.
We're going to run all the appliances in the kitchen, make sure they're operating correctly like they should. We're going to check all the faucets, sinks, tubs, showers and toilets throughout the house. Make sure they flush, run, stop when they're supposed to stop, no overflow.
We're going to check electrical outlets and I do say representative my electrical outlets. Because if there's furniture in the way, we're not going to move the furniture.
We're going to open a representative mounted windows. Again, if the furniture is away, we're not going to do those.
Check outlets.
We're going to look at the water heater, look at the electrical panel.
We're going to run the heat, run the air conditioning, check the basement, crawl spaces, attics. And what we're going to do is we're looking for the defects, right? And we're going to report on those defects.
What's not included is that all over there has a scuffle or there's a small hole over here in this wall.
If there is like damage on the floor or anywhere that is water related because of something that's defect, I. E. A leaking roof, plumbing leak is going to cause water damage. Obviously we will write that up. But like someone brush up against the wall and put a hole in something that is not cosmetic stuff is not covered.
We're making sure that the house you're getting is structurally sound and operational.
We don't care about how pretty or ugly it is because I've seen.
Not to want to add more work to myself on that, but some other offerings we offer besides the basic pest inspection, we have two flavors of that where we get one of our vendor partners who's passed out there, either Northwest, formerly Gill Strap or Arrow Exterminators come out and they have either two, one or two options. You can go out there and do a courtesy inspection. And what they're for most part doing is they're checking to make sure the house can be bonded and why that's important.
Let me give an example about.
About two years ago, did a house that was like 99 years old. It's not a crawl space. The front of the structure meets the grade. It's almost level to the ground. The back is, you know, it drops down. You can almost stand up.
The problem is, is that inside the crawl space, as you go to the front the area gets narrower and narrower to where it's like, like literally inches between the ground and the crawl space and the floor joist.
So in that particular house in the front, termites ate it up.
And the problem is that reputable pest, I do say reputable pest control companies can't necessarily protect those because they can't get in that area to treat it. They can't get underneath the house in a tight area. A man can't get in there to treat it, to prevent it, termites from getting to it. So that's a good reason to get make sure everything is checked out that they can put upon them if needed.
But then of course other one is actual termite letter where they are willing to say, hey look, for $95, we'll put our name on it that says you're currently termite free and you are going to be termite free for X amount of time, normally in a year's time.
So that's past mold mold testing.
We do that as in house, we take mold samples. We can either do air samples or surface samples or combination of the two.
There's always three samples taken for air, one of which is going to be outside as a baseline. So we have a comparison and we're going to get, we can always do more if you want or we can add some surface samples. But what we're looking for is we're have a little vacuum pump and it takes cartridge goes on there and it's taking air and it's pulling it through and it's accumulating anything that's floating around the air. So there's mold spores, dust spores, anything in the air it gets collected on its plate. We send it to the lab and normally we have like 24 hour turnaround time and they'll send us a report. Listen that to you guys. And this, the really cool thing about reports, it doesn't just say, hey, you have this type of mold or this type of this, that and the other.
It actually says stuff like, oh, you have pet dander flying around the air, you have soot floating around the air, you have pollen in the air, you have all these different fragments. And it actually shows little pictures of actual samples of the actual samples that we took out of the samples in that report. So we really like that.
So pest, mold, radon, radon. We do a radon inspections. If you don't know what that is, that's a invisible gas that you, you can't see or smell that comes out of the surface of the earth.
And because our House is so, so tight these days. It can get trapped in your home and you can breathe it. And being as a radioactive gas, it can cause things like cancer. As a matter of fact, it can be the second leading cause of cancer, only behind smoking cigarettes.
So it's kind of important, particularly as you get into the more mountainous areas of Georgia, you can tend to have a higher concentration of that, but it amounts to us putting a monitor in the home for 48 hours and returning and pick it back up to get the results for that.
And then lastly, we have sewer scoping, and that's where we farm it out to a third party. They come and they put a sewer camera down the line, and they're looking for collapses in the sewer line. Look for root intrusions, backups, bellies, where the water sits and stuff like that. And that can be really useful, particularly on older homes, but it's also good to be done, even on new homes.
And then one more thing we actually do. We don't get very much asked for, but for those clients who are out of state or out of country, we also do floor plan diagrams. So, you know, people like to see the house, you know, the pictures and everything. But sometimes people like to see the floor plan, how it, how it's laid out. And we could also do that.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Oh, I didn't know you guys did that. So that's pretty awesome. That's pretty cool.
[00:25:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: So you just touch on pest control radon and the overall process of the home inspection itself.
So important for consumers to know that it's not how deep and how precise you go into that process and how important it is for the whole transactional purpose. Right.
So thank you for sharing all of that. I think it's a great touching on all the different levels that pertains to that inspection itself. Right.
So what's one thing that most people don't realize about a home inspector in your experience?
[00:26:19] Speaker C: So I will say, like I said, we don't have a crystal ball, so we can't say what's going to happen in the future.
When we, when we analyze, for example, when we analyze the water heater or a furnace or air conditioning system, we always talk about how old they are.
And if it's an air conditioning system older than 15 years, it's considered end of design life. Generally speaking, if it's a water heater, anything above 9 years old is end of design life.
Some people may think that if it's in design life, oh, my gosh, it's dead. We got to get rid of it. No, it's not the case. It's not even necessary.
I've seen water heaters, like I said, generally nine years. I've seen them be 30 years old and working just fine. Not leaking, heating the water properly just fine.
I've seen air conditioning units 30 years old, still cooling very well, no problem.
That being said, what I tell clients is at this point it's working properly and you know, I'm verifying it actually makes hot water or it's cooling and heating like it should and if it's working, it's working great. Golden. Maybe you want to get like a talk to your agent and have them get a home warranty on those and that way if you move in down the line a year or so, they stop working, they go kaput. They can get it replaced, they'll get it fixed, but there's no reason just because something's old to replace it. If it's working, it's working.
And that's, you know, that's part of not scaring people. We don't believe in scaring people and ruining deal where's like hey, it's working. What it's not, there's nothing wrong.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: And just for clarity, what do you mean by design life?
[00:28:06] Speaker C: So, so everything has everything.
So to make everything in the house has a longevity for what, how long it should be expected to last.
So air conditioners are designed to last in general 15 years, but they can last longer than that.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: Proper maintenance, that helps.
[00:28:26] Speaker C: Yeah, maintenance definitely. How long is how well it's maintained.
You know, for exercise, if it's regularly maintained, to clean the filters out, they have the two tune ups a year when it's heating and it's cooling time.
Get them out there, check those things to keep it clean.
It's fine that normally in most cases it's fine. Water heaters, you know, as long as you don't keep the water turned up too high, the water pressure doesn't get too high in the house which cause excess pressure being the tank, you know, they can, they can last a long time. Like I said, they don't always but, but they can and it's just a matter of maintenance and also just knowing that, hey look, everything is going to, is designed to fail at some point, that nothing's perfect, that's going to last forever. So just be in mind, mindful of that and prepare, that's all.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: Do you have any wild crazy stories for us about some weird things you found when you're doing a home inspection?
[00:29:29] Speaker B: Can you walk us through One of those. How, how did you approach that? And what happened?
[00:29:36] Speaker A: He said, nope, I'm out of here. I can't talk.
[00:29:41] Speaker C: More. To start cleaning.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: Can you, can you paint that? Picture shows.
[00:29:51] Speaker C: Sorry about that.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: It's so good. It's part of the show.
[00:29:56] Speaker C: Yeah, some weird stuff.
So I. There's this house I was doing in downtown at a.
It was probably every bit of 70 some odd years old, maybe 80 years old.
My client was a investor and he wanted to take this property and flip it.
And so, sight unseen, he hadn't seen the property, he called me out, hey, can you go inspect this? I said, okay, sure, no problem. So I get down there, I looked this property.
There must have been light.
Two or three different layers of exterior siding, like literally on top of each other.
Grand total, maybe seven or eight different types of siding throughout the house.
Very haphazardly put on one of the walls. Looking down the side, it goes like this and it waves out about 6 inches. It comes back.
The roof line does similar things. It's just really weird.
I saw like the sewer line for a bathroom in the back of the house leaves the exterior slab, runs along the side of the house, and then goes back in the ground to go meet up the main.
And I'm inspecting this, and I'm about done with the outside. It took me about an hour and 15 minutes. It was, it was a lot. It was a lot.
The client shows up and he's walking around and I'm kind of showing what everything is looking at. He's on the phone. I hear him talking to his partner or whatever, saying, this house has problems.
And I'm walking around the inside. Now I'm looking for other things. And half the house is on a slab. Another half is on the crawl space. And I'm on the part that has a crawl space. And I'm walking on the concrete and the floor. Kind of just click, click. It just kind of just teeters on something.
I'm like, this foundation is gone.
And just point this out to the guy. And it's like, okay.
And so he's back on the phone and he comes back to me. He's like, hey, can, can you stop? I says, yeah, I could stop, I guess. It says, let's stop on this one and I'll have another one for you tomorrow. But this is not. It says, okay, cool. And so I, I, I just charged him half price because about halfway done, you know, and literally the next day he had another formula. Much better. But, but yeah, I see all types of Stuff, I mean, I've done.
This is one house.
Gosh, it's about 90 some odd years old as well. Older houses is very interesting, let's put it that way.
The electrical panel was in the, the crawl space, Nick. Crawl space had about an inch of water in it. Says, I'm not touching that.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: Oh wow.
[00:32:48] Speaker C: I'm not touching that. But it's in the pole. Yeah. So it's just like that, that could be a problem. But that's some of the weird stuff I see.
My job is very entertaining, to say very least. Get to see all types of stuff.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: I gotta say, just, just walk into a house like that, you never know what you're going to find, right? Yeah, especially as you said, that's 70, 80 year old property.
[00:33:13] Speaker C: And there's nothing wrong with old properties. Again, it comes to maintenance and as stuff is upgraded, stuff is upgraded correctly.
And that, you know, when it comes to like a house being flipped, a house can be flipped haphazardly or it can be done well. And I've seen both scenarios and that's another reason why they get inspected.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Do you see that a lot? Like haphazard flips where you're like, who did this?
[00:33:40] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I do see that quite a bit.
And I've also had a couple times where the seller may be still there and he'll, he'll walk around and like, yeah, I. That thing there, I replaced that. And this thing over here replaced that. And I'm like looking like, dude, I really wish you hadn't because it's done wrong.
And like. But he's telling me everything he messed up. So I'm like, okay, I'm taking mental note, I have to check this.
There's gonna be problems here and there because I just know some people are just not. They can't and those who can't, shouldn't.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: Or they try to just, you know, save a buck by doing it themselves, but yet they don't really know how to do it. So in the long run it's just gonna cost them when it comes to resale value. Because it wasn't done correctly.
[00:34:29] Speaker C: Right, exactly. Exactly.
[00:34:30] Speaker B: Absolutely. With that said, are there any, are there things a seller can do before listing their home? And.
[00:34:41] Speaker C: Yes, I'll say job one would be to make sure the house is clean.
Not, not like, you know, mop the floors, vacuum carpets. No, I'm not, I'm talking about that.
Get rid of excess clutter, which you should be doing anyway if you're trying to sell the house. Right.
And part of the problem is, is that as a home inspector, we are not required to move anything. Okay. Any of the belongings in the property.
We can at our own discretion, but we won't if we feel like A, will take too long, or B, there could be a problem where I could damage something or any other reason that we deem is appropriate to prevent us from having an excess amount of liability.
So, that being said, your electrical panel, make sure that there's nothing around it. When it comes to active panels, we need 36 inches from the panel back for access so we can have arm's length and get to it or step back from it. 30 inches from side to side and about six and a half feet up and down. We need that for our safety because electrical panels have deadly amounts of electricity in it. And if we can't get to it safely without having to reach over something or reach around something or kind of hunch into some area, we can inadvertently electrocute ourselves. So it's a safety hazard.
We definitely need access to the water heaters, to the furnace.
And I think that's the basic stuff.
If this. If there's already. If they're already in the process of moving. The more stuff you can get out of the house, the better, because it makes our job easier. We can see more.
We just want to do a thorough job for our clients to make sure that we can see everything we can see. And if we can't, then, unfortunately, we can't.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: So, speaking of can't, Stephen, how many times have you called me or Tony and been like, the power's not on.
The gas isn't on. Oh, gosh, the water's not on.
[00:36:46] Speaker C: Matter of fact, I did a house Saturday with the power was not on. I'm going to be going back out there this afternoon to finish it up.
That happens.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Very important right there. Right, I'm sorry.
[00:37:02] Speaker C: Very important.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: They're making sure they keep their utilities on.
[00:37:05] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, it really is. It really is.
And it.
It's hard because, you know, when we're doing inspection, though, an inspection can take three to four hours, depending on the side of the house. Average house is about three and a half, four hours. Right.
So we're kind of allotted for that time. And then we're off to the next one, you know, a couple minutes after that. Hopefully, if for some reason the power is not on or electricity is not, or gas, one of the utilities or multiple utilities now on, we can't complete the job.
So we're now at a loss of time.
And so we had to Come back out there. And the thing is that we have to account for that time and we have to charge sometimes to go back out to these locations. Because I did an inspection out in Douglasville, this is about a, about a year and a half ago, and I went to site, it had no electricity and no gas and so I couldn't do anything.
And I drove all the way out to Douglasville. That's an hour and 45 minute drive for me.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:12] Speaker C: And you drive out there, drive back, that's, you know, almost four hours of driving and do an inspection and you can't complete it. So I, at that point I had to literally charge the full price to go back out there. And that chart, that price was charged to listing party by the way, because they are, they do get emails and text message from us reminding to make sure the utilities are on.
So my policy is, you know, our policy here is we charge 250, go back out, just one utility off and the full price if no, because we have to account for that time because that's, that's where we could be going, do another inspection that we can't get to.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: And I would always tell agents, especially newer agents, if they don't know this, when you schedule your home inspection, call the other agent, tell them when the home inspection is, make sure they know, make sure if the home is occupied, that the seller knows that the home inspection is scheduled for. But even when we do all that, sometimes they still don't have the power on, they still don't have the utilities on. And so yes, like you had said a minute ago, we always say, hey, you know, somebody's gonna have to pay for this time. So we're gonna pass that on to the seller and be like, we let you know. That's why if you've, you know, you got the email from the home inspection team. I have a transaction coordinator, she also emails. I've called and I can show where I've texted, I like to text because you have the proof so I can. Look, look, I showed where I text the listing agent. The home inspector was going to be here Tuesday at 9am and you didn't have the utilities on. So sorry, but guess who's gonna have to pay for that.
[00:39:42] Speaker C: And not only that, it creates another additional inconvenience.
There was one house in, where was that? In Stone Mountain where the water was cut off and to get it turned down, turned back on literally took three weeks.
So that's three weeks of waiting to complete the inspection.
So if you're on the listing side gotta make sure utilities on you gotta. Gotta make sure that that's, that's time wasted. That's opportunity cost. On. On my side as inspector, we have to go back out there a second time on this case. I think I ended up going out there three times, honestly. So it's kind of a lot of work. But.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: So did they extend due diligence then?
[00:40:22] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: Wow. So you're talking like almost a month then that both parties were tied up with this house and they're not even sure they want to proceed yet because they haven't had the inspection.
[00:40:32] Speaker C: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:40:34] Speaker B: 60 day closing there.
It just shows how important communication is in that process. Right. If you're the listing agent, understanding and letting your client knows, you know the expectation what needs to happen over the next 10 days once you get that offer accepted, once you accept that offer and the due diligence process and having communicated that to, you know, to the seller and in the same capacity the buyer's agent informing their client this was needs to happen, this was going to happen and getting that done because like you said, that process was delayed three weeks for no utilities.
And I'm sure the agent knew that needed to happen and the seller, hopefully they did, knew that what needed to happen.
So it's so important having that communication up front and making sure that process goes as smooth as possible.
[00:41:34] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:41:35] Speaker A: Are there common things that are on every single home inspection? I know we joke. The joke is that every toilet is a loose toilet when you have a home inspection done.
[00:41:47] Speaker C: Yeah, just I would say about almost 50% of toilets are loose.
I would say about 40 of the garbage disposals don't work.
Just about every house built in the last 20 years with double pane is going to have at least one window that has a thermal seal that's, you know, it's foggy and we write this stuff up. You know, there's some things that just gonna fail and it's. You know, the foggy windows is not like a really bad thing. It's just like more of a visual nuisance than anything. It only decreases the efficiency very minute amount, but it's something. And if you don't put in the report, people don't like that. So put in the report.
Garbage disposal. Like I said, a lot of those halftimes don't work or you turn on it.
So it's jammed up a lot of times.
One things I put in the report a lot is I see a lot of.
I refer to as amateur plumbing or when you say amateur, you Kind of read between the lines, which, like, means not to code, generally speaking, but like the flexible hoses underneath, flexible piping underneath sinks.
They're not inherently bad. They work until they don't. Those corrugations hold on to debris. Eventually you. You have it back up in your sink or whatever.
But, yeah, those are some of those things that I see quite a bit of.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: When you get. Oh, sorry, Go ahead, Andres.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: Sorry, go ahead.
[00:43:24] Speaker A: I was just gonna tell you a funny story of my very first buyers. When we went out, we had the home inspection, and I was brand new agent.
And this is why I think you need a big brother, a big sister to hold your hand like a big brother, big sister agent to hold your hand through every transaction. So we had our first inspection. I got the inspection report back, and it was like this massive report of like all these things that are wrong with the house. And it's very scary at first, especially for the buyer, because they're like, oh, my God, the house is a dump.
So my first time I got the report and I was like, okay, bet. And I'm like, 67, 68 items I think I put on the attack. And I had it all ready to go. And then the lady that brought me into real estate was kind of looking at my amendment to address concerns, and she was like, what are you trying to do, kill the deal? She's like, oh, my God, you can't list every single thing on the report. And so I learned that, okay, so not everything needs to go on report. There's some things like the, you know, the toilets and things like that that are going to be issues or like a missing cover on, you know, an, like an outlet or something. And so that's when I learned, okay, you need to actually just go through and figure out the things that are deal breakers, and those are the ones that you put on the amendment to address concern.
[00:44:39] Speaker C: What I generally do in my reports is when I. When I talk to people. So part of the.
When people call us to do an inspection, I reach out to client and I give them that spiel about what I'm going to be looking for.
But when I tell them what we're looking at, I also tell them, you know, our main focus is to find stuff that's going to cost $1,000 or more to repair, things that can cause a thousand dollars more worth of damage if they're not addressed, and safety concerns. So that's kind of our threshold.
Yeah, I'm gonna have the small, nitpicky stuff in there. Too. But, you know, that's the stuff I'm looking for. You know, the meat and potatoes. The stuff you're gonna lose sleep over, don't care about.
And I appreciate you talking about long reports. That brings up a thought. I did this commercial property about a year and a half ago. It was down in Tyrone. It was a wedding venue. It was 15, 000 square foot.
I went in, went to do that one with a neighboring franchise home team office.
And he actually lives down there. So I had him scouted out and see what's what. And he kind of drove around the parking lot. Didn't want to be too intrusive. And he was just checking it out. And we quoted like 3, 600 bucks to do this. And we're going to have the H Vac company come and do the H Vac systems and everything, and they're going to charge you 65 bucks per unit to check those out. Figured. Cool.
My colleague, he found. He saw seven from the. From the car just driving around.
So the client says, hey, we got quoted like 32 at this other place. Can you meet that?
I'm thinking, man, yeah, I guess we probably can. We can. We can. We can match that. So. Okay, cool.
So when we arrive on site to do that inspection that. They didn't have seven?
No, no, they didn't have seven. They had 24.
So we reached back out, declined. Hey, look, man, we have H Vac guys here. Not homeless bears. H Vac guys. He's going to do more in depth. Look at these guys. Okay?
And we're gonna have to charge the original price. You know, I'm sorry. And he was like, oh, okay, that's. I have no problem. That's all. It's all cool.
Now, all those units were like, a lot of work beyond their design life. They were old. A lot of them were old.
And this same client, when we finally gave him his report, it was like 145 pages.
[00:47:09] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:47:10] Speaker C: It's. It's a big property. And mind you, every H Vac unit has a picture or two. Every furnace has two or three pictures. And it's a big facility. There's gonna be a lot of pictures. It's not necessarily bad. It's just a lot. Okay, so the client calls me and says, what am I supposed to do with this report? I'm thinking myself. Hold on a second.
Where is the agent?
The agent should talk to him about it.
But, you know, I said the whole report should be read. Okay, but you start at the summary. That's Going to be your big stuff to look at.
Okay? That's going to be stuff that's going to cost lots of money to fix. And you're gonna have air conditioners this, that, the other, you know, stuff is going to cost big bucks.
But you should read the whole report. You really should read the whole report because you're going to find small stuff which could become big stuff.
You can find how stuff works and how stuff is organized in your home, and maybe you see tips to help you navigate the house. And in this case, it's a facility, but same difference. But he was like, oh, okay.
And he appreciated that. He read the report and was happy.
But it's like, again, you know, read the report, read the report.
There's so many things that you maybe missed out on by not reading the report, you know, that could be a problem.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: Absolutely. You said 125 pages.
[00:48:43] Speaker C: 100, 145.
[00:48:45] Speaker B: Roughly, yeah, 145 pages.
[00:48:47] Speaker C: But mind you, pictures, lots of pictures. So that's not. It's not as bad as it sounds. It's just a lot of details and lot of pictures. And when it comes to pictures, I take an absorbing amount of pictures of the roof.
Lots of pictures in the crawl spaces places and attics, places where people generally don't go very much, which could be critical. Roofs are very important to keep the water out of the house. Of course, addicts, people like to see that and all that stuff. So I put lots of those pictures to say 20 pictures. It would be about. Right. 20 to 30 pictures for each of those. So that's a lot of pictures.
[00:49:19] Speaker B: So, yes, absolutely. Glad you said that. You know, read the entire report, because not everyone is going to sit there and. And read the report, let's be honest.
[00:49:30] Speaker C: Right.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: But you highlight the summary part, you know, the things that you should definitely pay attention to right now and.
And know after, or if you have the time, of course, before the inspection or at some point, definitely take a look on the entire report because that's going to give you a great insight into the overall health of the structure of the property itself and everything that you just went through. So it's important to sit back and. And take everything in that report, especially as a new, you know, homeowner to that property. Gives you a good understanding from your perspective of how everything is. So definitely recommend taking a look at the whole thing.
And we're almost at time to wrap it up soon. But before we get there, as a home buyer, can you paint me a picture of how should I Prepare for a home inspection compared to a buyer and a seller.
[00:50:27] Speaker C: So if you as a home buyer, you're gonna have to find or pick ultimately pick your home inspector which is, which is best for you.
I, I've been around for four and a half, four and a half years now.
I got Best of Gwinnett here for three of those years. So I'm really proud of that.
I'm certified with, with Ashy and you know, we have three, four, four and a half stars on, on Google. So we're really proud of that. So you know, look for a good inspector, ask for recommendations. Your agent will know someone and I, I will go from there. Vet venom yourself, don't take their word for it. You know, just about for yourself.
Other than that you should be aware of the neighborhood. I recommend if you're going to buy a house here, look around the neighborhood, see what the rest neighborhood looks like.
There's this one house I did. Where was this? I think it was in Kennesaw.
When I was looking at the roof, I fly a drone flew a little higher just to get a panorama view. And there was a sewage treatment plant like literally over the fence.
[00:51:38] Speaker A: Oh my gosh.
[00:51:39] Speaker C: So I mean, like I said, just want to make sure you're aware there's sew plant over there. And it's not necessarily bad, but sometimes they tend to have odors or something like that. But these are things that should be known, you know.
So that's another reason why you want to make sure you have a understanding what's around you.
Yeah, you, you might be getting this, this plot of land with the house sitting on there. But what's around you that could be affecting that. You know what your neighbors saying, talk to neighbors. What, what do you like, dislike about the house.
But it's, that's, that's about the extent of it. I mean everything else we're going to take care of.
I'm going to introduce myself, let you know what the inspection is and what isn't. Like I discussed already with you guys just a minute ago.
And I'm also going to find out if it's their first home, any concerns they may have with the property already. So I can make sure I hit those really heavy, make sure I get as much information as possible.
And once I'm finished at the site doing inspection, our policy is to get that report out as fast as possible. So you'll get that report in about 30 minutes after you pull out the driveway. So you don't get that report really fast. The only Time that won't happen is for some reason we can't get a signal, data signal, which sometimes we're in the sticks and that happens. But, but yeah, we'll get those reports out to you fast. And that's important because that gives you more time to work with your, with your agent to do that. What do you call it, Heather, Attack the attack to figure out what you're going to negotiate and how you're going to negotiate those things and get those results.
I also follow up 24 hours after the fact.
I call the client and say, hey, is any questions about the report? It's my job to make sure you guys understand the client understands the house the best they can and to do so in a way that doesn't scare them, but inform them what's what, take the motion out of it, no emotion and just this is, this is how the house is currently.
It's up to you, Mr. Or Mrs. Client to figure out what you want to do.
[00:53:39] Speaker A: Does the buyer have to be there when you're doing the home inspection?
[00:53:43] Speaker C: The buyer does not have to be there. It's completely up to them if they want to be there or not.
If they're there, I'd love to show them what I find as I find it or kind of show, you know, they may get more information if they're there, but everything I show them will be in the report. But you know, seeing stuff sometimes is more than, you know, a report. You know.
[00:54:07] Speaker A: As an agent I know sometimes I show up. I don't always go to every single inspection depending on, you know, where they're located. But I know I do show up occasionally. That's how you know I see you. When you're doing the home inspections, do you think, or actually let me ask real like real quick, do you see a lot of agents come to the inspections or do you see kind of few agents come?
[00:54:31] Speaker C: It's about, I would say 30 to 40% roughly, give or take.
They come. Sometimes 30, 40% come. Yeah.
[00:54:40] Speaker A: Okay.
Any last minute things that you want buyers or agents to know about home inspections?
[00:54:50] Speaker C: I think we covered it all.
For any agents out there looking for home inspector or any people who are looking to buy, we'd love to work with you.
I think our work stands for itself with the best equinoff three years in a row, only been business for four and a high ratings in Google.
We work really hard to do a really good job and try to be as mindful as we can about the current emotion that's involved with the house. And try to make sure that we don't add to the emotion, that the emotion in a negative or positive way just kind of be neutral and just make sure you just have a really strong understanding of what you're getting.
And if you, if that's important to you, we encourage you to reach out to us.
Our name is home team of Northeast Metro. And there's a couple of us around here, but Northeast Metro Atlanta.
And I guess I'll get my phone number, 678-293-8474. Again, 678-293-847 4. And our tagline is fast, trusted and accurate. That's the home team promising and I'd love to work with anyone and everyone out there if they have any for Home Inspector.
[00:55:59] Speaker A: So and I'm going to link all that information. So whether you're watching us through the podcast channels or you're watching us on social media, just go to the information and you can go ahead and click the link and be connected with home team.
[00:56:12] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:56:13] Speaker B: Awesome. Awesome. And before we wrap this up, I was doing a little research because Heather, we jumped in when introduced ourselves. In the first two episodes we talk about the market aspect of things.
Last week we talked about marketing, digital marketing for real estate agents.
But in my research I found that, that there's a lot of people asking about real estate and some of the things that they're asking for is, you know, what the real estate agents really do, how do they get paid, you know, who pays them, can it be a side hustle, full time job?
So in our next episode we want to dive into some of these questions because I know that you, you know, you're not alone if you're asking this question. There's tons of people. I myself had those questions before I got in the market in the industry.
So on Thursday we want to unpack some of these questions, dive into what that looks like and continue to bring value in that aspect. Show you what from a real estate perspective, you know what it takes to be in this business. Some of this, answer some of these questions and yeah, if you're curious about learning some of this stuff, stay tuned. We're going to provide you with some more in depth content and and catch you in the next episode.
Again, Stephen, thank you for joining us here today.
[00:57:31] Speaker C: Thank you guys, I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
[00:57:34] Speaker B: Pleasure learning about the inside out aspect of the inspection and how important it is for home buyers and sellers today. Regardless of how old the property is, regardless of how new the property is, how important overall to get it done. Make sure you have someone reliable on your corner.
And man, outstanding content.
[00:57:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I think this was very helpful for buyers and for agents just to be able to have this dive into what a home inspection is. I think a lot of people just don't really know. So again, thank you, Stephen, for being here with us. Andres, as always, pleasure doing a podcast with you. And if you are thinking about being an agent or you're a new agent, just like Andre said, tune in next week. You're not going to want to miss Thursday because we'll definitely be diving into all of that. And if you're on the fence about being a real estate agent, just book an appointment with us after the live and we can definitely talk to you through that process.
[00:58:28] Speaker B: All right, see you guys next week. Pleasure to be here. Andres and Heather, Heather and Andres, real talk.
[00:58:35] Speaker A: All right, see you guys on the next one.
[00:58:36] Speaker C: Appreciate it. Thanks.
[00:58:38] Speaker B: Bye.
