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Hi all:

I’m a professional house and building inspector and have done inspections for many years on many, many row houses. I don’t feel the need to identify myself because I don’t want to come across as though I’m doing a plug. I can say I’ve been referred through this website before and all of my clients were thrilled with my work. The intent of this post is to provide useful information to the house buying public.

I’ve seen many posts by purchasers of brownstones and I thought I could add some useful information. I can tell you that there are good inspectors and bad inspectors. It also doesn’t matter if an inspector is a licensed engineer or a licensed home inspector. There are plenty of “engineers” who are incompetent and do a horrible job, whereas there are plenty of home inspectors, like myself, who do excellent and through work.

For example, I inspected a building in Ft Greene a couple of months ago and subsequently came into possession of a report done on the same building a few months prior by an engineering company (whose services have been discussed very often on this site). I was astounded at how useless the report was – it was bloated with non-relevant general information and disclaimers and very difficult to navigate to locate information about specific details, such as heating equipment. The icing on the cake was that the 3-story building had a 30-amp, 120-volt service, which on any planet would be considered pathetically deficient. However the report stated that it was sufficient.

So what is to be learned here? First, don’t be too impressed by someone’s title, because as it turns out, it doesn’t mean that much. Second, anyone buying a brownstone is responsible for vetting whomever he or she hires to inspect his or her building.

How? You must ask questions before you hire or don’t complain when you get lousy service. Don’t believe the hype. There are a lot of clowns out there, but if you try, you can usually get a sense of who does and who doesn’t know what they are doing.

1) Can you speak directly to the person who will conduct the inspection when you call? You want to get a sense of who will be doing the work, how approachable they are, and if you can develop a comfort level with them on the phone. Will you be able to follow around and ask questions during the inspection? What’s included in their service?

2) What experience do they have? How long have they been doing the work? How many inspections?

3) Do they belong to any trade associations? Membership in a trade association is not cheap and generally suggests that an inspector is serious about their work. Most of the trade associations offer and require ongoing training, as no one in this business knows it all.

4) Most important: Can you review a sample report? Not just excerpts, but a full report. This is how you can see first hand the level of service you will receive. Conversation that happens at the inspection site can be forgotten,, so the report serves as a record of the inspection. Does the report seem through? Is it easy to read? Is it formatted in a way that makes it easy to locate information? Are there photos? Cost estimates? A well-crafted report will reflect the attention to detail that anyone needs for advice on such a large purchase.