The Home Inspector’s Responsibility

Home inspectors are specially trained to recognize the symptoms of defects, and report them to the buyer prior to the closing so they can make an informed decision. They cannot be ‘experts’ on only one or two aspects of construction.  They must be knowledgeable on all the systems and components with the same level of expertise. An inspector must never overstate a problem or the buyer might not buy the home for the wrong reason. Just as good home inspectors should never understate a problem or the buyer may incur a big expense when they move into the house. This is a fine line a home inspector walks and they must be skilled in order to perform this work.

Because a home inspection can make a real estate transaction more difficult, many people assume that the home inspector and the real estate agent are hostile to each other. This presumed adversarial relationship is unfounded and untrue. In fact over 92% of real estate agents recommend a home inspection to their clients. What the real estate industry does not want are untrained and unprofessional home inspectors that cannot be relied upon.

A home inspection does not include predictions of future events, provide warranties, or guarantees that nothing will ever go wrong. Future events such as roof leaks, water intrusion, plumbing leaks, and heating failures cannot be predicted.

The most important thing for a homeowner to understand is that things will break. As time goes on, parts of the house will wear out, break down, deteriorate, leak, or simply stop working.

The inspection image shows water marks in the corner of the ceiling. The water marks indicate that the water leak has been taking place for some time. One could assume that the homeowner would likely know of this water leak problem since it has been an issue for some time.

In a real estate transaction, the inspection report is only supplementary to the seller’s disclosure (what the seller knows about the home), and the report provides additional information to the home buyer.

The inspection image of the roof shows a shingle tab that lifted up in the wind and cracked in half. This is a roof defect that happened after a home inspection was performed. This problem is not the responsibility of the home inspector, but of the homeowner. And it's likely that the homeowner wasn't aware of the problem.