inspectorchris

I resently used them. They are an SEO / Pay per click website development company. Do not use them. This is an expensive service and results are poor. They will show you similar industry companies they have with call lists of 50 a month and promise you similar results. I have had my website checked out by a few experts and it was set to be a well setup and ran site. 4 months with them 19 calls barely paid for itself. I pretty muched worked for free. Money is better spent with a guy who does SEO is local and will run a blog or facebook page for you. way cheaper and results will be similar. SEO: Search Engine Optimization.

I have one guy here that used to be A Pro Home inspections. Some how he got out of his franchise and is still able to do home inspections ion the same area. The way I knew it was him was he used to use his infared camera as his marketing" we see more period" with infared images on his cards and website. Suddenly a new company popped up called " Inspector Gadget " with the same we see more tag line. When I called him and asked if he was the same as the A Pro he said "yes, I'm the funny guy tall with salt and pepper hair". I said ok..... Funny looking guy maybe[]. How much do you charge now. I was amazed that he charged what he would have made off of an inspection after he paid franchise fee. Why would you leave an established name and brand to make the same money.

I do agree. I am not looking to be gimicky. I unlike a lot of home inspectors around here don't have the time to be passing through offices every few weeks to restock candy jars and give them more note pads. I'm not a stationary store. I can't tell you how many times I've had people or realtors say to me that they lost my number or didn't have the company name right or any cards in the office something to that effect. So they want to use me again they just don't have the contact info handy at the time. I want to give away something that they will want to hang onto that will keep my name handy without having to give them something multiple times or have to stop into the office( where no one is ) and stock card holder and brochures ( that no one uses ). I have the WIN chocolate guy, NPI with the note pad and pen on every desk in every office I have ever been to. The House Masters with the huge budget and marketing team that has the time to put into the offices. I don't want to do that. I ask people about them and they say " I don't know them, that stuff is just here". That is not effective marketing or branding. They already are a franchise name, they need personal recognition.

Did the chimney have a rain cap? Was the cap or top of the chimney possibly letting water into the stack? I see this all the time and sometimes when its raining you can see the water running down the chimney into the flue pipe. Because their are no restrictive bends, water can make its way, all the way back into the furnace. Does the water heater flue have and water marks on it? it may not be as bad as the furnace as it should be entering the chimney above the flue of the furnace.

I need some help. I am starting a new marketing/ Branding campain for the new year. Does anyone have a good place to get some marketing materals from and unique suggestions on what to give away to people. I am looking for interesting things that people can actually use and or want to hold on to. I will be marketing to Realtors, Clients Etc..... So far I got Sun glass clip that goes onto your car visor, pens, pads, a screen/ keyboard cleaner for computers and laptops. been thinking about a hand sanitizer. with all the swine flue talk and the news saying you should keep washing your hands I figure it is a good idea. I know you guys can help me.[^]

Crap... sorry for the long post. its cold as hell here so I've been drinking behind the keys at home with too much time on my hands.

In a case like that I usually say sure..... how much was that house? when they answer how many HUNDREDS of thoushands I say well I just saved you That many hundreds of thousands in heart ache. I do this mainly to make the point that I did my job and it was worth it for you to order an inspection. I personally feel that if the buyer comes out of the other side of the inspection well informed and with new insight decides to walk, you did your job and should be paid in full, worth every dime. Should happily pay full price on the next inspection. But in reality it is not always the case. If a customer walks on a deal because the house turned into more work than they were ready for I usually don't give a discount on the next inspection as I feel they got their money's worth. Under certain circumstances I will. I like many here write a report in my office and not onsite. I tell people that have doubts and are ready to walk before we finish the inspection I tell them that I can hold off writing the report until they are sure they need it i.e. are moving forward. If they agree I charge full price for that inspection and add the discount to the following inspection if they deside to move on to the next home with no report. I also will offer a discount if they lose the house because the seller backed out, bank backed out things like that I truely feel bad about and the discount in this case comes with out asking. I always ask a client that calls for another inspection what happened on the last house. depending on what they say depends on if they get a discount or not. I've had clients call me a few weeks or day later to a year or two later still looking for a house that whole time. This also has personal feeling discounts like if they are single parents, barely making it into the home as it is. I will make acceptions but its how I feel about the situation. I have many realtors call and ask me in advnce about a discount for the net inspection and I always say to them sure we should get together and you should give them back some of your commission money too... because it would really help [^]. Again so they understand they are asking me to take money out of my pocket not because I think they will EVER in life work for free or less...but that is what they are asking me to do. When it comes to family and friends I still charge money ( usually half price of a normal inspection ). I do this for a couple of reasons and you guys should consider this also. They will 92% be likely to be getting an inspection regardless. So if they don't pay you they will pay someone else they should feel so lucky they happen to be close to someone that is an inspector and they can get a good discount. It cost you money to do an inspection: paper, supplies, electric, ins. fuel lic.and time., at half price you would be breaking even on the inspection by the time all is done. Lastly, if you do not charge your family and friends and do not ask them to sign an inspection agreement and something happens to that house, they will NOT be covered under your insurance. Not only do you need to have them sign the agreement, You need to charge them for it to be a ligit inspection. Even if from now one you write that you charged them a dollar ( that you happen to never collect ) you need to charge them something. I have customers that have pipe dreams with forclosures that the price is a deal and not that the house is priced correctly and has many problems. after a couple of those they usually pick a better home that is more money but they learned alot. They all tell me they were able to make a better decision about the next house because of what they learned from me along the way about homes and what to look for. Isn't that what they pay us for? our education and experience? By the way......My record is 7 inspections with one client over a 2 year period. What is the most you have done for one client during one buying process?

In all the accounts listed above by you and other members, all seem like valid possiblities. Sometimes I feel like our curiosity gets us to investigate further than we need to. I personally would have used a moisture meter just to see if it was wetter than areas around it. Checked the eave and roof closely in this area, then written up that further investigation is needed. If the sub structure was still wet when they made the repairs, and no one has lived in the home since, I could be condensation from a greenhouse effect of the house being sealed up and is now sweating. The damage before that could have been from the actual leak. but if moisture was sealed in, that could lead to sub structure rot. We can't do distructive testing to find out if that is the case but it should definately be looked into further.

Either way the light show is awsome to watch and usually does blow out the transformer Which by the way in this area cost 20-30,000 to replace.

It doesn't make sense to ever have an appliance that is motorized on a GFCI. The whole point is that it monitors difference in current from hot to neutral. If you have something with a motor that creates a surge of power or sudden load it will trip the outlet un necessarily. That is the reason that Fridge's are not supposed too be on them. A dedicated circuit makes sense to me but other than that it is always at risk of tripping un necessarily. IMHO I had a home owner call me the other day about there fridge being off after I left and accusing me of breaking it cuz the breaker wasn't tripped but it know longer operated so I MUST have done something that damaged the fridge because it was on a GFCI that they couldn't get to or see to know that was the problem.

Thanks. Thats what I thought but I figured I would ask just because it seemed a little off but wasn't sure if it was anything or not.

The house was built in the 50's and the ceiling was 9' high. That does make alot of sense. There are alot of these style homes in this area and this is the first time I've seen this. It maybe that the cement is so different that this one is more noticeable.

Hey Guys, I performed an inspection yesterday and along the entire perimeter of the foundation I saw this ( the Picture ). This is well above the soil line and there was a small crack at one point in the foundation that I was able to see that it is not a patch or parging of the interior foundation wall but is indeed part of the upper section of the foundation. The one thing I thought was maybe the builder build the original foundation to low and had to raise the level. I don't think it could be different pours on the original build because the level is to consistent around the entire perimeter. I wasn't too concerned about it, but more curious. My question is should I be? Image Insert: 718.17 KB

Thanks everyone. I don't feel my name is terrible but I do feel it misses the point with so many of my clients that I know I can do better and 100.00 worth of business cards isn't enough of a reason not to make the change. I see agents that I've worked with a couple of times and they have trouble saying the name correctly. as for mike I thought it was a " win-win" situation for him as well and if it is thats an amazing accomplishment that I hope to accomplish but I just don't feel that my company name does it for me. at first I thought it was good but now i'm not so sure. Anyway it's just a thought.

No eye ball.. and I used it as an "O" in the name but I've seen people use it in the "I" of INSPEC. either way I made it myself in a truck lettering shop in about twenty minutes and is exactly why I'm trying to hire a professional this time

Brain you make my exact point. It's hard for people to remember your company but the generally remember you. I think that is because your company name is harder to remember than your name. I used to work for a well known company that used to fabricate all kinds of metal parts that was very diverse and well known throught the area. I was known as chris from and the they would say the company name...as if it were my last name. it was all the association of the place and me. Had little to do with my name. My last name is a fairly ethnic italian last name "Natoli" and I've even gotten jobs from people that have said I wanted to work with an italian guy but those people aren't generally the kind of people I want to do business with if you know what I mean. I don't think someone could convince me to use my name for a company unless I was a really famous well known name ( which i'm not)

I agree that the whole inspector thing has been done to death but you are trying to convay what you do in an image. There are only so many ways that you can say "home" and "inspector" with imagery

Sorry I tried to upload my logo but it keeps giving me an error. let me try a picture of the back of my truck.. Image Insert: 725.66 KB Ok that worked

I have done the research and there aren't companies in my area that sound like the name I have. I did also choose it because the domain name was available in fact my logo with company name right now has IN SPEC Property.com so that people see it and may want to check out the website. I do zero advertising in the books. Instead I put my efforts into google this has been good because I ask all my client where they seached when looking for an inspector, they always say a refferal from someone personally or professionally and they say google. lets face it google replaced the phone book IMO. I also used property instead of home because I did want to do commercial inspecitons as well even though statistically commercial only counts for 4% of the total real estate market and I'm in NYC! I will attach a pdf of the file so that you can see what I have right now. One of the name I was thinking was" On the level" Property inspections. I think a real creative logo can be made for it and it speaks to me as this guys on the level or he's going to make sure everything is on the level. let me know what you think about the name and my current logo.

I'm working with a business consultant trying to get a new logo and graphics designed. We spoke about Name of the company and what it means. After explaining it means, everything checks out or is" IN SPEC " he then understood. I've always had trouble communicating it to people that aren't in this type of field and people have trouble remembering it. I thought if I ever had the opportunity to start over with a new marketing campain, now that I've seen the industry what would I use as a name. So I'm seriously condemplating doing so and would like some suggestions from you guys.

That's not a new green.. That's Statue of Liberty Green. [^]

I just read the responses again and it reminded me the other things I don't like about this software TOO MANY STEPS for everything. You have to manually add to the summery so once your done with the report then you have to go back through the entire report and add all the suggestions to the appropriate sections of the summery. TO add to the template is tedious work as well and maybe is why I type more that having pre written text to insert. I was seriously considering going with palm tech software ( no offence the devewave ) because their layout is exactly the same whether its on a computer or a pda it seems easy to add text to but the down side is you have to create all your own disclaimers and contracts. Can anyone give me feedback that uses or has tried Palm tech or should I start a new thread?

You all made some great suggestions that I will consider before wasting money on computers and software that may not speed up my reports. The way I do inspections and reports now I rarely get phone calls needing further elaboration and all the pictures are the reason.

Thank you all for your input. I would have responded sooner but I couldn't find the thread on the site. I am constantly trying to figure out how to work smarted not harder. I think after reading some other threads and seeing that it seems to be the industry trend that we are putting more time into making a better product. I can't raise my prices to much because there is a bottom feeder inspection company in my area that is also an exterminating company. He charges less because he's picking up the treatment work. In my area insect damage is like 74% of all homes. I don't think this should be allowed because it's hurting the industry. I think from now on I will try to ask the clients to show up an hour after I start the inspection. Maybe this will help me go through the entire house undisturbed and try to take notes in my reporting system. From what I read it seems that all the software out there just doesn't allow us to do the job and the report efficiently. I think I'm going to invest some time into learning how to type correctly. As of now I'm a 4 finger typer and I know that hurts me as well. The thing that I don't like about the inspectit software is that the mobile version doesn't look like or allow the same functions that the full computer version does. I think I may try to change around the template again and see if that helps. I do provide my clients with a lot of detailed house specific text that I can't copy and paste into the template. I feel that we could never really charge what all our time is worth because realtors are the ones dictating to their clients who to use and what prices should be based on the speed and the way we describe things. Sometimes I feel they want to do the least work for the most pay.

I have been reading this message board for a little while and this is the first time I tried to post something but have a question I hope to get some serious input on. I have been doing inspections in the ny area for 6yrs and started my own company 2yrs ago. I also moved and started my business fresh. No refferal sources completly from scratch. I started using written reports with the company I used to intern ( i guess would be how you describe working for someone to learn the business ) and when I started on my own switched to computerized reports. My question is (after reading as many threads as i could find on this question and not clarifying anything for me is) I do all my inspections the way many of you on here do ( from what i read ) taking pictures and walking through and teaching customers about the home they are buying then going back to the office and producing and e-mailing the report the following day. It takes me no less then 2hrs of office work to produce the report with inspectit software which I have fully customized to optimize my flow through the report and have over 300 inspections completed this way. I feel I spend way to much time doing reports and would like to maybe switch to an easier software or possibly a tablet to start and fill some minor componets to the report onsite to help speed the process. Do any of you have experience with this software or taking a long time to produce reports? any suggestions on alernative software? I was seriously considering Palm tech, it seems easy to use during the inspection. I like many of you don't like to stop my flow or train of thought to fill in the report. I also perform roof inspections for a insurance company that requires me to do a diagram of the roof in microsoft paint and produce a small report. I feel that having a tablet instead of paper the doing it all over on the computer later would help this but I'm afraid of a cumbersome computer that I might damage or be unable to see the sceeen from the roof. I would greatly appreciate your input.