Do clients make repairs?

[SNations]

I was watching Holmes Inspection a few nights ago, and during the initial walk-around with the owners Holmes mentioned GFCI receptacles. He said that the inspection report had noted a lack of GFCI receptacles in the bathrooms, and asked the owner if she had seen that in the report. She said yes. Then Holmes asked her if she had it fixed. She said no.

I would love to have a more complete picture of what repairs my clients actually make. Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm not so much helping them to be safe as just giving them a list of ways they might get hurt.

Does anybody have any real data as to how often and what kinds of repairs your clients actually make? I suspect that to get really good data of this sort would be very difficult. Anecdotal evidence always comes in, but that's not reliable as an indicator of overall activity. A reliable survey would take a lot of time and a considerable amount of money.

[Inspectorjoe]

Frankly, it's none of my business what gets repaired. I hate this swiped phrase, but my duty to the buyer is 'I report, you decide'. There have been some unusual findings where I've contacted the buyer later and asked "how did ______ turn out"?

I doubt there has been or will ever be a survey done that would answer your question.

What's wrong with anecdotal info? From the multiple inspections I've done on the same building, I can say that MANY issues go unrepaired.

[ejager]

I had one couple tell me that they wanted as much listed on the HI report as possible, everything they said. Turns out it was a honey-do list. I did hear back later that they were working their way through it and hope to have it done in a year.

[hausdok]

I've gone back to inspect the same houses for different clients years later and have discovered, more than once, that my clients didn't do a thing or did very little. It taught me to put that out of my mind. What they do with their house once they own it isn't my concern.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[Jim Katen]

I was watching Holmes Inspection a few nights ago, and during the initial walk-around with the owners Holmes mentioned GFCI receptacles. He said that the inspection report had noted a lack of GFCI receptacles in the bathrooms, and asked the owner if she had seen that in the report. She said yes. Then Holmes asked her if she had it fixed. She said no.

I would love to have a more complete picture of what repairs my clients actually make. Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm not so much helping them to be safe as just giving them a list of ways they might get hurt.

Does anybody have any real data as to how often and what kinds of repairs your clients actually make? I suspect that to get really good data of this sort would be very difficult. Anecdotal evidence always comes in, but that's not reliable as an indicator of overall activity. A reliable survey would take a lot of time and a considerable amount of money.

They extort whatever they can out of the sellers and then the never do anything else.

- Jim Katen, Oregon

[kurt]

No one does anything. Or, almost no one. They use the report to beat up the price, then live with the defects. I don't care.

A few folks put in the smoke detectors and GFCI's I continue to recommend, but that's about it.

This goes to the heart of what I think is most wrong with what we do; we have a bunch of know-littles telling us what we have to tell customers, so I find myself telling folks to do dozens of things I know are never going to happen.

Personally, as far as the ever increasing plethora of safety stuff, I wish I could just hand them a big catalog of all the safety stuff, tell them to read it, and call me with questions. I honestly believe we're creating generations of zombies; no one pays any attention to their immediate physical environment, and they expect the world to be made safe for their passage. Go to China, get a sense of what personal responsibility means, then come back here, and you understand we're a society that doesn't understand the meaning of the words.

Professionally, I list all the crap that the true believers tell me I have to tell folks.

[John Kogel]

Out of the dozen or so houses in my own neighborhood that I've inspected, I can tell you that one guy has replaced his roof. []

A couple of weeks ago, the sellers had left a report lying there from 2 years ago, one of my competitors. I had a look. He missed a couple of things in the E panel, cable clamps and a double tap. Everything else, from the cracked chimney cap to the wet spots in the crawl, was all there. The people hadn't touched the place.

[inspector57]

From my experience with multiple inspections on the same property, most of the little stuff is never addressed. Some of the big safety stuff is address but usually it is corrected incorrectly[^]

But on rare occasion, I know of people that go item by item fixing things.

So basically it is all over the board with most somewhere in the fuzzy middle.[]

[allseason]

I agree that most buyers just want to beat up the seller. I had an out of town client who wrote me a letter regarding some issues they thought should have been revealed at the inspection, which they did not attend. After reviewing the report I noticed that the items were in fact in the report and wrote back to them stating so, they failed to read the report in its entirety. After talking to the realtor later I found out that the buyer got a huge credit on the house by telling the buyer at the closing that if he did not give them five figures (over 20k) in additional credits based on my findings they would walk. He caved.

On another note, a couple of years ago I was driving past a local 2 family that I had inspected and saw bundles of roofing shingles in the driveway. I had done the inspection less than 12 months prior. When I got back to my office I pulled up the report and saw my comment as to the poor condition of the roof-Whew-so some people do follow through.

[Darren]

I have second done inspections years after the first one and have found buried oil tanks that were never removed and I can't tell you how many FPE panels were still in place.

I just don't get why/how so many people put their family at risk by not changing the FPE.