UK home inspection problems.

[bosco]

Hi All,

Hope you don't mind me dropping in. I've seen from your postings that you're aware of the proposals to introduce reports in the UK.

I am intending to become a home inspector on completion of my (very expensive) course.

As you may have heard, the Govt. here did a recent complete U-turn on its plans to introduce mandatory inspections in June of 2007.

We have a similar forum in the UK run by Ryan-

http://homeinspectorforum.co.uk. It would be great to have some of you guys over for discussion, compare notes and cheer up a couple of hundred, very worried potential Home Inspectors. Some are looking at a loss of $15,000 in course fees alone.

Hope to see you.

Bosco

[hausdok]

Hi Bosco,

Welcome to TIJ. Yes, you and your fellow UK inspectors are welcome here anytime. I'll visit the link that you posted and I hope that others from TIJ will as well.

We've been following events in the UK for months now and we've even run some articles here on TIJ about it. I have to tell you, it's pretty disappointing to see the pols there in the UK cave in to special interests and toss such a carefully thought out program.

We've been pretty bemused for months with the near-hysterical doom-and-gloom commentary by estate agents, banks, mortgage lenders and RICS members who're opposed to home information packs (HIPS) and the home condition reports (HCR's) that were mandated by the law.

Any seasoned inspector here in the US who read those articles knows that it was just a smoke screen thrown up by those who currently control the real estate market and are afraid of losing some of that control. It looks more and more like the estate agents and the lenders there, like here, would prefer that buyers remain as ill informed as possible about the homes that they are purchasing, so that the sale goes through smoothly and they get their commissions with as little work as possible. Heaven forbid that a home inspector should rock the boat!

What's really laughable is the stance that a lot of the RICS surveyors have taken in regard to the training and credential you are working toward. Many of these guys and guys are carping that there's no way that anyone who attends a school full time for 1 to 2 years could possibly be qualified to inspect the condition of homes.

Gosh, where the hell have these guys been living for the quarter of a century? For more than 30 years, uncounted millions of homes in this country have been inspected mostly by men and women whose only qualifications were some background in construction (or not) and a week to 10 days attendance at a home inspection school someplace. I've always maintained that home inspectors here should be better educated, but it's a pretty hard sell to the inspecting community when one looks back at how the profession has survived without higher education involvement.

I used to admire RICS, and thought that most of their home surveyors were pretty bright folks. No more, after reading some of the trash talk they've thrown at home inspectors in the British press over the past couple of years, I now lump them together with the engineers in this country who maintain that all home inspectors are posers and only they are qualified to inspect homes.

It's a crime what's happened to you folks, and the loss of mandatory HCR's is a crime perpetrated on the British public by greedy special interests and facilitated by week-kneed and flaccid pols.

It's time for you folks to band together and make the British public smarter about the home inspection process and educate them about how it's only those who are going to make money from the sale of the home who really don't want the HCR's. You need to make them understand how inspections protect them and everyone else involved in the transaction.

Don't give up. It's a good thing you're working toward.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[bosco]

bosco;

Mike /Housdoc,

Many thanks for your recent and detailed contibutions on the UK forum.

While much of what you have said could benefit aspiring HI's over here, I think folk are still reeling from what they thought was a 'sure thing'.

We still await further news from the Govt. on their plans, but the whole process is still very much 'up in the air'.

Will keep you updated on any changes.

Bosco