anyone doing city POS & or compliance inspections?

[Rod Whittington]

Some Local municipalities/cities require a POS (point of sale) inspection in order to place a home up for sale. They also have periodic rental property compliance inspections. These types of inspections are performed by city employed housing/building inspectors.

QUESTION: Are any private home inspectors doing POS and or rental property compliance inspections for a municicpality/city

in addition to their private fee paid home inspection business?? Does anyone know of any municipality/city that hires/employes outside(non city employed) home inspectors(private) to do POS and or compliance inspections??

Thanks for your help!

[bandag]

Rod, Here in PA. you have to be ICC certified to do code inspections, at least in my town. Do you have any certs? I'm sure you realize that there are a lot of differences between HI and codes insp. A codes inspector will never have 3 or 4 hours to check over a house like a HI can but he IS expected to catch some construction mistakes and check for safety items. In codes insp. the contractor is your PIA. and all you hear him say when you write something up is "but we always do it that way". In HI the realtor is your PIA and all you hear them say is "how long is this going to take?" (and when your done) "he's just nit picking, that crack in the foundation isn't that bad". I have never heard of a municipality using a HI for inspections but I guess it is possible. I am doing ride along HI right now and if I can get a job in the field I will take it but I also have 2 ICC certs and if a decent codes insp. opening comes up in my area I will apply for it. There is a fellow on the other forum that was a HI for many years and had certs and now quit HI to become a codes officer, so he could certainly do both. Let's see what others have to say about this.

[cguffin]

Out of curiosity, what are some advantages of being a code inspector over a HI? [:-?help]

[bandag]

Well to name a few, fixed salary each week, 12 paid holidays, paid health ins. 2 wks vacation, set hours, always off weekends, no going into wet crawlspaces, company car/gas to ride around in during work time. uniforms, badge, etc. I don't want to work for myself anymore, been there already (30 yrs). At 5pm when I go home what ever happened today is someone elses problem, as long as I did the best job I could. Just want to finish out my working career helping/educating the public on properties. I could be happy with either career just waiting to see what comes along.

[Rod Whittington]

Additional info from my first post:

I am not looking to change my career to a city code inspector/employee. I know the head inspector of a local city that may change its laws which could leave the city short in handling the amount of inspections they could do. They may consider allowing it's residents to hire private home inspectors to do the POS/ compliance work from an approved city list. This could save the city a lot of money/training, benefits costs, etc. by allowing private home inspectors to do the inspections vs. hiring employees. This could also be another way for private home inspectors to pick up additional business. I am looking to see if there is an inspector/city out there who is doing this already and my be able to share w/ me how they are doing it. Thanks, Rod

[Scottpat]

A little thread drift:

The city I just moved from attempted to enact mandatory inspections like you are talking of. After builders, real estate agents, insurance agents, home inspectors, etc., joined forces to fight mandatory inspections the Mayor and several city council members decided it was not the best course of action. It did not pass, and several council members were not reelected.

It was based on the IRC Property Maintenance Code, the IPMC is the code that is used by the handful of communities across the country that have such inspections.

The main reason for such inspections is to keep a city looking "Nice". It has nothing to do with a homeowner buying a home with no problems.

In the plans the city was going to hire an additional inspector or two, to perform these inspections. the homeowner or buyer would have to pay $125 for the inspection. At that fee it would have been a self funding program with profit. The city already had a similar program for rental properties in place. It cost the owner of a rental home $100 for the city to do a similar inspection before it could be rented to anyone. Apartments had to have 10% of their units inspected every year.

The employee cost factor was not an issue.

As a home inspector, I would fight against these types of inspections. It will detract from your normal home inspection business. New owners think that the property is OK because the city has inspected it.

[hausdok]

Hi Rod,

Go into our headlines archives. I ran a few articles about some cities who were contemplating doing these.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[Bill Kibbel]

Rod,

The City of Reading PA briefly tried using home inspectors for "pre-settlement review inspections". Earlier this year, they decided to no longer accept private inspections. City code enforcement officers now conduct all the PSR inspections to bring uniformity and apply "consistent code enforcement by one source".

I've never done anything in Reading except large commercial inspections, so I never had any direct experience. Joe Kelly probably had some experience with the program. His e-mail is at the bottom of this page: http://www.advancedhi.com