Leigh Anne Monk: Okay, Gary, let’s discuss the process of selecting a home inspector. This is a very important person in that home buying process. So the first question I think would be what should a person look for in a home inspector?
Gary Marsengill: Well a person should be looking for someone they feel comfortable with and is skilled and knowledgeable about the components of the home and how it operates. And that person typically should have a construction related background and then there are various training opportunities and associations to become members of that require continual training on an annual basis.
Leigh Anne Monk: So is there an actual license?
Gary Marsengill: There is. The most well known, there are several but the most well known is the American Society of Home Inspectors. One their qualification is that you have to have twenty hours, minimum of twenty hours annual of additional training.
Leigh Anne Monk: To try and keep up with new technology? Okay that makes sense.
Gary Marsengill: New technology and also to make sure that you are taking care of your business aspects properly.
Leigh Anne Monk: I’ll tell you, to be honest with you, I have some of my seller clients ask for the home inspector's license number just to prove that they were legit because sometimes like you said, not you per say but you know what I mean, it’s their house and their proud of it so actually having that license number on that report really has been helpful it makes you more legitimate so to speak.
Gary Marsengill: Right and it shows that you have put that time and effort into 1) knowing what you are doing and 2) learning the best ways to go about that.
Leigh Anne Monk: Exactly so just to give our audience some examples of your own background what did you do prior to being an inspector yourself?
Gary Marsengill: Prior to doing inspections, I was a site supervisor for a construction company here in Vienna.
Leigh Anne Monk: Okay what did that entail?
Gary Marsengill: I started out on the ground level and worked my way up to the site supervisor so I was responsible from everything from digging the footings for the homes, single family townhouse, whatever we were building at the time all the way to handing the keys to the purchaser after closing. So I oversaw the whole production process of whatever we were building.
Leigh Anne Monk: Okay so it sounds like you have had great experience in your past to know how things should be properly be installed. I would guess that it would make it easier for you to see something that is not properly installed when you do inspections.
Gary Marsengill: Right.
Leigh Anne Monk: Because I know there is a lot of home improvement people…a lot of do it yourself “ers” of the world and sometimes that helps from a cost perspective for the seller side but sometimes the buyers gets a surprise if it is not up to code and things like that.
Gary Marsengill: Right and I like to express to people that just about every day you see another way that somebody does something wrong.
Leigh Anne Monk: Really. You have probably seen more than one way to see one thing wrong. Okay now I also know that we have done inspections in the past Gary you bring a laptop with you, you take digital pictures and include that as part of your report. Is that the way that most inspectors do it?
Gary Marsengill: I would say there is a greater percentage of them now over the past couple of years but there still are inspectors that will fill out paper in a book and hand write their items but with a computer we are able to input most of the information during throughout the inspection. We’ll the photos as we discussed earlier and then we’ll import those and email that you so you have a fairly lengthy catalog of your home.
Leigh Anne Monk: Right I mean I personally can’t imagine not receiving that electronically. Number one as most of you know from our previous video segments we talked about the importance of the timing of this home inspection contingency. You actually have a certain amount of time to review the repair items and get your report back to the seller so it’s really important to not just get the inspection done in a timely manner but actually get that report to us. I would imagine that the paper process would take longer. And so therefore you would have a fewer amount of time to review the actual information and make your decisions, so for me the computer got to be the way to go.
Gary Marsengill: Right and we try to get that to you by that evening or by the next morning.
Leigh Anne Monk: Oh that’s excellent. Good, good so you mentioned that some of the licensing organizations have requirements for continuing education. How do inspectors and you personally stay on top of those key technologies?
Gary Marsengill: By participating in blogs of course on the internet, social groups and there are always question and answer sessions on those to discuss new materials and occasionally we do come across something we haven’t seen before and when that happens I will tell the purchaser or the agent that I’ll take down that information and I will go research it and go find out and then let them know what’s going on with that. Also in that training day wherever it’s taking place they always try to bring you up to speed on some of the new things that came out as topics of those training seminars.
Leigh Anne Monk: Well good because I’m sure having a group of inspectors together that group think probably brings up more questions and more answers and probably a lot of discussions I am sure. Well as you know Gary a lot of people are not just buying homes for themselves but they are buying homes for investment properties and a lot of times in those situations they may be buying a foreclosure or a home that’s been distressed in any other way. Do inspectors actually go in and perform inspections on conditions that we may consider pretty poor or perhaps appliances have been removed things of that nature happen as well?
Gary Marsengill: Yes they do and one of the biggest reasons is one the purchaser one has already been through the process with their own home and they use our list to sort of create a shopping list if you will to try and budget for expenses to determine exactly what they need to do to get that house back into good condition.
Leigh Anne Monk: That would really be important to have that opportunity to look at because you can look at a house….and everyone can see the cosmetic repairs they are needed but you can’t see the structural ones until you have someone like yourself come in that does make sense.
Now we get this questions a lot because obviously we see as you go through the inspection you’re going to be making comments to the buyers who were there present during the inspection oh you are going to need to have this repaired or this repaired or this needs to have a service call on it. Do you actually advise on those repair costs themselves?
Gary Marsengill: Not so much as the cost unless it is a basic for instance for a water heater we will try and give them an approximate figure of what a water heater would cost. In addition to that the cost associated with some of the other repairs may entail other items that we can’t see during inspection or processes that may be required as far as getting that particular job taken care of.
Leigh Anne Monk: So I know I heard you give sometimes some general ranges but they really need to talk to that licensed contractor in most cases to get that.
Gary Marsengill: Yes license contractor whether it be a licensed handyman, electrician depending on what aspect of the home is requiring.
Leigh Anne Monk: Okay and again buyer just for your knowledge the contract itself actually has a preprinted line that says these repairs must be done by a licensed contractor so that is why we like to group them together in categories like here we have electrical issues, here are the plumbing issues so we can help you with who you need to hire as a seller and as a buyer you need to work through those issues to make sure everything gets taken care of properly. Now do you actually recommend those licensed repair professionals at all?
Gary Marsengill: Not typically. We like to refer those to their agents that they are working with because they typically maintain a list of contractors that they’ve had good luck with or other associates.
Leigh Anne Monk: We do have some good professionals that we use all the time and it really does help because again we can work with them we’ve often had them talk to you if they didn’t understand the repair issue and there’s a communication and that actually is a really good point I wanted to bring back up, Gary. Our inspectors, all inspectors are available after the report because what happens as you know is we take the report we come up with a list of repairs and those repairs are submitted from the buyer to the seller and the negotiations begin as to which repairs are going to be done. What actually happens in that situation?
Gary Marsengill: Well we do make ourselves available to the purchasers or the agents on either side of the transaction either by phone. It’s easiest by email as you know and we get questions from them on a regular basis because either one contractor gave them one opinion and one gave them another. And so we do make ourselves available and not just during the process of creating whatever they’re going to have done but after they’ve settled and closed on the home and moved I let them know I am available and this not just a onetime deal and we want to be there for them.
Leigh Anne Monk: That’s fantastic. It’s just a wonderful service and I know we’ve said in previous segments you can’t go wrong getting a home inspection and it certainly helps to understand the type of person you want to hire to get that done. So thank you for taking the time to share that with us.