How To Choose A Home Inspector In Ohio

Not all home inspectors are created equal. Of course they all should be licensed to do inspections in the state of Ohio, have you sign a limited liability pre-inspection agreement, and provide you with a written inspection report. All inspectors must carry error and ommissions and general liability insurance – but this is where the similarities end.

There are over 245 licensed home inspectors in NE Ohio as of 2022, so how does a home buyer go about choosing a good home inspector? Are they all the same? Do they all get up on roofs and crawl through attics? Are they all experienced enough to do a good job on your home? So how do you find out?

My name is Pete Mizeres and I have owned and operated a home inspection business in Cleveland Ohio for 20 years now. This experience has educated me on what typically constitues an effective versus a non-effective home inspector in our market area, North East Ohio. Such experience has been derived from personal observation and discussions with other inspectors, buyers, sellers, trades people, contractors, and Realtors.

I have come to define an effective home inspector as one who performs a visual, non-invasive home inspection that reveals all significant reportable material issues present and accessible at the time of the inspection per the state of Ohio’s standards and practices for home inspectors. Typically all such issues manifest within the first 12 months of occupancy by the buyer or when the buyer goes to sell the home in the future and the next buyer’s inspector identifies material issues that were not identified by the seller’s inspector but were obviously present at the time of the seller’s inspection such as electrical panel wiring defects, structural defects in the attic or foundation, etc.

So how does a new buyer of real estate in NE Ohio vet and choose an effective home inspector? Lets start with prior work experience. In my opinion, asking an inspector what they did in a former life to see if they were in the building trades has little to do with determining the effectiveness of that home inspector today. This is because most trades people or general contractors only specialized in one area of the building trade, say plumbing, electrical, framing, roofing, HVAC, etc. There are several areas that an inspector must have competence and experience in when inspecting a home which cannot be acquired without ongoing education and experience in the home inspection field. In addition to this, there probably is no good way to verfiy what the inspector is telling you about their past work experience is accurate anyway. So I believe this is not a useful question to ask when choosing a home inspector in Ohio.

Another uninformative question to ask is to have them explain their inspection process or what they inspect – because this is probably going to be the answer: “I perform a visual, non-invasive inspection of the permanently installed systems and components of the home per the state of Ohio standards and practices for a home inspection which basically includes a visual inspection of the garage, exterior, roof, attic, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, interior, structure, and foundation of the home while operating accessible and operable controls”. If you really want to know what a home inspector does, then click on the above Ohio standards link and read the standard – this is instructive as it also includes what a home inspector DOES NOT do.

That said, one of the important things to determine when choosing a home inspector is to dermine approximately how many inspections they have performed. At least 1000 home inspections is a good base line for a competent inspector to have performed. Why 1000? This was around the number where I really felt comfortable and in control of my inspection process for any type of residential or commercial building of any age under 20,000 sq ft in NE Ohio. So i feel that if the inspector has significantly less than a 1000 inspections, you are taking a chance with them, and typically they are going to be lower priced inspectors. In fact, this is how less experienced inspectors compete with more experienced inspectors – by charging less for the inspection. So don’t fall into the trap of thinking that just because a home inspector is licensed by the state of Ohio that they will be an effective home inspector for you and therefore all you have to do is choose the lowest price inspector. That would be penny wise and dollars foolish – saving $100 on the inspection fee by hiring an inexperienced or not thorough enough inspector who potentially misses important observations that cost you thousands of dollars once you own the home. Not smart, right?

But how do you verify that a home inspector actually has performed over 1000 inspections (or close to it) when you contact them? Just because their web site says they have performed over X amount of inspections doesn’t mean they really have. Who is going to call them out if they haven’t? If they tell you over the phone they have, do you believe it?

So how do you determine if they are adequately experienced or not? First off, I would take a look at their web site and see if they are an ASHI Certified Inspector. This means they have performed at least 250 fee paid inspections to the ASHI standard which is exactly the same as the Ohio standard aside from some minor differences. Their certified status can be independently verified by looking them up on the ASHI web site. ASHI is different from InterNACHI (another home inspector trade group) which does not certify their inspector members based on this criteria. Click Here to learn more about this. Of course the inspector could be a 10 year experienced InterNACHI certified inspector with over 1000 inspections performed as well.

Next I would look at the inspector’s Google My Business site by searching Google for that inspector or for inspectors in the closest major city that you are looking to buy a house in. Google will show you two key things – how many years the inspection company has been in business and how many five star and one star Google reviews they have.

Once a new home inspector starts their home inspection business, it will take them a few years to get up to the business level of doing at least 250 inspections a year – so any inspector in business for less than 5 years probably has not performed at least 1000 inspections yet, unless they worked for another home inspection company first and then went out on their own. Of course Google can be mis-led by the business owner who submits that their business was started five or more years before they actually did. There is no vetting process done by Google to verify the date any inspector actually started doing fee paid inspections.

Another way to gauge how many inspections an inspector has performed may be to look at how many Google reviews they have and multiply that by 4 to get a guestimate of their total inspections since not all customers leave a review – but that is not infallible as we have 619 Google reviews at the time of this writing though we have performed about 10,000 inspections. Some inspectors focus on acquiring Google reviews and optimizing their web site for Google search ranking and some focus on marketing to Realtors so they can get on their referal list, and some do both like we do.

Speaking of Google reviews, select the inspector or inspection company’s lowest reviews and see how the company or inspector responds. Every inspector in the real world who has done a lot of inspections will invariably have a handful of one-star reviews – typically written by un-happy clients who got rejected by their home warranty company for a claim or don’t have enough grounds to sue the inspector for an issue they perceive the inspector should have identified and warned them about before they moved into the home. So they leave a one-star review because they are frustrated that they are having to deal with a monetary issue but they can’t go after the inspector because the issue was either outside of the scope of the inspection, pointed out by the inspector but not acted on by the client, or present but not accessible to the inspector to identify. And sometimes we just miss something because we are human. Anyway, pay attention to how the inspector or inspection company responds to the bad review. Was it professional? Does it make sense? Was the response logical, well thought out, and articulate? Or was it not responded to, adversarial, non-professional, or not logical? Most inspectors agree to reimburse the client for the inspection fee as long as they take down their one star reivew – and since the client has no other recourse unless they want to hire an attorney, they would rather have their $500 back versus the satisfaction of posting a one star review. So that’s why most long term operating inspection businesses actually don’t have any one star reviews in the last few years – which of course is unrealistic because no one is perfect and there is always bound to be clients who mis-understand the scope and limitation of a home inspection. At Detailed Home Inspections, we don’t offer to refund the inspection fee if the client takes down a bad review – we respond to them honestly and truthfully so that you our potential next client can better judge our integrity and adherance to the state standards and practices. Feel free to read our responses to our bad reviews here.

Another thing to consider is the inspector’s reporting format. Do not hire an inspector without first reviewing their sample inspection reports – and they should have more than one. Our inspection report recommendations are straight forward and to the point. We rarely recommend bringing another trades person back to the house for further evaluation because we are not sure if there is a problem or not. Watch out for inspectors who do this as they are just covering themselves from a liability standpoint which ends up costing you more money because you will have to pay for another trades person to review the item. This is just an indication of the inspector’s lack of experience – when you ask for an inspector’s inspection report look for this.

Typically, the only time we recommend further evaluation is when there is foundation or structure damage and a licensed structural engineer needs to evaluate it to sign off on it or provide instruction for repair or there is a potentially large cost for correcting an issue and you should have a hard cost estimate from a licensed contractor in hand in order to understand the cost implications so you can negotiate with the Seller. We also do this for older vacant homes with no sewer line information.

We provide an easy to read web based report published the same day as the inspection with high quality pictures along with a summary page. We are fortunate enough to have had many competing inspector reports forwarded to us over the years so we know what is out there and have taken the very best elements from these reports to combine into our own report template. A lot of these reports are hard to read and follow which gives even us, experienced inspectors, a headache! Before you hire an inspector you should be familiar with the type of report they deliver and how soon they can give it to you.

We use a commercially available reporting format by Spectora which is available to other inspection companies – but we have tailored it to our inspection and reporting style and commentary that we have developed over the last 20 yrs – so it is easy to read, navigate, and understand what our observations and recommendations are. Check it out Here

Now what about testimonials and reviews that the Inspection company either has posted on the internet, social media, or on their literature or web site? It’s all sunshine and rainbows isn’t it? “So and So was so very thorough and complete in their inspection….we would recommend him or her to anybody!” It’s easy to get a smiley face review right after the inspection BEFORE the Buyer has lived in the house for a few months or a year. Every Inspector gets those reviews, if they ask for them, whether they have done thousands of inspections or 50 inspections, and yes we collect them as well and will probably ask you to write one for us if you hire us and like us!

So the REAL review of the Inspection company or Inspector’s ability comes from the un-solicited review that you get from a past client who has lived in the house for 1 to 5 yrs. But you are not likely to get those reviews unless you ask friends, family, neighbors or co-workers who they used and how effective they were (ie. how well they identified what they sould have identified per the limitations of the Ohio standards and practice for a home inspection).

But what about the inspectors that your Realtor gives you? Just because an inspector is on your Realtor’s list of 3 or more inspectors doesn’t mean that all of them are effective home inspectors and you shouldn’t just pick the lowest priced one. Nor should you be skeptical of your agent’s list as typically your agent doesn’t want to look bad and have to deal with you complaining to them after you move into the house that the inspector they recommended missed things. Again, you should do the due dilligence that I suggest above to further vet the inspector you end up hiring.

Some inspectors allow you to follow them around every step of the way during the inspection and some do not. We fall in to the latter category – and here is why: After doing inspections in Cleveland Ohio and the surrounding North East Ohio cities and townships for 20 years, we have come to the conclusion that allowing clients to follow us around during the inspection is not a good idea for three reasons. The first being that it is distracting for the inspector and therefore un-safe. The only time I’ve ever fallen off a roof during a home inspection is with the buyer talking to me. The second reason is that the inspector can get distracted by the conversation with the client and damage the seller’s property. The only time I’ve ever stepped through the ceiling below me in an attic is when I had a client tailing me and asking me questions. And finally, because of the distraction of having a client tailing them during the inspection, it is more likely for the inspector to miss a material issue that otherwise should have been identified if the inspector was not distracted by the client. My view point is that an inspector’s fiduciary responsibility to their client is not to educate them on how homes are built and how electricity works but to identify material issues that are observable and reportable per the standard so the client avoids out of pocket expenses that coud have been negotiated with the seller. I don’t think an inspector can do both and be price competitive and effective.

Now with that said that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t attend the inspection – we actually prefer that you do. That way you can get another opportunity to look at the house while we are working for you and keeping you updated as to what we are seeing as we move from section to section in the home and answering any questions you may have after we give you our findings in that section. And of course there is no need to take notes since pretty much everything we review with you on site will be documented in the inspection report we send you later that same day.

When choosing a home inspector in Cleveland Ohio (or anywhere else for that matter) you should ask if the inspector will walk the roof or use a drone camera to inspect it if the roof is not safe in the inspector’s opinion to walk. Viewing the roof from the ground, at the roof’s edge on a ladder, or from upper windows is not enough to effectively evaluate a roof. And this includes crawling through all accessible areas of an attic, so asking the inspector what they consider to be an inaccessible attic for walking should be determined before you hire them. We typically walk all accessible attics that allow entry through a hatch, the floor joists are not covered with loose fill insulation, and there is enough head room to stand up in. Otherwise we will inspect it from the hatch. Inspection of the attic helps us determine the roof condition among other things.

As far as thermal imaging cameras go – we used to use them but got too many false positives when checking for leaks so we just rely on our moisture meters and eyes instead. My opinion is that thermal imaging cameras are a marketing gimick – even if an inspector uses one, you will still have to sign an inspection agreement that exonerates them from any hidden defects that are not observable with the naked eye or accessible to be viewed. So if you think thermal camera’s are important to use when conducting a home inspection, ask to read that inspector’s pre-inspection agreement and see if the above disclaimer is present. If it is, then its a gimick. If it isn’t, the inspector hasn’t done more than 1000 home inspections with it. If I’m wrong send me an email and I will eat my words! More than likely the inspector will reply that the thermal imaging camera is just another tool to help them determine the condition of the home. My opinion is that it does not offer a material advantage over an inspector with moisture meters and the ability to walk roofs, attics, and crawl through accessible crawlspaces. So there you have it – I hope this article has been helpful and I wish you luck with your home purchase!

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