What kind of inspection report should you insist on?

OK, I have advised that to try to lower your potential liability in buying into multi-family-dwellings as much as possible you need to:


1) Make sure you have the Condo inspected

2) Make sure you choose an inspector who takes the time to perform a thorough evaluation of not just the purchase unit, but also the building envelope/exterior, roof, parkade, and all common mechanical areas.

3) Most important of all, look for an inspector who’s ‘process’ includes a detailed review of all engineering reports commissioned by the Strata in the last 5-10 years.

I would like to now talk about the type of report the buyer should ensure their chosen inspector provides.

By far the most common form of report used by home inspectors North America wide is the ‘Check List’ report. This takes on many different flavours and can even be included in a fancy publication like the Home Reference Manual which looks impressive but at its core is only a 9 page check-list-format report. The rest of the binder is boiler plate text that may or may not be relevant for the home you are purchasing and often does not describe a given defect with enough information to be truly informative in my view.

The fundamental problem with checklist style reports is that they have been designed to be of as little effort as possible for the inspector to fill out while at the same time protecting the INSPECTOR from liability. They typically do not go out of their way to inform you the PURCHASER and ensure YOU are protected from liability. There is physically not enough room to do so on most of these styles of reports as they often have limited opportunity to add enough commentary to fully describe a defect or deficiency. Inspectors often like this style of report because it takes very little skill, thought, or time to fill them out. Because you do not have to explain the deficiency, you can rush through the home with the only purpose being of identifying what may be a problem on the checklist and then state ‘further evaluation recommended’. Now of course most purchasers follow that advice- right? The reality is that very few purchases take additional steps, beyond the home inspection, to determine the current condition of the dwelling.

The final fundamental problem with checklist style reports in my view is that they never contain photos. Photos are the single most important tool that a good inspector has of portraying information to their client. Yet for a majority of the industry, they are not part of an inspector’s process. How can they be? When the average inspector provides a carbon copy checklist report on site and then never sees the purchaser again, how can photos be included? The answer is they can’t and typically aren't. Those that do will often just provide the client with a memory card or CD/DVD of raw unedited photos with no commentary. There is also a whole segment (significant) of the inspection industry where the inspector is scared to provide photos. A regular topic of discussion on inspector forums and at association meetings is around the concept that an inspector could be found liable for a defect shown in a photo but not referenced in the inspectors report.

Computer generated ‘checklist style’ reports are a slight step up from a hand written checklist as they can allow more extensive commentary and the addition of narrated photos, BUT only if the inspector is willing to put in the hours of time to modify the out of the box software template and then the extra time required on a per inspection basis to create the report at site or back in their office. Unfortunately, many don’t.

You can see that I am not a fan of checklist reports. I wish I was, they are much faster and easier than the reports I utilize in my business. Not many inspectors relish the idea of spending a day behind a desk creating a report and I am no exception. I am always looking for ways to decrease the report production time but always ensure that my number 1 priority is informing and protecting the client. In my opinion the best inspection report is a narrative report created specifically for the inspected dwelling that is augmented with lots of annotated photos. This is much the same format used by most engineers. The process is intense in the time frame typically allotted for subject removals and usually takes between 10-15 hours, but this has been the only way I have personally found that allows me to ensure that my client is as fully informed as possible.