Home Inspector Continual Education

As publisher of The BC Inspector industry newsletter, I like to practise what I preach and try to attend most of the continuing education opportunities in my geographical area. I am also currently taking a 12 week Building Envelope Science course at BCIT.

What strikes me as unfortunate, is that I seldom see any volume of other inspectors at these events. In fact, I usually see the same 2-3 inspectors who like me, feel that remaining current in your training is crucial to performing our jobs properly. (Province probably has in the region of 350-500 licenced inspectors)

Many inspectors make all kinds of claims of earned education credits, but why are they never seen at building industry seminars and events. BC Building Envelope Council puts on excellent seminars on a regular basis, that are completely relevant for a home and property inspector. The Building Enclosure Science industry hosts regular conferences providing a full day of learning on just one topic - building envelope, which is the most important building component today in light of the number of leaking multi-family units on the market. Yet at all of the recent events I attended there were the same 2-3 of us from the home inspection industry.

Many inspectors do attend the meeting seminars provided by their certification associations and these events are a useful addition to a inspectors training. However, they are often limited in scope or too brief to be of any meaningful educational when attended in isolation. There main purpose seems to be to allow the inspector to check off that they have met their associations continual training requirements.

There should be some requirement within the certification programs or even licencing that ensures an inspector receives continual training on ALL of the buildings components and systems in a home. In addition to earning a certain number of arbitrary credits per year, an inspector should have to provide proof that they have covered a list of required topics on a cycle of X years. This would force the inspectors to break out and seek out a wider variety of training and would encourage the certification associations to look further afield, than the usual fair, for seminar providers.

In fact, it is now easy than ever, for a home inspector to find out what is being offered in their areas by becoming a subscriber to http://www.thebcinspector.ca/, where they will be able to view a CPD calendar that lists hundreds of seminar opportunities across the Province.

SO, when hiring an inspector, ask what courses are seminars they have taken lately and see if they truly are maintaining their professional development in this field.

Are you always best served by your agent

This is an excellent discussion on why you may be better served by ensuring you hire a truly independent home inspector.

http://www.investinganswers.com/a/why-your-real-estate-agent-isnt-always-working-you-1899

Getting a Mortgage on a Leaky Condo

Did you know your chances of getting a mortgage plummet as soon as they find out that the condo is a suspected 'leaker'.



In most cases, the majority of well established lenders will not lend on properties which are suspected to be 'leaky condo's' or that are only partially fixed if previously identified. In order for most lenders to advance funds on a unit in a building determined as a 'leaker;' they want to see a full remediation plan laid out and approved by the Strata. They further want to see that the repairs will be covered or are covered by a 3rd party warranty.

Most lenders will request the following documents, prior to lending on a building identified by the home inspection as a 'leaky condo':

1) Strata Form B documents
2) Last 2 years AGM minutes
3) Building Envelope Engineer's report identifying scope and budget for fix
4) Minutes of Special General meeting where at least 75% of the strata voted in favor of the special assessment, or other funding formula, needed to finance the complete restoration of the building, per the engineer's recommendations.
5) Three contractor quotations
6) If work is already complete - Completion Certificate/Inspection Report from Building Envelope Engineer

It is important that we, as home inspector's, correctly identify the risk on multi-family condominium style dwellings and that you our clients are made aware of the difficulty in obtaining a mortgage on these units if plans are not already in place to repair.

I am grateful to Alan Brown - Mortgage Professional www.mypowermortgage.com/alan for providing the body of this information.