PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian R
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk. Today we have on Preston Sandlin himself. Preston, thank you so much for being on.

Preston Sandlin
All right. Thank you for having me. And in the pre talk, we determined that both us of have ADD. Gotta keep it under 40 minutes so I’ll try to stay on task. But thank you for having me.

Ian R
I was just telling…we want to learn about you, Preston, in just a minute here. But me and him were just talking about how we have ADD and then we both went off on tangents about our ADD and things related to ADD. I’m like, oh, this is gonna be an awesome podcast.

Preston Sandlin
Hard to contain it to 40 minutes.

Ian R
Yeah. But we’ll, we’ll make it happen. But Preston, just so people know who you are. I’ll just give you a quick introduction. Preston Sandlin from Home Inspection Carolina. I’m gonna guess you have somewhere between 15 to 20 inspectors, you’ve been around forever. You might have actually had the first home inspection podcast starting back in 2003. So thank you for setting the stage here for us at Inspector Toolbelt Talk. Tell us a little bit about your awesomeness, Preston.

Preston Sandlin
Please, we’re gonna send you a beer for that. Thank you.

Ian R
I’ll give you the address after.

Preston Sandlin
Yeah, I’m old. He said it much nicer. I’m old. I first started doing home inspections mid to late 90s. I mean, we literally were doing them on carbon copy, like three carbon copies. You can buy those from, I forget where we bought them from. But anyway, you’d write it out. And then you’d have to write it again. The summary, divide it up pink, yellow, and white copy, and the buyer got one, buyer’s agents got one, and you kept one. There were no pictures. I actually started, I was taking Polaroid pictures, and I would say, see picture number one, and then I would write number one on the thing. And then. So then we moved on to, we got the Sony Mavicas, because you know, the with the floppy disk, and that was frickin state of the art, 1.3 megapixels. Awesome. Awesome. But you know, now they’re dinosaurs. I got a couple of them around here somewhere. But you know, obviously, we’ve moved on and graduated from that. But yeah, I was a school teacher to begin with. And I started doing inspections working for pest control company and started doing inspections like, right when they were starting to, you know, they only started really in the mid 80s. I came along in the mid 90s. But you want to understand there was a case out in California that led to that, and that’d be a whole nother podcast. But you know, used to have everybody worked for the seller, and that was sort the buyer, you know, starting to do that. But um, yeah, I built it up over time. We have several inspectors, we serve Charlotte, North Carolina, about a 50 mile radius. We also have an inspector in Raleigh, North Carolina and in Greensboro.

Ian R
Man, so you don’t look as old as you say you are, so good for you. But I will say..

Preston Sandlin
The filters are great, aren’t they?

Ian R
Yeah, right. But I will say, I would, I would call you an industry expert. You were doing home inspections before we called them home inspections. That’s a beautiful thing. And you have seen the beginning of the birth of the industry. And I say birth. You know, everybody’s like, oh, I was doing it back in the 70s and 80s. It’s like, okay, we didn’t really call them anything until the 90s. So you’re a groundbreaker. And you’re not only a groundbreaker. But you have kept up with the industry. You’re still an innovator in the industry, I’ve watched you jump in on things and help change the industry even more for the better and moving it to the future. So I think you’re a really great person to have on for the subject that we’re talking about today. And that is, mandatory home inspections. Now, before everybody goes, what, I’m not saying this is actually happening, but it is actually happening. It’s the beginnings of it.

Preston Sandlin
I want to hear more about it. Now, I’ll respond to it. Because you talked to me about it pre show, we were going back and forth. And I want to hear, I mean, obviously, I’m aware of what that is, but who’s pushing it? What’s the logic behind it? And what, and then I’ll give you my take on it. But tell me more about what you, what you know, and you’re telling the audience as well.

Ian R
Yeah, of course. And I’m not any kind of political expert. And I didn’t want to know your opinion, Preston, before the show. Because I like to have people on that. I don’t, I don’t want to know your opinion. I want to hear your opinion. And if it’s the same as mine, different than mine, somewhere in the middle, because that’s where good discussion comes from, and where we can actually analyze what’s actually going on. So, Massachusetts, so typically, from what I understand the East Coast and the West Coast, primarily New York, Massachusetts, and California will push bills for certain things, legislation, and then it creeps into the states in between. And so somebody explained this to me who’s into politics, I’m like, oh, okay, that makes sense. So when this came out, it started just exactly how he said it would happen. In Massachusetts, they started to come out with a bill to not make home inspections mandatory, but made it so that the home inspection contingency cannot be removed from contracts. Yeah. And New York State is releasing a bill, it’s still, I believe it’s at this point in the podcast, or when we are recording this, I believe is still in the judiciary phase. But that’s the same thing. It’s making it mandatory to have the inspection contingency, but not the inspection mandatory, which actually, Nick Gromicko made an interesting comment on that he goes into the inspection contingency is mandatory, it’s the same thing as a mandatory inspection. And he’s kind of right, because it’s, I mean, it’s not like the government’s gonna go and force somebody to get an inspection. But this is the best way they can do it without looking like they’re overstepping their boundaries. There are other states where those rumors are, are starting to flow around, there’s at least one province in Canada, that is talking about it. But once this happens in Massachusetts, New York, then it starts to spread to other states. And even states possibly that don’t even have licensing for home inspectors, which may also push other parts of that discussion may push licensing for home inspectors. As for the reason why, and who’s pushing it, there’s apparently, from what I understand. And if somebody has more information on this, I’d love to know, because I, I started reading this political garbage. And I’m like, I don’t know. But from what I understand, it’s coming from like New York State, we have the secretary of state, which controls a lot of the licenses in New York State, and their primary job is to protect the public. So Secretary of State actually controls home inspection licenses, because they view it as a way to protect the public. So that being said, Massachusetts, I don’t know how that exactly works. But where it seems to be coming from, is a lot of these politicians, their constituents, are losing money, and finding hardship because of the housing market. So if you skip an inspection, it keeps houses on the market for a shorter period of time. And prevents people from getting due care and diligence during the during that period. So it’s not like NAR or anybody pushing for it, from what I understand. It’s actually consumer protection. And politicians constituents being like, hey, man, people are losing money. Also, I think, personally, this is just an opinion, the attack on NAR, and these kind of laws coming into effect, I think are closely related. Because the real estate industry is also a very large piece of our economy here in the US and Canada. So if you mess with that, you mess with every other aspect. So here’s these big lawmakers and, you know, government and they’re like, oh, cool, we’re going to do a soft landing for the economy and NARs is like, you know, what, we’re gonna, I just saw a chart, and I don’t know how accurate it is. But it came out by the, the Ohio Association of Realtors or something, that a third of inspections almost were, were skipped. So it’s like 25 to 30 some odd percent. And it’s like, okay, they’re trying to do a soft landing. And then NARs just like, let’s shell out some cash and or gather in some cash and make a bunch of money. To me, it’s logical that they’re like, let’s slow down this craziness, and make the home inspection mandatory without actually making it mandatory. That’s my perception of things. What are your thoughts, Preston?

Preston Sandlin
Well, it’s pretty interesting. You know, here in North Carolina, they were waiving home inspections, kind of the thought behind it was, as far as the buyers and sellers, you know, the real estate agents, they were saying, well, why do the home inspection, they’re not going to fix anything anyway, because it’s selling over asking. There’s 40 people waiting to buy the house, we’re not fixing anything anyway, why we getting an inspection. But then what happens is, you know, people go in, they buy the house, first of all, they pay too much for it, then they have that buyer’s remorse on the back end, and now they got problems. They got a roof leak, the HVAC doesn’t work, and they’re pissed off. And they say, well, the realtor told me not to get an inspection or we wouldn’t get this house, you know, waive the inspection. And, you know, I think there’s probably gonna be some lawsuits to realtors and stuff. And, you know..

Ian R
There’s a lot already.

Preston Sandlin
Some sellers were saying, you know, we’re not even allowed inspections. Which I’m not sure they can do that. So from that standpoint, I’m yay, I think it’s great. So, you know, I used to say too, you know, I mean, we all went through the COVID day and you know, that’s, boy that worked out well for the pharmaceutical companies. The government mandated everybody get, you know, wouldn’t it be great if everybody, they mandated a home inspection and four booster home inspections, wouldn’t that be great for the home inspection industry. But with anything, you get the government involved, I would tread lightly in what, I mean, you know, your knee jerk reaction is as a home inspector, it’d be great, it’d be great for our industry. But I want to look a little bit deeper. And, you know, I’m a libertarian at heart, you know, I believe in small government and less government interference. Now, I realize people listening may not have the same philosophy as me, but I’m a free market guy. So I’m very much, I don’t like government intervention of any kind. Because my worry is what else is going to come along with this, there’s going to be some strings attached. And what I mean by that is, so if they mandate this, that’ll be a short step to mandating a certain type of report, when everybody can do the exact same report, and then slowly behind that, you know, they can commoditize our industry, and, you know, well, every home inspections the some, we’re just gonna, you know, get the chuck in a truck, the 199 inspection, I mean, that would be the kind of stuff I would be like, hey, wait a minute, you start mandating this, you need to look 2, 3, 4, 5 years into the future, where’s this going after this. I mean, the thing that all home inspectors out there now love, and I know you told me not to touch on it, but I’ll do it in a way that’s good. You know, as everybody thinks their report’s the best, you know, it’s like, hey, well, imagine if that was the standard form. And we all did it, you know, I don’t care how great a home inspector you are, your home inspector’s gonna look just like the other guys, you know, while you touched on licensing, I’m in a licensed state. I know, Georgia is an unlicensed state, South Carolina is licensed, we do in North and South Carolina. Sounds like New York’s license. There’s some other states that are and aren’t. You know, that started in 1999 for us. Prior to that, we weren’t licensed. You know, it was just, you didn’t even have to be a contractor, but a lot of guys were. You know, you just had to know about houses and doing, you know, I guess that’s the way it is in Georgia and other states. And in the beginning, and I thought that was great, because I thought, hey, you know, that’ll be more hurdles, or, you know, it’ll increase the, you know, just not any maintenance man can become a home inspector, there’ll be a certain amount of standards, right. But here’s the other side of that, that I’ve learned over time, who’s regulating this? Who’s going to regulate that? And can that be corrupted, there is nothing like, you think government’s corrupt, go down to the local level. You know, I know a lot of people think government solves their problems. But government can be your biggest problem. And I know, I’m going off on a tangent a little bit like that. But you know, what can happen when you have licensing, and you know, this might be piss people out there, but you can get some people on that licensure board that make that thing go a certain way that’s not very businesslike, you know, they think everybody, almost like socialism, or something, you know, and they don’t like the guys that get out there, and market and hustle and all that. So they try to make the laws to try to, you know, put the brakes on them or something like that. So I guess my answer is, short term that seems like a good idea. But I’m very, very cautious about getting the government involved in something, making something mandatory, because I think it could come with some strings that we may not like. And if you guys don’t think government, I mean, if you think government’s the answer to things, let me ask you something, go to your DMV office, and try to renew your license. And look at the efficiency in that place. When government takes over something, that’s what you got to look forward to. So, I’m not sure I’m for making it mandatory, even though it seems like it’d be good for our industry, I need to know more about it.

Ian R
Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack in what you said there. And I won’t get into the political aspects of that, that’s not something we, we typically delve into a whole lot of, but there’s a lot to unpack there, especially the commoditization of our industry. And we can talk about reporting. I mean, we own reporting software, that’s what we do. And as you know, one of our users recently said, oh, my agents love your report software, Ian, it’s great. This and that. And, you know, my competition, I was looking at his, and it was a big pile of doody. And they’re like, your report’s so much better. That doesn’t happen, that doesn’t happen in a market, yeah, in a market where…

Preston Sandlin
Yeah, I’m gonna buy Ian’s report writing software because it makes my company look better. And I’m gonna do a certain thing, but if the government, if they mandate inspections, I would tell you pretty soon after, you’re gonna see standardized reports. That’s just my thought. But I’m sorry.

Ian R
No, no, I want you on here for your opinion, your opinions valuable, because you’ve seen this from the beginning, all the way up to this point. You’re one of the few people who have, and you’re still in the trenches with this. So the commoditization part is the part that I worry about the most. I personally feel that mandatory home inspections is a death stroke because at first we’re going to be like, oh, this is awesome, but think about like before licensing in the mid 90s, is when we, as an industry made the most money, taking into account inflation, that we ever did. Average inspection fee in the 90s was about $350, which if you took into account inflation would be about a 700 some odd dollar inspection now, almost 800, depending on how you look at it. So, I mean, we make less now after licensing, because I remember my uncle, he was a surveyor, I’ve talked about him on the show before, and he would do inspections, he wouldn’t call them home inspections. But if you wanted him, he had to work on his merits. They’re like, oh, you don’t want just anybody, you want this guy, because he’s awesome. And then once licensing came out, everybody’s just like, oh, look, I have the same, I have the same qualifications as him. And he just took 120 hour course, it’s like, 140 hour course. It’s like, no, you don’t, he has 40 years experience and is the best, and you took 140 hour course, and you’ve never been in a house. But on paper, you just commoditized it saying he has the same qualifications. And that reduced our pricing. To be perfectly frank, that was a big contributor. I’ve never been a big fan of licensing, because now you don’t work on end product, you work on, here’s a stamp that says, I have the same qualifications as that guy. That’s why we talk a lot on this podcast about how do we differentiate ourselves. We used to not have to, we used to just either be awesome and make it or not. But that’s a whole different podcast. The commoditization, it’s a big deal.

Preston Sandlin
I 1,000% agree. And, yeah, well, you know, when licensing comes in, and I thought it was good in the beginning, but I think it commoditizes the industry, commoditizes you, and it works to keep it that way, too. Let’s go back to your example. Let’s say, did you say it was your uncle? Is that who you said was the guy 40 years experience?

Ian R
Yeah, and that’s exactly true. And I’m going to actually make an argument against our argument for our listeners. So that chart that I was talking about that came out, let’s say, let’s say even 30%, 30% of houses skipped a home inspection. Now the argument would be, logistically, wouldn’t that bring 30% of houses back into the home inspection industry, we’d have 30% more work. The logic of that sounds good on the surface. But I want to bring out an example. I want to, I want to see what you think about this Preston. So think about when way before me or you when they standardized housing so that you had a code enforcer. So now these guys who were checking out houses and checking out, make sure it was built, right. Maybe it was a family member or a contract or whatever, and they would double check the work. Okay, you know, but now look at what the industry has become for code enforcers, they come, they spend maybe 10 minutes, they kind of just stand and talk and they’re like, oh, like this, you need a double jack stud because this header is over six feet and okay. There’s no, there’s nothing great about it. And nobody’s standing there saying, wait a minute, maybe I could get a better code enforcer. Let me do some research, the guy just shows up and does it and leaves. That’s what a home inspection is going to become. So we’ll have 30% more, but we’re going to make less, and we’re not going to, it’s not going to be the same industry. It’s a death-stroke in a lot of ways. What are your thoughts on my illustration there? Yeah, my uncle.

Preston Sandlin
Let’s say, man, he’s really good at marketing, you know, and he’s out there marketing, he’s marketing his 40%, you know, it’s 40 years in the business, he’s making flyers, and realtors love him. Well, then what happens is somebody complains to this new board that’s created because of licensing. And, you know, it’s like, hey, man, this guy’s you know, and, quite frankly, the board’s supposed to protect the public, but I find that that kind of happens, but it also becomes a policing force for people who aren’t doing as much business as somebody else. Oh, well, therefore, he’s cheating. So this person makes a complaint about your uncle, doesn’t like the way that he’s marketing, or you know what he does lunch and learns, he’s buying those Realtors lunch and teaching them stuff. That’s, you know, he’s bribing them to use him. We obviously know that’s not true. But that sort of garbage comes, those kinds of complaints will come to the board. And now the board, you know, we need to do something we, you know, we need to be useful. Let’s have a vote on that, oh, well, you can no longer do lunch and learns, or you can no longer, and it’s all of a sudden, it’s like, wait a minute, this is anti-free market. They’re doing their best to commoditize your uncle, when your uncle is trying to differentiate himself. So the more you differentiate yourself and make yourself more on your merits, people to use you because of your merits, which is the way the free market should work, the government is working to commoditize you and make you all the same. So that’s why I am, I would be against the mandatory inspection reports, even though it seems crazy for home inspector to say that, I just know government comes with a lot of strings, and they want to commoditize things, and they get people working for it and on the border, who’s going to be, if they do this, they’re going to have to have somebody and force it, some type of people. I mean, who do you complain to if they don’t, there’s going to have to be some group. And I guarantee you sooner or later that group is going to work to commoditize. And they’re not going to like people who are differentiators. I agree with you. I have, I have a bunch of rental houses. And I had some code issues on one. And he wrote me up for this stuff, you know, and I’m a home inspector, you know, I’m, I’m trying not to be the home inspector, the buyer’s dad, right. And it was ridiculous. And the stuff that he wanted me to fix, he wanted me to put a TPR valve on a water heater that was like old, it wasn’t even hooked up. It was just in the attic, we couldn’t get it out. There’s now a new one. But he wanted me to put a TPR valve on the old one. So I mean, among other stuff, and you know, I just looked at all this stuff. And I said, you know, instead of fighting with his dude, I’m just going to do everything he said, I’m not getting into a peeing match with him. And I did all the stuff, he had a whole bunch of other stuff. I did it. And I was supposed to meet him out there at a certain time, and he was gonna do the inspection. He came earlier. And I was mad because it was like, we were supposed to meet at one o’clock or whatever it was, he came earlier in the day. But he passed everything. He didn’t even go inside the house. And I was almost mad at that point. Because I was like, I want to show him I did all that stuff. But he passed me. So I was just like, you know what, I’ll just shut up. And, you know…But it illustrated your point. Like, I was like, this is a terrible system they got here. I mean, it’s it’s, it’s taken the meritocracy out of it, you know, it’s introduced me, mediocracy or less is now the standard, where meritocracy, you know, the best, like, your uncle would rise to the top, because people ask around and you know, reviews, you know, that sort of thing. So yeah, I’m against it, you know, and your thought about, you know, it would immediately give 30% more. Okay, but that sounds, are we, it sounds like we’re getting away from protecting consumers, we’re more interested in our industry, you know, but I would be more in favor of something like this, where maybe they make it standard, where there’s a form that has to be read to them to waive the home inspection, and they have to write it, and maybe that they have to sign that but it has to be read to them, or they have to read it. But the consumer gets to make the decision. Because at the end of the day, I’m all about freedom, freedom of choices, you know, me, as you know, put that on the other shoe, Ian, let’s say, you’re daggone investor, man, and you’re a former inspector, contractor, you know your stuff, you’re going to buy an investment property, you already know, you’ve gone in there, like, hey, I know what, I got to put in the roof, I got to put a furnace in. Now they’re forcing you to pay for an inspection when you don’t need one. Because you’re an investor, and you you know what needs to be fixed. How’s that fair?

Ian R
Yeah. And I think the problem that we’re kind of circling is it does two things, it changes the function of the home inspection, and the perception of a home inspection. And I think maybe a better illustration than code enforcers would be mandatory inspections for your vehicle. So we bring our vehicle in, and we get it inspected. I don’t drive around asking which mechanic has the cheaper inspection, because they’re all about the same. I forget what it was, I just had, I just had one of my vehicles inspected, I’m gonna say $70. They have a checklist of things they have to checkm and they go check, check, check, check, check. And then off, off they go. So we don’t view it as something of any more as I need to protect myself, I need to protect my vehicle, my family is in the vehicle. When’s the last time we ever heard somebody say that they see a sticker on the window and they say, gotta get this inspected. So it changes the perception. But the function of it becomes different too. It becomes a routine, cheap option, a thing that we have to get through. A good example of what the problem is with that is, I still remember this time I brought my vehicle to a mechanic, me and my wife are still young, just newly married. Bring it to the mechanic. Well, no, no, no, I’m old now. This was like, this was like 17 years ago. Yeah, we’re going back in time, Preston. Inserts, you know, what is it, the montage music in the background of me meditating on our, pontificating on our time when me and my wife are younger, but anyways, go to the mechanic, and he inspects the car, sends us back. On our way back home, in the vehicle we just got inspected, we ended up having a mechanical issue, on the way back home. And so I drive back and he goes, oh, yeah, I forget what was wrong. He goes such and such is wrong. I’m like, you just inspected it. He goes, it’s not part of the inspection. I’m like, did you see it? He goes, we don’t look there. Because it’s not on our checklist, you still pass New York state inspection. They’re doing the minimum, he literally had us change our back wiper blade. Like that, he’s like, you can’t pass inspection without your back wiper blade, like, well, oh, my goodness, yeah, we’re gonna die on the road without this back wiper blade. But meanwhile, I think it was like a control arm or something. And I’m like, this is so backwards. But that’s what happens when you mandate a home inspection. Licensing is already a blow. And I’d love to hear people if they argue with me on this, I would love to hear your opinion on it. Preston just happens to have the same opinion as me. We didn’t talk about this before. You just mentioned that we might be talking about it. But in fact, I thought I would probably have the opposite. I guess I can imagine a majority of the home inspectors probably won’t, because if you look at it in a shallow depth, it seems like a good thing. Exactly.

Preston Sandlin
You know, here’s something else to think about, Ian. So let’s say they make this mandatory. So now every house has to be inspected. If you’re a home inspector, and you do a lot of home inspections, anybody out there listening, how about every time you watch TV, there’s a house fire on…? How many of you guys immediately like, what’s the address on the house?

Ian R
It’s funny/

Preston Sandlin
You’re immediately like, looking up in your system. Did I do that inspection? And if you did, you’re freaking sweating for a couple of days. But here’s one thing to remember, they all have homeowners insurance that usually cover stuff like that. Now, homeowners insurance sends their own inspector out to do that. But what if the homeowners insurance now can say, well, you know what, we don’t have to have that guy come out anymore. Since the home inspection’s mandatory, we’ll just take the home inspection report. But now, you are going to be a hell of a lot more liable for that than you were before. Because let’s go back and say that house burns down. And it’s one you inspected like a year ago. It’s an electrical issue, whatever. You know, yeah, there could be reason, but you know, the insurance company sent their inspector out there, too. So they’re, they’re liable too, you know what I mean, if they come after you, your, your insurance and your lawyer, whatever should be able to say, well, you guys have sent your own people out. I’m not, the insurance company’s not my client, the people are and you know, the insurance company is just trying to figure out a way not to pay it or to get money from my insurance company. But now, I feel like if you make that mandatory, they may do away with that and now just put all the liability on you.

Ian R
You know, you make a point that I didn’t think about, because think about vehicles, my insurance company for my vehicles doesn’t come out and inspect them, but they want to know that it’s inspected. So I didn’t think about that as a possibility before, boy, that’s depressing. But no, you’re very right. It could change how our industry is perceived. Because now, let’s say I’m Geico, and I’m insuring a house up in, or Liberty Mutual, Liberty biberty, right. But Liberty Mutual up in New York, and you know, it’s like, oh, home inspections are mandatory. Why don’t we just tack on what we need done here. And now you have a guy with a checklist, New York says mandatory home inspections, and the mandatory, and they’re gonna want to see standardized reports. And New York State has actually already put into place some things that standardize our report writing. So there are certain laws and adjustments that came about, I think, in 2016, that were some of the first steps of standardized reporting, because they do not like having three reports for three different inspectors that they’re trying to review for a legal issue. And they don’t, and they have to relearn how to read a report. So New York State’s already going that way.

Preston Sandlin
If they’re all the same, you’re not standing out anymore. You’re you become like, livestock, you’re like pork belly futures now, you’re a commodity, you’re not, you know, and you’re not the the best and the brightest aren’t allowed to be the best and the brightest anymore. You know what I mean? It’s like you’re putting weights on them. And in the end, the consumer loses, because that’s who we’re trying to protect. And just like you’ve said, it’s a race to the bottom, if you make something mandatory or government mandate, it’s just gonna be the minimum checklist. What, what’s anybody’s incentive to do a better job? You know, I know, people always say, you know, I hear this argument all the time. We have licensing. We have standards of practice, and they do mandate how we write a report much to my chagrin, I don’t like it, because it’s like DDID, every sentence has to be described, determined, indirection, or what could happen. In other words, you know, the blank over there is rotted, and it needs to be fixed or else this will rot more or cause a flood and you need to get somebody..

Ian R
Yeah, that’s the North Carolina thing, the DDID.

Preston Sandlin
Yes, that’s our thing. On the surface that sounds good. Yeah. Okay, so you have to write that for every freaking thing. A loose toilet. And the realtors get mad, you wrote a paragraph about a loose toilet, I mean, all we got to do is tighten the damn thing up. I mean, it gets, when you read a North Carolina report, it gets a little ridiculous because you have to DDID every single thing, I could see doing that for a major issue. But strike plates loose? Well, the strike plate over here is loose. And that could lead to becoming more loose or getting stuck. And this could happen, and you need to get a licensed Qualified Contractor out here to tighten this tripod down. Does that not seem a little over excessive, and again, you get the government involved. That’s, that’s the kind of things that can happen.

Ian R
I’m going to use a real life example here. So in the municipality not far from me, two municipalities, actually, in New York State, they had problems with septic systems in their municipality. So now whenever you buy or sell a home in these two municipalities, you have to get a septic inspection. Now, many, many years ago, when this happened, we were thinking, oh, this is a great thing. Because now we can, now we can do more septic inspections. But now the septic inspections that they do for these consumers are terrible. So we had one, we had one done on the building, and they went in, like we open a tank, we do hydraulic load test, we’ll throw dye down it to make sure it’s not coming out anywhere. And we’re scoping it out to the D box and walk in the leach fields. They come out. And now there’s two aspects of this, they come out and it’s just a quick checklist. And then it’s done. And they actually, when we go to say, hey, we can still do a septic inspection on top of this, they’re like, no it was already done, people will move in, and their septic will fail. And all this other stuff because it is mandated by that municipality that it has to be done. And there’s two aspects of that. One is, when you used to be able to do it for the municipality, you just have to follow their guidelines. And eventually municipalities like, we want everything, like you said, standardized. So now they send their own person out. In the one municipality, it can take up to a month to get that person out. And so now all the agents know if you buy a house with a septic system, we add an extra month on for closing. Even in this hot market, they’ll be like we just had to wait a month to get a septic system done. I had one one property out there where they were still waiting, because they’re like it’s January and they’re like we know, we need to close in a week. They’re like it’s cold out there, you know, government worker kind of stuff. And they’re like, nah, and we’ll see, it took like two months. So DMV.

Preston Sandlin
DMV. It’s like the DMV, if you want to know how efficient government or government then go to your local DMV, and that will remind you.

Ian R
But there’s the other nervousness. So what I think was, was going to happen is the first year or two. I think every inspector in a state that or province where this becomes mandatory is going to be like, awesome, yeah, there’s more inspections. And then I think after a year, maybe two, it’s going to start hitting us or like, okay, we have this checklist now, oh, crud, anybody can really do this checklist, or what happened with those municipalities with the septic systems. The municipality hired their own person, they pay him $35,000 a year. And that’s all they do is they go out and do the septic fields and septic systems, and they don’t really do an inspection. And that’s it. And the next so the one municipality did it first. And then the second one did it, when the second one did it, they’re like, we’re skipping the whole private inspector thing. We’re going right to a government employee, and they charge you for the inspection. So they’re out there making, you know, 400 grand a year on a $35,000 a year private person, why wouldn’t they do it? So that’s the other thing is these municipalities, the government can now make money off of the home inspection industry. And they’ve already learned that, they already do that. In my state New York, I hate to say this people, but just like that political person I was talking to, they’re like, it starts in mass or New York, or California. And then once one of them does it, the other ones, the other ones fall into place. He mentioned Connecticut being one of the next ones. Maine already has semi-laws that are kicked in for stuff like that already. Well, I’ve got, I know we’re probably getting close to time. I want, two points, I want to attack this from. Please do.

Preston Sandlin
I’ll say them to begin with, and help me, remind me of each one.

Ian R
I’m going to totally forget, Preston.

Preston Sandlin
The whole reason that they’re skipping inspections, let’s go up a level or two, what’s, what’s causing them to skip the inspection. I’ll talk about that for a minute. And then we’ll talk about Amazon for a minute. And I think that I have a little conspiracy theory.

Ian R
Okay.

Preston Sandlin
All right. So let’s talk about it for a second. You know, we’re talking about basically a symptom, right? What’s the cause here? You know, why are people skipping inspections? We wouldn’t have had this conversation 10 years ago. I mean, they weren’t skipping. Why? Why are people skipping it? So let’s, let’s go up a couple of levels. And it’s because, you know, homes are so expensive. They’re they’re trying to save money any way they can. And the demand is so high that sellers, you know, it’s a seller’s market, you know, and they’re not fixing anything. So, you know, instead of, I’m always like, why are we fixing, trying to fix a symptom? Why don’t we fix the cause? I mean, to me, that’s always you know, what I mean, what’s causing, there’s market situations that are causing, so I’m always like, well, if you fix the damn market, then you won’t have this symptom.

Ian R
Yeah, so here’s, I really think you’re onto something. But the problem is, you bring your kid to the doctor, and they have a runny nose, and the parent complains about the runny nose, the doctor knows that antibiotics aren’t going to fix the virus because it can’t attack a virus, it’s an antibiotic. So they treat the runny nose, and it makes the parent feel better. They’re treating the symptom, because you can’t stop the demand on the market. They know they can’t stop that. They know there’s 20 buyers for every house, they know that these are, these inspections are getting skipped, it’s costing the judiciary system a lot of money with the lawsuits and all the problems, and they know all that. I think they’re seeing home inspections as an easy target. They’re like, if we force a home inspection or make it look, make it mandatory without making it look mandatory, we can slow down the market. So now that house stays on the market a little bit longer, and hypothetically, even at the super competitive market, somebody gets in there and they’re like, crud, this is a $400,000 house with eighty grands worth of defects that they would have bought otherwise, they’re gonna move on. And now the next buyer can come. So now they, I think they’re artificially slowing down the market or trying to, using the home inspection field. I don’t know. Do you think that or no?

Preston Sandlin
Yeah, that’s an interesting thing. Well, I mean, I think they put too damn much money into the economy. But that gets political. Like that’s caused everything to you know, all your groceries cost so high. But anyway, let’s go to the other one because I don’t want to run out of time, Amazon. Amazon is taking over the world. We all buy stuff on Amazon. I’m constantly looking out the window. I’m expecting a package now. I love Amazon, and I hate Amazon. Right? I love Amazon because they’re very customer centric. They’ve taken out, you know, they look at everything through the customers eyes. I hate Amazon because of killing like all these local businesses and stuff.

Ian R
Yeah.

Preston Sandlin
But it’s so nice to be able to, oh, hey, man, I need a new quarter for my phone. I go in here and click on buy it for cheaper price. And it’ll be here tomorrow afternoon. How easy can that be? Alright, so what’s preventing people from buying houses on Amazon? Because alright, well, why do people buy from Amazon, because you can return it. They guarantee they take the risk out. Because it’s like, you know, I go to buy something. And I’m like, this site. I don’t know about the site, man. It could be a scam. I don’t know, I know, I get my money back from Amazon. They’re taking the risk out of it for you. That’s why you buy stuff from Amazon. Because you know, my wife, you know, she sends stuff back all the time. I think, now this is my conspiracy. But a lot of my conspiracies come through. They want to get to the point where you push a button to buy a house. Yeah, they pretty much will take realtors out of it because they see that, they want to you know, what they call that? What’s the Uber, Uber? Uber was like the first industry, right? They Uber, they took out taxis. So that’s what they call it. Now they Uberize, they’ve been trying to Uberize real estate for a while, or Amazon. The problem is they’re still risk for it. But if they make these inspections mandatory, and every house has an inspection report, at least in the consumers mind, even though you and I know and, you know, hey, you got a commoditized report that was like low level, but a consumer’s mind is, hey, every home comes with an inspection. You’re taking the perceived risk out of their mind. Pretty soon. I could go on Amazon or Zillow or whatever, push a button, buy a house. I don’t need a realtor. I don’t need anybody. And the people who are making big money on this are the Zillow or the Amazon or whoever the app is, whoever the Silicon Valley intermediary is. And you know, is this all just a big thing, the NAR, the you know, the push to make inspections, is this all just a big thing to just be able to sell houses on the internet without any risk, perceived risk? Basically, Uberising the real estate industry, that’s my question.

Ian R
And it very well could be, there’s already companies out there that have already said they want to consolidate and Uberize, as you put it, the inspection industry, the real estate industry, and the whole process. The attacks on NAR, I’m not saying I believe your conspiracy theory or not, but it’s already been said that, yeah, we’re trying to do this, not us. But like, that’s what others have said, we’re, they’re trying to take over the whole industry, and make the home buyer, and how they put it is make the home buying process easier. But let’s be frank, there’s a lot of money that passes in the home, in the real estate industry. You have agents and brokers and inspectors and appraisers, and attorneys and mortgage companies, there’s a lot of deep pockets that they have to pull their hand out of that pocket to make that happen. But they don’t have to pull their hand out of their pocket if they go around and do things like this. So I do believe that this is an attempt to control the real estate market better. Through a, through an adjacent industry like ours, I think that these state governments, I’m gonna call state governments because the federal government, I haven’t seen much from them on it. But I think the state governments have noticed they’re like, you know, what, why is everybody interested in the home inspection field? Why is all of a sudden this like a big thing? And theres big companies involved and all this other stuff?

Preston Sandlin
I see it as that’s the one thing that keeps people from being able to just buy something, oh, I mean, you get a ride on Uber, you know what you’re getting. Right? Your order your, your cord for your phone, you know what you’re getting, and if it’s broken, you could send it back, no risk, no risk, no risk, you know, what you get. With a home, you can’t just buy a home without some type of inspection, as far as taking out the risk. Now, let me add one other caveat into that. And again, I don’t know this for a fact. But I you know, I, I also am not dumb. And I think we all should like, hey, wait a minute. I mean, you know, big companies don’t do things without a vision of the future. And I’m just wondering if this is their vision of the future, the government doesn’t do things without a vision of how they want the future to look. So here’s something else. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but have you noticed the consolidation of home services industries?

Ian R
Oh yeah.

Preston Sandlin
A buddy of mine, I do a radio show here locally, about once a month, About Your House with Ray Terry. And he does like, he asked me on there, and he has, you know, he has brick masons, he has HVAC guys, you know, and he told me, pulled me aside once, he’s like hey, man, have you noticed like all these, you know, family owned mom and pops are all getting bought up? I said yeah, I have noticed. He said, well, you know what that is, they’re getting bought up, bought up, bought up, by these conglomerates, they’re gonna put a bow on it and sell it to Amazon, you know, I guess Amazon’s who is trying to get into home services.

Ian R
Yeah, they’ve been trying for a while.

Preston Sandlin
Please don’t get me defamation or anything. I don’t know this for a fact. But I noticed there’s some consolidation going on in home inspection, too. And I don’t know if some of those people know, I can’t imagine they’re just buying it without some vision of what that, I just wonder what their vision of the future is. You know, I don’t know. And I’m not saying that, you know, I don’t want to get a defamation lawsuit or a cease and desist. I’m not saying anything. But I do know, like, nice consolidating, they’re not just buying it to buy it, they have a vision of what the future is. And I don’t know, is all of this going to be sold to Amazon, or something like?

Ian R
Well, there’s a lot of merit to what you’re saying, and I’m not saying necessarily to Amazon. But there is a larger consolidation going on, in general, because that’s what, that’s what society is going towards is more towards, like, bigger companies being able to return something that happened to deal with the small mom and pop shop, although I’m just the opposite.

Preston Sandlin
And good for the mom and pop, if they’re cashing out, and I’m not against that, hey, man, you get a good payday. You want to retire? Um, I’m not against. I’m not against it. But I’m also like, weary of okay, what, what’s happening here? What’s the bigger picture? What’s the view from 30,000 feet? What’s going on?

Ian R
But let’s, let’s talk about some of the facts in the industry real quick, because you have Inspectify, we’ve talked about them on the show before. They have their standardized inspection fees and their standardized reporting. And they’re a one click option, so to speak. And I’ve mentioned them on the show before. Launch Pad just announced that they’re standardizing the reporting software across all their companies nationally. And their announcement that they made was that they wanted to push towards the standardizing of reports in the home inspection industry in general, is what was indicated by it. So this is the beginning of it. That’s what you get at the end of it. And the beginning of it is mandatory inspections.

Preston Sandlin
And I’m not, I’m a free market libertarian guy. I’m not saying you should.

Ian R
I’m just Ian. I’m not any of those, I’m just some dude.

Preston Sandlin
Yeah, I’m just some dude. But I also want to be smart enough to realize this is what’s going on. And you know, where, where do I need to position myself to take care of my company, my business, people that work for me and my family? And you know, what, what’s my smartest move always?

Ian R
Yeah, so and if everybody listening, I want to end on this note. This is not happening quickly. This isn’t going to be later this year. You know, I think some states might have it in the next decade. And then I think most of us will probably be retired by the time it happens, and then you have time after that, but I would not tell you to say that this is a good thing for us now or in the future in general. And it sounds like, Preston, you agree with me on that?

Preston Sandlin
Yeah, I’m against it. But like you said, I’m just a dude.

Ian R
Yeah. So some actionable things we can take away is, not that any of us are probably really supporting bills, or anything like that in any states. But now, now is the time to make sure that our business model isn’t just, I do home inspections. I’m a home inspector who provide sewer scope, who provides septic inspections, who provides every other service we can think of, I’ve said this before, ancillaries, ancillaries, ancillaries, ancillaries. So let’s say Ian is completely wrong, the whole world blows up. And there’s no more home inspections. If you have ancillaries, you go oh, no. And then you just go back to work, because there will still be ancillaries, people still need those. So that’s not going to happen. But I’m just saying worst case scenario.

Preston Sandlin
Two ways to make more money in this business, do more home inspections or provide more value ancillaries per inspection. The home sales last year was as low as I forget the exact numbers, but I went into a real estate meeting. It’s the lowest it’s been since 1990. So there’s less houses being sold. So you know, that first option, doing more home inspections is really tough. So provide more value per inspection. And, you know, honestly, like I said, either do more inspections, or provide more value per inspections, I’d like to do both. But if I had to choose, I’d rather provide more value per inspection, because there’s less liability, less driving, because you’re only inspecting one house, you expose yourself to more, like if you can make the same amount on one house with ancillaries versus two houses without ancillaries. I will take that one house with ancillaries all day long, because it’s one house. And you know, a lot of times people think, oh, God, if I start doing mold, or I start doing sewer scope, that’s opened me up to more liability. Oh, no, it’s the opposite. Yeah, it’s reducing your liability, because now you’re either going to find the stuff out or if they refuse to do it, and you offered it to him. You have more of a defense.

Ian R
Exactly. Yeah, we could go off all day on this because I’m right on the same page with you. But Preston Sandlin, everybody, just a great guy. Thank you so much for being on the show and sharing your wisdom and experience. And we’ll have to have you on again. And we’ll talk about ancillaries because that’s one of my favorite things to talk about. But thank you so much, Preston.

Preston Sandlin
Yeah. Thanks for having me. man. This has been great, man. You’re awesome, awesome, dude. I like what you’re doing.

Ian R
Thank you, same to you. And we’ll talk soon.

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at [email protected].

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