PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian R
Hey, Lance, welcome to Inspector Toolbelt Talk. How are you today?

Lance Coffman
I’m good, Ian. Thank you so much for having me. I’m good. Glad I could be here.

Ian R
Yeah, I’m super glad you could be here. I was just saying before the show. I hear your name a lot when commercial inspections come up. And you seem to be the, I don’t know if it’s the appropriate term, poster boy for commercial inspections lately.

Lance Coffman
I hope not.

Ian R
So yeah, I don’t know what that means.

Lance Coffman
I don’t want that.. but okay, I’ll take it.

Ian R
Alright, so, well, I meant that as a compliment. We’re getting the show off to a weird start everybody, but I’m really glad to have Lance here. Because one question that comes up a lot. And we’ve had a couple of episodes on commercial inspections this season already. And this will be our third one. Because I really believe that commercial inspections are an important pivot point in our industry. And I really think we all need to take it a lot more seriously than we have over the past decade or two. So Lance, you’re going to be talking to us on a question that we get asked a lot, which is how to bid and create proposals for commercial inspections. I think when it comes to commercial inspections, that’s the biggest question I get asked, ironically, you know, everybody has the initial, how do I get into it? How do I find jobs?

Lance Coffman
Right.

Ian R
But when it comes down to it, once you have a job come in, you’re like, what do I do? Where do I? Where do I get my total amount that I’m charging from?

Lance Coffman
Right.

Ian R
Before we get into that, tell me about yourself. Or tell us about yourself, your background, your company, how you got into commercial inspections, things like that.

Lance Coffman
Yeah, absolutely. So I can do that pretty quick. So I started, I say I, my wife and I, she’s the majority owner of our companies, actually, which is awesome. So we started Forever Home Inspection, I want to say it was conceptualized in 2016. And we got into that at a time when, I don’t, I don’t want this to sound crass, because I don’t want to, I don’t think it is crass. It was just, we were at a point where the the level of inspectors were aging out, right. So it was, you know, as an industry where it was much older gentleman, they weren’t very present online, there wasn’t a lot of marketing effort put there. They were just busy by word of mouth. And we were able to come in with my wife’s marketing backgrounds and my sale background to really get into the industry quickly. And so we grew that quite a bit. And you know, of course, with home inspection, we’ve ebbed and flowed with our team size. But around 2019. Before that, I had been getting calls for commercial properties. And I was not comfortable doing commercial properties. You know, because I see home inspectors on their websites always say, yeah, we do commercial or we do light commercial or whatever. And I don’t know what that means. And so I was like, okay, what is commercial? How do I do this? Can I actually do it? And at that time, I didn’t feel confident. But also toward the latter end of 2019, I started really paying attention to CCPIA. And if not the first, one of the first classes they held for how to become a commercial inspector. It was Rob, and I want to say it was like Ray Klein, and man, and like three or four other instructors. So a lot of big names at that time with InterNACHI. And so I did that in October of 2019, I believe. And I brought my wife along with me. And because we made a vacation out of it. And so while I was there for the week doing my class, she was at a coffee shop nearby creating our website. And the moment we left class, she pushed start, and we were getting calls the following Tuesday. So we realized that because commercial was so nuanced, if you Google even right now, if you Google most states, you’re not going to find a true commercial inspection company online, you’ll find maybe an engineering firm or due diligence firm or something. So we realized that there was a great way for us to get started, similar to how we did with home inspection so many years ago. And that’s, that’s how we got into it. I started you know, learning more, I’m a hands on applicable kind of guy. So I started reaching out to vendors that were HVAC, electrical, fire suppression, and just say, can I do a ride along with you? I’ll pay you, take me on the roof with you while you do an inspection or while you’re, you know, doing an annual or whatever. And I learned quite a bit from that. So I know the class is far more robust now than it was when I first started, which is wonderful. But that’s, that’s kind of how we got into it. So, you know, I’ve done north of 4000 home inspections, and I’ve probably done close to almost 500 commercial at this point. So, yeah. Which I mean, you know, you might look at that over four years ago, that’s not a lot. But with commercial and the type of properties we’ve done, I look back and think that was quite a bit that we were able to get accomplished at that time.

Ian R
No, I mean, 500 in the four or so years that you’ve been doing it, actually if you, if I’m doing the math, right, you started in 2020. So 2021, two, three, four, I mean, you’re barely four years into it. That, so that’s a lot. As we’ve talked about before commercial inspection can be a week to a month long, sometimes longer. Rob Klaus was on the show, and he said he had a six month inspection one time. That guy rocks, he really is cool. I like that guy. A couple of things, just side points to the commercial industry. I like how about three years in, I’m trying to write down your math, as you’re, as you were talking about three years in is when you’re like, you know what, let me do commercial inspections. A lot of guys are like, oh, let me get more experience under my feet. Or let me do this and that. Either do it or don’t, you know, to quote Yoda, “do or do not, there is no try”, you know, and you didn’t feel comfortable with it.

Lance Coffman
No.

Ian R
But I think that is the key to commercial inspections, is when we do what we’re not comfortable with, I can guarantee you, there’s 99 out of 100 other people that are also not comfortable with it, and that’s where the money and fulfillment is in your career, you know, doing things you’re not comfortable with and getting comfortable with what everybody else isn’t. Would you agree with that?

Lance Coffman
I would too. Yeah. I mean, I would say most of the things in business that I did, I was uncomfortable with, I have a business partner, my wife who is very energetic when it comes to new things, and she’s always willing to try and fail and try and fail again. And I think that crossover from residential to commercial is not as big a leap as most think, it’s just learning the new type of process. I think the biggest part of commercial for me, was not the inspection aspect of it, or the assessment aspect of it. It was understanding commercial real estate, understanding commercial ownership. All of that is different, because with home inspection, it’s you know, most everyone owns a home or has owned a home. So it’s not foreign to us to what that looks like. And it’s, you know, they call you, you do an inspection, write a report, rinse, repeat, do it over and over and over again. And commercial, it’s just not like that. So I think that was, it kind of feels like the new frontier a little bit getting into it. But once you understand it, it’s not that difficult.

Ian R
Yeah. And that’s really, really the key, get uncomfortable.

Lance Coffman
Yeah.

Ian R
Understand what you’re doing. And then from there it’s just fun. I will say, though, that I like how you brought out how some home inspectors in your area, have it on their website. And we’ve said this in both the last two commercial podcast, if you just have it, if you throw it out there to see if the spaghetti sticks to the wall, it’s going to flop on the floor.

Lance Coffman
Sure.

Ian R
You have a separate brand, you have the Focus Building Inspection versus your Forever Home Inspections, have a separate brand, build something that looks like what a commercial buyer would look for. And the work does come rather quickly.

Lance Coffman
Right.

Ian R
I think I told this maybe on another podcast, I can’t remember, I still have a cold. So forgive me, Lance. But I built a website for a guy a few years back up in New Hampshire. And we did some light SEO on it for him and things like that. And a week later, he said, Ian, what the heck, I’m like what, and he goes, I already got a $10,000 job out of this.

Lance Coffman
Right.

Ian R
And I’m like, that’s the commercial market, man, if you have anything out there. There’s commercial buyers looking for commercial inspections right now.

Lance Coffman
Right.

Ian R
And they just can’t find them.

Lance Coffman
Yep. I agree with you. Well, I think those big prices scare people too. Because you think a bigger price, you know, more liability, more to do. Am I capable of it? You know, the average home inspection’s probably like 550, around, you know, nationally with add-ons or not. And then, yeah, my average commercial is probably 25 to $5,000. And so it’s vastly different. And I think that’s the scary part of it. But I agree with you. Yeah.

Ian R
Yeah. And just to quickly touch on that point, too. We have to get used to charging higher prices.

Lance Coffman
Yes.

Ian R
Even in our inspection business. If we’re, if we’re the guy that’s out there for 299 any house within three hour radius, we’re probably, to be perfectly frank, not a good candidate for commercial inspections.

Lance Coffman
Right.

Ian R
We need to be able to walk into a room and not worry about what people are gonna think about my price. You need to say, yeah, this is a $15,000 project. Here’s my proposal. Oh, you want to add on three things? No, there’s no discount, here’s the extra prices.

Lance Coffman
Right. Right.

Ian R
We have to be able to command that.

Lance Coffman
Yes, absolutely. And I think that’s the disservice that a part time home inspector dabbling in commercial is doing to the industry as it starts to grow is creating false prices and false offerings, because they think that it’s commercial, and if they really knew what it was like, they would be giving themselves more credit and charging more and really learning their craft. So, you know, but that’s always gonna be a thing. You know, that’s not a shot at home inspectors. They don’t know what they don’t know. I didn’t, and so I had to learn more. But, yeah, I mean, we put out you know, three or four proposals a week and we might get half of them because people come back say I found something cheaper, and then I scratch my head and I’m like, there’s no way that you got something cheaper that was going to be anywhere close to how we talked about what you needed. So…

Ian R
Yeah, there’s an old expression if you want to, if you want to attract bees, have honey. If you want to attract flies, you’re just gonna, you know, we’ll leave the rest to the imagination. Yeah. So you’re going to attract the type of buyers that you have by the service that you offer and not necessarily your price. We have to be able to deal with rejection on that. But we digress a little bit, I just keep trying to drill that stuff into our listeners, because it’s very important for us to understand that. And that’s why we’re here is, you know, I didn’t understand this stuff. When I first started out. Heck, I didn’t understand this stuff five, six, seven years into my business, because there weren’t as many resources. There wasn’t a Lance Coffman on a podcast telling me, hey, here’s some things that you can do. There isn’t a Rob Klaus saying, oh, yeah, this is XYZ, what you need to do. So this is an advantage for our listeners. So let me ask you, this has always been my weak point. And I’m going to admit this to everyone, whenever I had a commercial inspection, I would totally not have a replicable way to bid a job, I would never have a constant proposal. Sometimes it’d be verbal, sometimes it’d be an email, sometimes it’d be on a piece of paper, whatever. And that was bad, because that’s how I did my inspection business. So maybe we could dig right into it, say we, we did everything right, we have our own brand, or on website or marketing, whatever, for our commercial inspection, we get a commercial job come in, what are the basics of bidding that job?

Lance Coffman
You live and die by communication, and in commercial, and so I mean, you do on residential, too, but it’s it’s amplified in commercial. So if you are not communicating effectively, you could have everything you possibly need to be found. But if you don’t communicate well, you’re going to lose clients and their interest, and so on. But also, you know, you mentioned having all these different points of entry into your company for a proposal. And one thing that I’ve learned viciously from my business partner is that she created one point of entry, and that was it. Because what happened on the residential side is, it’s easy to have poor boundaries, and you get Facebook messages for scheduling, and you get a phone call or a text message, or they might call your business line, and you’re trying to field all these different ways. And we learn quickly, that’s how you crash your ship. And so we created one online form that’s on our website, right now, if you go to my website, focusbuildinginspections.com, I got it pulled up here, there’s a Request a Proposal button on almost every page. And that’s where the funnel starts. Because I gather the information from the client. And if they say, hey, I’m just trying to get prices, and I point them to that, and they don’t fill it out. That’s not the client I want. Because I’ve had that, I actually had that this morning, I emailed someone yesterday, and she just cold turkeyed me because they just wanted me to give them a, you know, an arbitrary price. And that’s not how I want to do business that way. So the basics of it is getting the information upfront, and then being able to have a conversation further. So as soon as I gather my proposal information from online, myself, or my admin will look at that, and then I will personally call the client myself. And I will go over that, because what I have found is, they often don’t know what they want or need. So just because they click something doesn’t mean that’s actually what they want. And so they need a conversation to take place. And then once I’ve prequalify them to make sure we are giving them the right, you know, procedures and services and stuff that I can, then I would put a proposal together, confidently knowing that this is what we discussed, knowing that that proposal is probably going to come back 99%, you know, approved. And then from there, it’s on to scheduling and you know, gathering data. So I think that’s the basic is communication, if you’re not communicating effectively, if you’re not gathering data the same time every single time, then you’re leaving yourself up to failure or having weak points in your armor.

Ian R
So I really liked that, I was going to ask you what effective communication looks like in your business model. And you just explained it. One point, one point of entry. I really do like that. We’re used to shooting from the hip as home inspectors, like, oh, I got five phone calls for inspections today. Yeah, that’s $500, 550, 450, 600. Because we know our prices.

Lance Coffman
Right.

Ian R
Every, every commercial building’s a snowflake, they’re all different. So there’s no one size fits all. So you have to get accurate information. So yeah, I wrote down step one, gather info through one point.

Lance Coffman
Yep.

Ian R
And then number two, follow with phone call. And I do follow up with a phone call just to kind of, you know, make sure everything’s accurate. But I do like that it. It does take a lot of time it seems to create a bid and our proposal, more so than a home inspection. So you might spend, it sounds like between the form, reading that over, looking it over, checking out the building, and then calling them back, right there, it could be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half or longer, but that’s a commercial job. And you could very well lose it, so I like qualifying your clients by having them fill out that form, if they’re not willing to do that. They’re just gonna go hire that guy for 299 to inspect the building and run through it.

Lance Coffman
Yeah, well and even that time it took me to gather that data, call them and process it. I add that back into my proposal time. So you know, if that was two hours of work, then I’m going to put two hours on the proposal, somewhere in there to get back the time I did. You know, it’s kind of like if a mechanic were to come out, and they say, we’ll look at your, you know, we’ll look at it for free. And then if we find something, you know, we’ll wrap that $100 service fee into your overall fee. That’s kind of how I kind of approach it with that. So, Ian, you’re right. Sometimes you do all that work, and you get nothing. That’s just, that’s sales and business. But I try to wrap it on the back end.

Ian R
Yeah. I mean, that’s how contractors, at least in my area used to do it years ago.

Lance Coffman
Yeah.

Ian R
Come on, give me an estimate, and you pay for the estimate only if they get the job. They’ve kind of gone to the reverse of that. And that’s actually a question that I’ve been asked before, they come out and they charge for a bid. And I’ve had engineers that I’ve worked with on commercial jobs, and they charge me for a bid and they deduct it from the from the actual inspection if they get it. Have you ever thought about doing that model? Or has that not been effective?

Lance Coffman
Yeah, I mean that, possibly. But I think it’s one of those things too where we’re how I’m charging and the communication upfront, is not something that is given to the client in the conversation, rather, they don’t know how I’m putting that proposal together. And they may know my hourly rate that I give them, but then everything after that is let me do the research and figure out what it’s going to take to put this together. So I mean, yeah, I could see that as a good selling point to say, I’m going to charge you for this initial and then, you know, if it comes to fruition where we schedule, then of course, you know, I’ll reduce that off of it or whatever as enticement, but I don’t really ever bring that up in conversation. I guess it could work. Yeah, absolutely.

Ian R
Yeah, I don’t know, because I’ve never done it myself, either. It seems logical at first thought, but I’m not sure. But I like your method of doing it. And, you know, I kind of do that with a home inspection anyways, you know, I factor in at least, you know, 15 to 30 minutes of communication before and after an inspection. So I’ve had to factor in a whole other hour when I, into our general standard inspection prices, because it’s like, it’s not a two hour inspection. It’s three hours, it’s not three hour inspections, it’s four hours, you know, and for the people that don’t ask any questions, that makes up for the ones that asked me three hours of questions afterwards.

Lance Coffman
Absolutely. Well, and if there’s one tagline, if there’s one, you know, snippet of a meme, if you will, from this whole conversation, I taught the same thing in my class a couple of weeks ago, my cost secure class, is that when you come into commercial, you’re not an inspector, you’re a business consultant. Right? Because if somebody ever comes and reaches out to me, I act as if I am a knowledgeable business consultant who understands buildings, and they need my help determining what is going to affect my bottom line in finance. That’s the only, I mean, they bought a building in commercial because they need it to make money. They didn’t just buy it because, some people do. Some people might buy a building because they like it. But the ultimate goal was to use it to make money in some form. So whether to sell it or flip it or use it for their business. And so I, you have to come at it from that approach. And if you just come at it as you know, menial inspector, then you’re always going to allow yourself to be treated as such. And you’re always going to price yourself as such, and you’re always going to have communication as such. And so yeah, I propose and I give things to people, and they look at me like I’m crazy. I’m like, this is what you called me for. And so if that’s really not what you want, then we may not be the best fit for each other. So…

Ian R
Well, I would like to point out you’re very successful at what you do. So a lot of times we worry too much about losing work. Say oh, well, I lost a bid. I lost this job or some other inspector got that, good. Let them have it.

Lance Coffman
Right.

Ian R
Success comes from being choosy.

Lance Coffman
Right.

Ian R
You know, you know, you don’t just grab everything that’s out there, you grab what’s worth it. And there’s enough out there that it’s kept you busy, you know. And you’re in Tulsa, you said, right?

Lance Coffman
Yeah, that’s right.

Ian R
Yeah. So that does, that does help being in that geographic area. So that that’s good. And you go, how many states do you service altogether?

Lance Coffman
Four states right now. So I’ll travel to Arkansas, Missouri. Let’s say Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and then Oklahoma. I rarely go down to Texas, just because it’s such an oversaturated area. I have, I have clients that will send me to Texas, but that’s far and few between. But yeah, anything that borders because I mean, Oklahoma is a small state. So it’s easy to get to one side to the other within, you know, four and a half, five hours, and then the same to all the major metro areas around like, I’m going out to Kansas City next week to do two hotels, and they found me through SEO. So yeah, and they pay well, so yeah, I’m gonna go up there.

Ian R
Yeah, definitely. Awesome. Yeah. So getting back to the subject at hand. So gathering the information. I guess my next question is combined with two questions, like if somebody wanted to find out what information you look for, they can go to your website, you know, Focus Building Inspections.

Lance Coffman
That’s right.

Ian R
And look at, look at your intake form. You’re very generous with letting people see that obviously.

Lance Coffman
Yeah, if you go to my website and at the very top left, I’m on it right now, you can just click on Request a Proposal. And that’ll tell you exactly what we do as a company, our company is extremely transparent. I dislike very much companies where there’s a lot of ambiguity on their website and the prices and what they offer, I just want to tell people straight up, this is who we are, this is what we do. This is the process. And this is the cost. And then I allow people to make a choice, because then at that point, if they did their due diligence, they’re coming to me with the understanding of what type of business we are. I know a lot of people like to work in ambiguity, because they want to control the, you know, the process on the back end. And I’ve never found success in that. So yeah, you can go to my website, and you can see what the proposal process looks like. I even give you a sample proposal on our website so people can see what that looks like, what type of buildings and everything that can be incorporated with that. There’s a lot of good stuff there.

Ian R
That’s awesome. Again, man, I wish this stuff was around when I started my career. But if I could just request the audience, everybody’s really cool about it. Look at the form, please don’t fill it out and inundate Lance and his wife with a bunch of, hey, here’s a fake property. I just wanna see how this works.

Lance Coffman
Right. You can you can go through the questions. You know, and I’m even, it’s one of those things where, as Brit likes to say, everything’s for sale. So if you see something on our website, she’s happy to create it for you for a price. But we’ve given enough information on there to help people better understand what we do as a company or as an inspector.

Ian R
Nice. So what are some things, I guess that ties in with my question. What are some things that are on the form/included in a proposal that are key points? Like, obviously, you want to know, you know, stuff, like, you know, where’s it located? And things like that, but like, what are the key points? is it square footage? And what types of inspections that they want? Or what are the focal points that guys should be asking about?

Lance Coffman
Yeah, absolutely. I don’t want to detract from our conversation, I’m going to pull up actually, what this would look like. So in the questionnaire, you’re correct. So I want to know their name, I want to know their location, I want to know their contact information. If they have a business website, I ask for it, because it helps me determine who they are too, right. If I go look at their business, and they’re, you know, a big, big conglomerate, or they’re a small business that helps me better understand who they are before my call, I want to know the address of the building, I want to know the square footage of the building, at least, what is being inspected. So if you go to my website, you know, you can see what our list of assessment options are, and what our list of inspection options are. Because there is a difference between an assessment and an inspection. Most people don’t understand that, but there is. So they can go through and choose what they want on the proposal request. And then that allows me to, again, have that conversation you chose this is this really what you need, let’s talk about that more. And then, you know, the days they want the inspection, because I give them some options, similar to most anybody. So it’s really just kind of basic introductory, I want to capture who the client is, at first, I want to capture the building. And they have an option to attach additional documents to that as well. So if they maybe have an offering memorandum or something that’s already been provided to them, then I can at least evaluate that too, obviously it was looking at and those things, but you know, anything that can give me about the building. And then the proposal itself is different. So let’s say I get the intake form, I read it, I understand what I’m doing. And I do a little you know, process on the building and look it up online, I call the client, I go through it step by step, I understand what they need, I feel confident in that. So do they. So they leave the phone conversation feeling confident that the proposal they will receive will be based on our conversation. And then the proposal will be very different. So I’ve created so many different types of proposals over the years. But what I have found and you know, from, from a business partner marketing team, they’ve put together something that I think is tantamount. And so even if you go to CCPIA’s website, they give you an idea of how to put a proposal together. So the elements that you should have, because the problem with something like an ASTM standard is there is no real understanding of how that works. It’s so convoluted, and it’s you know, it’s engineer talk. So it’s one of those things where it’s not really giving you the best option on how to create things. CCPIA has taken that to the next step. So my table of contents on my proposal is I give a company summary. So they understand who I am as a company. I introduce who is on the team. So it’ll be Brit and myself and then Amy, our admin. And when I say on the team, I give them who they would normally might talk to. Right? I don’t want to, if I’ve got 20 people on the back end, I’m not going to list them on my proposal. But you know, at any given time, they may talk to my admin team or Brit and I in the conversation of development. I always give people a mission, who I am as a company because I’m a human, and I think humans like working with humans. It’s really hard when you get online and it looks very robotic and stale. And it’s really hard to see yourself working with some of those individuals, because they just want to say I’m so good at this, look at how good I am. Look at my accolades. That’s such great, but I also want to be a human. And so I try to make that as human as possible. So I give them my mission and vision. And then I give them a project timeline. And I think that’s important because a lot of people are not providing something that says, this is what you’re going to get from start to finish. Because there is so much like, listen, I just need to buy a building, I don’t really know how this process works, I got your information online, or someone referred you, what am I expecting here, I want them to know exactly what to expect. And so the project timeline look like they, you know, we accept the proposal, they have to sign contracts and agreements. And then I do an interview after the proposal. So I want to know about the building from the seller, and that and so I mean, I walk them through the project timeline, how many steps there are. And then after that, I will put a description of the property on its own page based on the conversation with them, their proposal requests and what I have found online, because then that’s also too, they can look at that and go okay, he’s right, this is the building I want inspected. This is because that that description is not just the address of the size, it might be a 200,000 square foot warehouse, but they may only want me to inspect 30,000 square foot of office space, right? And so that has to be, it has to be separated. And then we get into the proposal. So I request the services. And then I always want to give additional considerations in my proposal, because they may not want you know, something like a sewer scan, or they may not want you know, air quality, or they may not even be thinking about an ESA 1. But knowing the building and the research I do, I may add some additional stuff on there for them to take a look at. And you know, why not upsell when you can. And so I leave it to that. And then I just explain it, we break it down. And then at the end of it, we always put our standards that we inspect by. So you’ll see that I am going off of the CCPIA ComSOP and some of the ESDA or ASTM, you know, 2018, ’15 some of that stuff I take. And that’s really how our proposal goes. And like I said, you can find that, a sample on the, on our website, and look at that. But that’s, it seems like a lot, I used to have a very simple kind of, you know, one page proposal. But I realized that, again, I took myself out of just being let’s do this quick and dirty and put myself into a business consultant. Because what I have found on the resi side is that everything is a fire. Right?

Ian R
Exactly.

Lance Coffman
Everything is a fire, and it has to be put out now. And on commercial, it is not like that. And everything takes time. It’s business. And so I want to conduct myself the same way. I don’t want to have this sense of urgency. If they send me a proposal request, they get an immediate email back that says they may not get something back in 48 hours, right? I want to give myself time to do that. I’m busy in the field as well. And they should know hey, if he’s busy, it’s gonna take a few days, that’s good. If I’m getting a busy inspector, then that means that you know, they’re doing something worth being busy for. So. And even if I’m not I give them that facade.

Ian R
So I really liked that information, because a lot of us come from a contracting background, I say enough of us in the inspection industry that we can appreciate that because I chuckled inside as you’re going over all that information. Because my favorite version of the question, how do you bid a commercial inspection job is? Do you guys just go by square footage? Or do you have a standard price? And that’s like, that’s like saying, okay, how do you bid building a house? I don’t know. Do they want standard colonial trim two and a half inch? Or do they want you know, custom milled trim? And do they want tile floor everywhere? Do they want hardwood? What are we doing? Is it? Is it you know, 3000 square foot house or 1200 square foot house? There’s so many factors in it. So I wrote down as my third point, or my fourth point, not a simple square footage. We have to take the project as a whole and we have to look at it. And it sounds like to me, you look at square footage. Yes. Okay. But then what do they need? Is it going to take me three days to inspect this 30,000 square foot roof? Is it gonna take me two days to do this and three days to do that? Let me add a little bit of a buffer. And then do you have standard square foot pricing that you use and then build off of it or no?

Lance Coffman
No.

Ian R
Yeah, exactly.

Lance Coffman
And so I know, I know that, you know, some programs like CCPIA has like a square footage calculator on their website and stuff. And that can be helpful. But I’ve done enough of a more I look at the project. And this is such a term that everybody uses. I’m gonna use it here. I look at it from a 20,000 you know, aerial view, right? And so, I look at it and go okay. If I see this building, what is the building? What are the components? What is the client asking me to inspect and then I have to sit down and think, how long is gonna take me to get to the site? How long is going to take me to write the report? How long am I going to be on the site and just cuz it’s a 100,000 square foot building doesn’t mean I’m going to charge, you know what I mean? It could be, I may spend more time in a 1200 square foot daycare than I would have 100,000 square foot warehouse. You know what I mean, so I can’t base it on square foot, I never have been able to justify that. So it’s really the project length. And you’ll see it on our proposal online, I also give variance prices. So I might say, hey, I’m telling you, it’s $2,000 for the project upfront, but allow us maybe a two hour, three hour variance, because we might get on site, and it might take us a little bit longer to do that. And if we do, then, you know, do you give us permission to assess that at the end of it? And we’re, you know, gain that if we need it? I don’t always provide that in my proposal to people, but I gave it as an example on our website. But yeah, I can’t go by square footage. It’s all about the project. And that, and I think that’s where I tell people most because I get the same question. How much do you bid for commercial? You know, what’s the standard, there is no standard. There is no standard hourly rate there. So when you look around at home inspectors what ends up happening, it’s the greatest thing, right? You put your stuff online, and then immediately everybody replicates what you’re doing, or they knock off $10 or $20, or $50, to make themselves more appealing. And in commercial, most people don’t have their prices online, I may have an hourly rate online, but you don’t know how much it’s actually going to cost. So there is still some mystery to it. But everything is based on how long it takes you to do it. And then what your worth is, if you don’t know how much it costs to leave your driveway and get to the project and come back, and then the time it takes to do everything, then you haven’t really researched what you want to be charging an hour for yourself. You know, what’s your worth.

Ian R
Yeah, and I try to, I try to emphasize that too, know what you want to make. And I go by day, personally, when I bid a job, I don’t go by hour, I go by, what do I want to make in an average eight hour day. And in home inspections, you know, I want to make anywhere from, you know, 1000 to $2,000. Commercial, I’m shooting for two to 3000 typically. And it really kind of depends on the type of inspection and how far, travel time and things like that. So it gets really squirrely pretty quickly. Yeah. But let me let me let me give you a couple scenarios. Would that be okay?

Lance Coffman
Yes, please do.

Ian R
Because maybe I’ll even give you a couple fake ones and a couple of real ones that I’ve done. Sure. And to see how, how close maybe I came. Some of these may be from 15 years ago, though. So you know, I don’t know how old you are. But I’m in my 40s now. And sometimes I remember things, I’m like, remember last year when we did this, buddy of mine be like, you mean when we were like 20. I’m like, oh, yeah, yeah, that was a day ago. All right. So let me give you one that I find is very common. And I don’t know why but like a small restaurant like a pizza place. Let’s say it’s a 2000 square foot building. 1200 square foot is a pizza place on the first floor. Let’s say 400 square foot commercial kitchen. 800 square foot apartment above. And now, I think that would be 800 square foot like dining area. And they probably have about 20 parking spots on a busy road. So I just gave you some basic information. And those who can’t see Lance is pulling out his tablet and I can see the wheels grinding. And he’s already going at it. You can tell he does this.

Lance Coffman
You said 1200 square feet of a restaurant below. You said, is that a is that a resi on top of 800 square feet? Or is that an extension of the restaurant, you say?

Ian R
No, up, second floor’s an apartment.

Lance Coffman
Okay, so that’s an apartment above. Okay. I’m not too worried about the outside area there. That’s just kind of how things go. Everybody wants to look at like, oh, it has 100 square, you know, 100 parking spots, this can take forever. Not really.

Ian R
Yeah, how long does it take to look at a parking spot?

Lance Coffman
Not really, not that long. Because I can determine real quick what I need to do there in probably 15 minutes. But that’s me though. So if I’m looking at a 1200 square foot restaurant, there’s a few things that I have to figure out with my client. One, are you going to continue to use it as a restaurant?

Ian R
Yes, maybe.

Lance Coffman
So if you’re going to continue to use as a restaurant, then I already know that I’m going to be asking for details from the selling side before I go in, right. So I want to know, are all the inspections done? I’m looking into commercial kitchen. I have ADA compliance things now. I have safety things, I’ve got, you know, fire suppression things, I have so many different things to factor into that. But what this is going to look like and this is the difference of what I was telling you earlier between an assessment and an inspection because most people in commercial want to look at everything like an inspection. And it’s not. Most people are just needing some sort of assessment on the property to give them an idea. And so an assessment is more data gathering and more, you know, preparing than it is, you know, an inspection is if I went to go look at a vent hood specifically, and I tested it and I measured it and did all that, that’s an inspection. If I walk up to it, and I see that it’s clean, it’s orderly. It has its data tags. It’s inspected annually. That’s more of an assessment. So on a 1200 square foot restaurant like that, and I think of the apartment above it, you know, I’m probably, gathering the data I need, I might be only on site for four hours, if that, so we’ll say three hours on site. Now to write my, my PCR, which is my property condition report, I’m going to give myself some time. So what I’m going to upsell on them is, if you’re running a restaurant, you need to make sure that the property is going to be operational for a long time. So I’m going to recommend that that I give them any immediate costs to repair replace anything, and then probably an average of, you know, let’s say five years out on on things to take care of, so they can budget for that. So that’s going to take me another hour or two to put that together. So I may be looking all together, you know, at 10 hours for the project based on what I think I might offer them. And you know, if I’m looking at, is it local or am I driving far to it?

Ian R
Nah, let’s say 20 minutes.

Lance Coffman
Okay, so it’s there. Yeah, I might be $2,500 for that project.

Ian R
Okay. And it sounds like the commercial kitchen is really what makes it big. So what if I say, whoa, oh, my goodness, that’s too much, Lance. Let’s take the commercial kitchen out of the picture. Treat it like a home inspection, you’d probably be about 1000, 1500. Somewhere in there.

Lance Coffman
Probably. Yeah.

Ian R
So okay. Let me give you, let me give you two more quick ones, then. Because this I’m having fun with this. Let’s, I’m usually on the other end of this. I like this. Okay, so let’s say you have to travel an hour to a hotel. The hotel is 500 rooms. But we don’t necessarily need all the rooms inspected. We want a representative number. We’ll, we’ll lean on you for that number. But we do want the building structure, roof, heating, electrical, and all that basic stuff fully inspected, but the actual rooms itself, we only want a representative number.

Lance Coffman
Okay. This hotel, does it have a restaurant in it, ballroom, bar, or anything like that?

Ian R
It has a ballroom but no restaurant or bar.

Lance Coffman
Okay, so pretty much just open space.

Ian R
No pool.

Lance Coffman
Probably office, or I mean, a meeting space, that kind of stuff. Okay. How about, let’s see 500 units, that’s gonna be at least probably like a…

Ian R
And it’s single floor. So it’s sprawled out and not stacked. Yeah. This is an actual inspection I did years ago.

Lance Coffman
Are we looking at PTACs on every room? Is that what we’re looking at? Sure. Okay. So let’s say representative amount, let’s say we did 125 rooms. That’s at 25%. Because you also have to factor in with the hotel, or motel or whatever, getting into every room, because you’re looking at changeover times you’re looking at the day of the week, there’s so many factors that keep you from, and that’s why I create a variance in my proposal too is, you know, I’m not going to get there at 8, and I’m going to get into all 125 rooms, and they’ll be done at noon, I might get into batch of them at three o’clock, at one o’clock. It just depends. So I gotta I can’t just factor in that.

Ian R
Just as a side point, I found that most hotel rooms, most hotels, were pretty good when inspecting them from like 11 to three. So check out to check in. And that’s when we did most of our rooms stuff. And then we would go and do other stuff afterwards.

Lance Coffman
Yeah, that’s a good, that’s a good way of doing it. So let’s see here. This will take a second, but I’m going to put some loose numbers together for you.

Ian R
Interestingly, they asked for 75 room sample out of this particular one.

Lance Coffman
We can go from 75. That’s fine.

Ian R
This was 15 years ago, so I had to really dig for this stuff.

Lance Coffman
You said you had to dig for that?

Ian R
Yeah, I’m just like, oh, man, I don’t even remember this one. But every time I drive by it, I’m like, hey, honey, look, pulling the old inspector thing. I inspected that place.

Lance Coffman
I do that all the time. I love that. Like that meme of Leonardo DiCaprio. And once a time in Hollywood. Exactly. Pointing at it, it’s like I did that. That’s me. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian R
I have no shame in it.

Lance Coffman
Yeah, knowing what I would probably offer them because I’m looking at probably close to eight hours in the field. I’m giving myself probably a five minute variance or more taken in each room depending upon what they might need. If I’m gonna go like, check the age of the PTAC. I’m gonna take a quick look at because I’m not running the shower, I’m not running the sink, you know what I mean? I’m just popping in and out, especially multifamily. So I’ll say at most five minutes, you know, on 75 rooms, I’m already there, almost six and a half. So I’ll knock that down to six hours. Probably another three to walk around and look at everything, get on the roof. It may be one of those things where it, depending upon the roof and the size, I may end up bringing out a roofing contractor with me just to help me on the time being on property. Depends on the day I’m having or week. So I’m looking probably eight hours in the field. I’m probably looking at an additional eight hours to write reports because most of these clients are going to want a report, they’re going to also want some additional information normally, so they’re probably going to want some sort of, you know, opinion of cost table, and then there’s going to be additional reports. So you’re gonna have a normal report, which is just the assessment of everything, but then I’m going to have safety reports that’s going to go along with that, because when you have that many people in and out, if you don’t have proper safety features, then you know, that’s, that’s, that’s kind of a separate report, I would sell them on, a safety survey or an ADA survey. So I’m probably looking at, I’ll probably categorize it around 24 hours. So personally, and then if I’m shooting around, you know, two, 250 an hour, I’m probably anywhere from 55 to 6000 on that project myself.

Ian R
So not too far off, I had, I couldn’t actually find the exact number, I think I was about 3500 15 years ago. So that would probably be about the same right about now. And I was also dumb, scared, and young, I like to admit, I’d like to admit that. But I probably would have been about like 4750 by today’s numbers. So I’m not too, too far off.

Lance Coffman
And I mean, there’s so much there, I didn’t, you know, trying to figure out what the client is and all that it may be closer to that by the end of it, you know, and 75 rooms is a lot of rooms to move through. And it just depends on what you’re looking for in the rooms. And because what, I mean 75 rooms, you may go through it, and there may only be two room layouts, you’re looking at the same exact thing every single time, you may only be in a room for a minute, take pictures, take a look at everything and then get out of there. Because on commercial, I don’t build the report on site. I’m getting the data, I’m capturing, and then I go back to the office and really work through everything. So that’s just my personal way of doing it.

Ian R
Hotels were kind of kind of my thing for a while. I remember doing this one up in the Adirondacks here in New York and near a place called Blue Lake. And I always found that you had to go to the lowest common denominator of human intelligence in everything that you looked at. Like they had these railings that kind of leaned outward. And I remember like leaning outward, I’m like, if I’m just some dude, drinking too much on a weekend in the Adirondacks, I’m gonna fall through this thing.

Lance Coffman
Right.

Ian R
And my buyer was like, wow, I didn’t even think about that. I’m like, yeah, this had standards in the 70s. It was an old hotel, but I’m like, yeah, some fat guy’s not gonna, this is not gonna hold him up. So I just found hotels to be very unique that way. I know we’re running out of time. But I wanted to give you one more quick one.

Lance Coffman
I’ll do this quickly.

Ian R
So let’s say a 25 unit, apartment complex, apartments are about 700 square foot each. They all are basically, almost studio, they have one bedroom, a kitchen and a small living room area with a bathroom. They’re all occupied. And basically what would be considered full home inspection on each of them. But they’re all conjoined like little motel looking things. So there’s like four motel looking buildings. And each, at the end of each building is a big utility room with all the mechanicals.

Lance Coffman
Sure, so you’re saying that they’re wanting a like a full home inspection on each room, is that what they’re wanting?

Ian R
Yeah. So you know, check all the plumbing, heating, electrical, each one, each one has a crawlspace underneath, they all share a roof. They all share one mechanical room at the end.

Lance Coffman
Okay, is there an individual attic access in each room, is there going to be you know, if I’m looking at a standard of fire protection and separation and stuff. That’s one thing too, so.

Ian R
So this one was actually, the first one was a fake one. The second one was real one, this one was a real one, too. They didn’t have attic separation, which was actually a big nono, that ended up being a big deal killer for them.

Lance Coffman
But you can go through the whole attic space, probably on one access.

Ian R
With one access, yeah.

Lance Coffman
There’s four buildings. Um, here’s the thing on units like that, if I’m going to go into each unit and capture that data, I’m going for the most important data, because they’re going to want to know, you know, they’re going to want to know electrical, mechanical, plumbing devices really. And so I’m gonna go in, where’s my hot water tank if it’s in there? Where’s HVAC? Let’s take a look at the bathroom real quick. Am I at least getting hot water, I may run that for a second. And then, you know, move on and get it out of everybody’s way. Is everything grounded safe? I may check a few things. Is there a GFCI in the right spot, and then get out of there. So I’m not in each of those spots very long. So if I’ve got 25 units…

Ian R
They’re basically, it’s almost like doing a motel.

Lance Coffman
Yeah, absolutely. And then, if it’s over four buildings, you’re probably looking at for something like that. Probably. Knowing that just because I did something very similar to it without anything extra just going through and checking everything. Probably about 2000. Oh, okay. I can probably sell that all day. I did. I did a multifamily. Just last week. That was almost the exact same setup. It was five buildings. I think I went into 25, 30 units. I didn’t go into all of them. Very same thing. And I think I charge 2000 for it because they just wanted to kind of give me the basic information and stuff. So yeah.

Ian R
So I think I ended up being four becaus..

Lance Coffman
I could see that.

Ian R
They were more complex than they look like.

Lance Coffman
Yeah.

Ian R
So I mean, this was just a quick one.

Lance Coffman
Well you said crawl space too, didn’t you? So I mean, yeah, you gotta add extra time for crawl space and all that. So yeah, you might be, it might be closer to three, as far as hour wise and man was getting into those spaces if they want the full thing.

Ian R
Yeah, and, and the way you’re going about it was a little different than I was going about it. I was there for a day, and I had another inspector with me. And it was also, I charged extra too because it wasn’t in the greatest part of town, right. And whenever there’s occupied apartments, I have what I call an inconvenience fee. So if that apartment isn’t available, I have to go outside my scope of time, you know, like, I have to come back to this apartment or I start it and the person comes on, I had to stop and have to come back in. And I probably went a little too deep into it. And I probably didn’t make as much per hour as they should have. Yeah. So it sounds like you have more of a tight process, because you do, you do 100% admittedly, more commercial inspections than I do or have. So you have a very tight process. But that just shows that we weren’t too far off on numbers. You know, those are, those are pretty close numbers.

Lance Coffman
Yeah. And I mean, you know, there’s, there’s times when students will ask me, I say, students, their students of mine, other inspectors will say, hey, I’ve got a project, can you, can you look at it with me, make sure I’m all on the same lines, and, you know, you’re gonna know your area better than me, and you’re gonna know what people are charging more. Because it’s one thing to say, hey, I’m gonna grip five professionals to come out that are all licensed in different areas, and how much is that going to cost? You know, everyone’s over there at 150, you know, 75 to $150 an hour. And then you’re, you know, that may be the better option on some projects, more so than by yourself. But I think the one thing people struggle with most is the cost of it, but also bringing in more people than necessary.

Ian R
Yeah, exactly.

Lance Coffman
Because they’re not really paying attention to what their client needs, because their client really may just want an assessment of the building. And at that point, you know, you really can fly through the property, gathering the data, there’s more work at the office than there is in the field. But if they want every single thing inspected, then it’s much, it’s much more in depth. And I’ve had that on both of them, you know? They want real and then they don’t. Yeah.

Ian R
So I think that’s a really good point. I think you would probably have won that inspection over me the last example, the first example, I think, I think you would have gotten if they were keeping the kitchen, the second, the third one, I think you would have gotten it over me because I actually went too far. And even my clients like, this is more report than they needed. Yeah. It’s like, if I was buying a house, I would totally hire you. He’s like, but I mean, come on. This is for apartment buildings that are easily, give me the basics. Do they have hot water? Anything broken? What about fire stuff? So these are all really fantastic points. And I could talk all day. But I want to emphasize to everybody listening, what Lance has done has taken him years to build expertise, not just the years that he’s been in the industry, but whatever you’ve brought beforehand, whatever your wife has brought beforehand, to build these systems and these ways of going about things. The fact that you just openly share them. It is really an incredible thing that you do for the industry. So Lance, this is awesome. Thank you for going through my weird exercises. I’ve given you random buildings to bid. I could do that all day. That’s fun. But thank you so much for being awesome and sharing it with us.

Lance Coffman
Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much.

Ian R
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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