PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian Robertson
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt everyone. So I’m excited today. We have on for the third time on our show Christian Adams, how are you, Christian?

Christian Adams
Thank you. Thanks for having me back.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, no, we’re excited to have you here. And you’re wearing your Keystone by iGo shirt. So nice to see that.

Christian Adams
I was trying to sit under the radar actually, you picked up on that very quickly.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, no, as soon as I saw it I’m like, hey, that’s cool. Nice. It’s a nice shirt anyway. So yeah, I’m all about a good t shirt. So. But I’m also excited today to have you on because there was a little bit of a program that you let us in on and told us about. And I just found out before we started this episode here, that this is the first time you guys are actually talking about it in public. So this is kind of like a big announcement thing here for you.

Christian Adams
Yeah, I really like this is a forum and an outlet. And you and I get to talk properly and be honest, right? And I wanted people to hear about this program to and to understand it properly. Rather than having like a marketing piece they might read or a flyer or something. I also know that you’re going to be brutally honest, right and open about it, and ask me the questions that maybe the inspectors love to ask as well. So that’s why we chose this forum.

Ian Robertson
And again, I feel privileged. And I even warned you before the show, I said, I’m going to ask you some questions that home inspectors are going to want to know about this program, because we always hear about, okay, here’s a new program. And this is going to change the industry and this is going to make you a million dollars. So this actually is is a new program, hasn’t been done before, to my knowledge. And I’d like to test it out and kick the tires and maybe ask some questions that other home inspectors have. Yeah. So let’s dig right into it. So it’s basically what you’re talking about is a Curbio partnership. So can you tell us what this means? Nuts and bolts for the average home inspector?

Christian Adams
Yes. So I think what I’ll do is I’ll start with like, who is Curbio? Right, they haven’t really worked in the inspection space before, they’ve been very agent focused. So Curbio came to market about six, seven years ago, as a simple way, for a seller, okay, and a listing agent, when they bought a house that needs some work, right? But maybe they don’t have the cash on hand to complete that work. To get that work done, right? Repairs, renovations and things for the home. But without having any cost out of pocket. So the traditional Curbio model is you inherit Aunt Susie’s house, it’s got beautiful brown carpet from 1967, right, the roof needs redoing, and maybe the AC needs kind of replacing, they will come in, they will do a very professional job as like a GC manage the project manage something gets done to a very high standard, complete the work but nobody pays until closing. So for an agent, if you’ve got like a listing or potential listing that’s got like fleas on it, you know, and they know that it’s gonna be problems during the inspection, potentially, you’ll probably be selling the home because once somebody sees it, it’s just, you know, in a bad state of repair, they can fix that problem for their seller. And obviously, for an agent, they’re like, Oh, hold on, I can sell this house as it is now for 400,000. But if we get it renovated, I can sell it for 500,000, that’s an extra three grand in the agent’s pocket, and they can sell the home faster, and hopefully not have that contract fall apart. Right? That was Curbio’s initial model account with, it’s very popular, like I said, they get a very high quality of what they warranty the work for the buyers, they know that the work that’s been done can be transferred to the new buyer. But what they’re not doing is any kind of standardized pre listing inspection. So there is an inspector involved with Curbio typically where they need someone to go out and find out what’s going on with that home. What are the issues here, and Curbio, goes select Repair Pricer as the the platform and the service and essentially would take those inspection reports create standardized data and estimates for them. So the Curbio team can go back and say, Alright, this is what we’re bidding. To get this work done, here’s what we think it’s going to cost. And also, most importantly, here’s the ROI we think you’re going to get out of this work. Because obviously there’s no point the seller fixing stuff that there’s not really going to put more money in their pocket at the end of the day. So we’ve been working with Curbio on that for a couple of years now basically been their estimation arm. And what we see is you see this across the industry as a whole huge variation in the quality of the inspection reports that come through. What we wanted to build was basically a standardized version for Curbio. So they know that every time an inspector goes out, they get the exact information they need on that home, come in and basically bid and do the work. But when we took it over really a step further. And this is what I’m super excited about is with this Curbio saying, You know what, inspection’s network are fantastic, we get a really good product from you, we want to go one level up, they are covering the cost of the inspection for the seller and the seller’s agent at this point. So that now our partner inspection companies can actually go out and say to their top listing agent, hey, when you come and get a Curbio pre market evaluation through me, it’s free. And just to clarify, Curbio still pays the inspector, they pay them that fee, they pay them upfront as well. It’s not like they’re waiting to get paid at closing, Curbio fronts all that money. So it’s, it’s basically this new tool that an inspector can have in the tool belt, if you’ll excuse the pun, to basically bring out and go win more business from agents and sellers. That’s dramatically different. Because we have found the two objections to pre listing inspections historically, have been, I don’t want to pay for the inspection upfront. But why should I be paying for that? And secondly, everything that’s found during that inspection, people often can’t afford to fix it, and pay out of pocket. And we think with this product and this service, we are basically removing those two objections to help inspectors grow this side of their business.

Ian Robertson
Okay, so a little bit of information to unbox there. So let me let me kind of distill this down in my own mind. So Curbio is going to pay a home inspector to go out, do a pre listing inspection, submit the information and then that’s it? The seller kind of goes and does their repairs and deals with Curbio on their own. But ultimately, we’re just getting paid to do pre listing inspections for Curbio, is that correct?

Christian Adams
Correct, I want to be clear, it’s not an inspection though. So it’s not in all the states, we’ve done a compliance in, it’s not treated as an inspection. It’s not part of a real estate transaction. It is a pre market evaluation, it shouldn’t be considered a full inspection. It is not designed to replace a buy side inspection. I think that’s pivotal here, we are not trying to remove one side of the business and say everybody should get the home’s done up front. This is for specific homes, where we feel that there are repairs and renovations needed. And if those are completed, right, the homes can sell faster for more money, right and have less deals that fall apart during that inspection and transaction process. So it’s not for every home, I want to be clear on that. And it’s not designed to replace buy site inspections. It’s meant to find the major issues that could you know, essentially block a deal. But also identify renovation opportunities in that home for like kitchen, hardwood floor and bathrooms, things like that.

Ian Robertson
Okay, so I’m glad you addressed that. Because what I worry about in my mind is, you know, sometimes people get a pre listing inspection, buyer walks in, well, they already had an inspection, and then they they move on, but this is, does it cover everything a home inspection does or is it more like, you know, agents in my market, they’ll bring a contractor in and they’ll do a pre market evaluation, like you called it there, they’ll come in, they’ll say, yeah, the roof may need to get replaced, they don’t go as in depth as a home inspector, but to like, you know, renovate this kitchen for 20 grand, and you’ll probably get 35 out of it, you know, dry out the basement for 15 grand, and you know, you’ll sell for 20, that kind of thing.

Christian Adams
That’s exactly right. So it’s major issues and renovations that we identify. So part of the process is we actually scan the home with a Matterport scanner, not the standard one that takes like an hour, this is a new one, you can put on a gimbal we actually create a rendering of the home. So we get a really good idea of what’s going on in that home, we know the square footage of the kitchen and things like this. So we can give that so exactly that information, like dry out the basement, put a new kitchen in, you’re gonna make more money, but don’t worry, Mr. Mrs. Seller, because we’re going to cover the costs of that until closing, and when I say until closing, it’s up until 12 months after the work is done, that they have to sell that home before they have to pay anything. Basically, there is no interest or fees whatsoever, and they never pay for the inspection. So like I said, it is for specific homes and specific listings. If a home is pretty new, you probably don’t need this on it, right. But we would also encourage the buyers to still get an inspection, because it’s not a full inspection. Right? There’s still maybe other things that we can find out later.

Ian Robertson
Okay. So if you don’t mind, I’d love to get into some of maybe the deeper questions because I just picture our listeners right now, maybe turning up their radio a little bit or, you know, looking at looking at YouTube and saying, Oh, well, let me pay more attention. But I want to ask a few more questions here. So I want to get back to that Matterport thing that you had mentioned here, but how much does it pay? And how is it and to be honest, we’ve kind of talked about Inspectify on this show a lot and how we don’t like price fixing and, you know, this is how much this inspection costs and this is how much we’ll pay and you know they pay very low fees in my opinion, how is it different than Inspectify? What do you guys pay per inspection? And is it? Is it inspector generated? Or do they get put into a pool? And all the agents in that area, when they just ask for the service, do they get just assigned the assignment? And they go and do it? So I know I loaded you up with like four questions there.

Christian Adams
That’s good. Yeah. So it’s not it is a standardized inspection. So there is standardized pricing. It is about a one to two hour inspection in our testing, though, so it’s not considered a full inspection. The other bit that’s really interesting there is in licensed states, like even Texas we went to the Texas Real Estate Commission, and said, Hey, do you have to be licensed to do this inspection? They’re saying technically no. But we are using licensed inspectors and licensed trainees and people because we think it’s important. That’s why this business essentially could have gone outside the industry, to anybody, we are bringing it back in to say that this is a tool for inspectors and you guys are the ones that should be looking at it. With that in mind, though, for one to two hour inspection, we’re paying a flat fee at the moment of 225 per home. Okay, paid upfront to the inspector. It’s a lot more than like rental turn inspections and things that you see the fees get down really low. On the is it a pool of inspectors are afrom, yes and no. So when you go through onboarding with the program, you get a set of dedicated marketing tools, in that set of marketing tools is what’s called a deep link. Okay, that is tied specifically to that inspection company, we load that into a trackable QR code. The minute that an agent scans that code, they are locked into that inspection company. If they go into the app and order inspection from now on, it goes back to that inspection company over and over again. So it’s not like we are relying on the inspectors to go out and build a business for us, and then we take it away. Right, it is locked to that inspection company. And that’s really important to us. However, there is a captive set of agents that already use Curbio that don’t have a dedicated inspector. For that, yes, we tie them through the iGo booking process for people who are in this program. So you’ve opted into this program. And we basically schedule directly. That’s something that round robin availability basis, that way that iGo network works for everybody else. So yeah, there’s kind of two sides to it. But ultimately, a lot of the business because this is a new program that is exclusive to us, will be generated by the inspector going out there to their top agents and saying, Hey, put this tool in your back pocket, right? You’re gonna need it someday.

Ian Robertson
Okay. And that makes a lot of sense. So 225 for one to two hours. So when you say one to two hours, does that include report writing time? Or is that just on site?

Christian Adams
It’s, it’s a very simple template, I think this will be done on site. It’s not your traditional, it’s preset comments and things like that. It’s a five to seven page report, once people can kind of see the reports, I think they’ll really understand exactly what it is, is, again, this is not necessarily the same as a full pre listing inspection, that might take four or five hours, right? It’s not exhaustive, it really is to focus on getting this home ready for market.

Ian Robertson
Okay, so let’s get down to the nitty gritty of that, then what’s the difference between a full home inspection and this? Can you give us some examples? Like, are you getting into the attic?

Christian Adams
Yeah, so we can be focusing on major systems. Okay, so your HVAC, plumbing, electrical, things like that, not necessarily investigating every crawlspace, but active leaks, moisture and that kind of thing. So and it’s going to vary by state and area to what is included in inspection, what isn’t? Like I said the best way, honestly, I would be happy to share like a copy of the template so people can see exactly what they include in it. And then also, the thing is outside the scope normally is focusing on renovation opportunities, but you’re literally going to grade a kitchen. Right? Do you think it needs upgrading? Luckily, because inspectors are experts in the marketplace, they have that knowledge uniquely, they see hundreds of homes. Right. So compared to what else is out there in the market? In your professional opinion, could this deal with a refresh? It’s questions as simple as that as well. But yeah, I think the easiest thing and honestly, is to share a template so people can see what questions we really ask.

Ian Robertson
Okay, so it almost sounds like a field inspection, had a baby with a home inspection, and a contractor evaluation and merged all into one, which makes sense to me, oftentimes, as an inspector myself, we’ll get asked by insurance companies or even contractors, you know, hey, could you provide extra pictures of the kitchen? Or can you provide extra pictures of the exterior? And you know, sometimes as a courtesy, we would do it? Yeah. I remember one time a contractor gave estimates off of our reports for a whole rehab. So it does kind of make sense in that regard. So all right, the Matterport thing, does that, is that something that the inspector has to invest in a camera?

Christian Adams
Yeah. So there is a gimbal. There’s a cost. There’s an onboarding fee that covers that gimbal cost the marketing materials, we print out flyers for you with that QR code logged in, but once that setup fee has been paid essentially, no, there’s no other fees or anything but yeah, the gimbal is a lot cheaper, Matterport cameras used to be like $1,000 or something, you can run it from your phone instead. So Okay, we utilize the phones that people are using, as long as you have a lidar enabled phone, which most of the newer ones are, then you can run this program. And if not, personally, if I ran a company, I would probably invest in it anyway. And so it’s definitely worth it. Because this is an exclusive product that you can kind of roll out there that nobody else is gonna be seeing at this point.

Ian Robertson
Okay, because it did worry me because the Matterport thing has always looked good to the home inspection industry. But in reality, it’s kind of unwieldy to do a whole house is like a whole morning, just a Matterport. But if that’s just it’s almost sounds like a Google 360 except better.

Christian Adams
It’s a lidar scan. And what’s really interesting here is the application of crossovers between inspectors and appraisers, I don’t want to get too much into it, but I’m not a huge fan of appraisers. Right? I just, I think they’re useless. And I did a study with the Washington Post a few years ago, like how many deals fell apart because of appraiser who’s just like, abusing the Dodd Frank Act basically, to to stop other and other appraisers coming into the market in the area control and pricing, they delay deals. So what’s happening with a lot of these big wholesale mortgage companies is they’re now accepting certain floor plans and things, the desk appraisals, which means you don’t need to send out an appraiser for the home. They’ve already got the information in the inspection report, they’ve got the information from the Matterport scan, right? What else do they need. So we’ll be working with lenders as well to say, hey, this has happened to this home, this could essentially be potentially a desk appraisal certified home, which really helps the agent, right? It really kind of moves the process along, and also reduces the cost for the buyers appraisals, like a year or so ago. So I got some, like $900 for an appraisal of a 1600 square foot three, two. And that’s like, that’s absolutely insane. So I think there’s some crossover purpose here where what we’re using is much faster, cheaper, you know, Matterport approach with the gimbals on the phone, you can start getting inspectors value to be even higher for the listing agent, essentially.

Ian Robertson
Well, interestingly enough, there’s an app that a lot of insurance companies use. And the only reason I know this is my basement recently flooded. And so they use an app. And that’s what they use, they measure the square footage, and it’s pretty accurate. Their version of that app is terrible. Matterport has always been very accurate. I’ve liked Matterport. You know, I’ve seen them get within 10 square foot on a 3000 square foot house. It’s it’s pretty impressive. So all right. So that answers the Matterport thing. And what about liability. So I walk into any home, and I have liability, but it sounds like Curbio is hiring me to inspect that house. What happens if, you know, let’s talk about two different types of liability, general liability and E&O, type liability. So I step on the couch to go move a curtain or something like that something stupid and break their $10,000 couch, or on the other side of things. While I was in there, I didn’t notice that the basement was full of mold, because I was just moving. So what kind of liability do I have in those situations?

Christian Adams
Yeah, in this specific situations, and honestly, I forgot to check with our legal team on that, what I understand there is still an agreement signed by the seller. So whatever normal agreement that you have, with the seller, that limits your liability would be in place, but I’m gonna have to probably check on that fully, is to say, whether it’s saying that Curbio is hiring you, is Curbio hiring you for the seller, and the seller has, you know, essentially the same agreement in place that you would normally have. But I would say as far as I know, it’s the same, you would have been doing it buy site inspection, okay. Maintain the same insurance right and have the same agreements in place.

Ian Robertson
Okay. Yeah, I’d be interested to know that because that’s always the worry of a home inspector is a measure of liability. Interestingly enough, there’s an opinion out there that seller inspections have almost zero liability, because you have to prove damages. missing something on an inspection doesn’t have the same weight as it does on the buyer side as when you’re doing on seller side. So this again, this is told to me by attorneys and stuff like that. I don’t know how I’m not an attorney. So it doesn’t seem like high liability anyways, but I wouldn’t be interested to know that and who we’re working for. Because another thing is, it’s important that we distinguish it, that it’s not part of a home inspection. Because like, for instance, in New York, I cannot be paid by any other party except the person hiring me, which always makes it kind of awkward because agents are like, Oh, hey, as a gift to my client, I’m going to pay for the inspection. I’m like okay, well, you can reimburse them, but the check has to come from them. Right. And, you know, it makes a little awkward, but that’s New York State law just as an example. Right. So but if it’s not a home inspection, and I think that’s kind of what you’re getting at, it’s not a home inspection.

Christian Adams
It is not a home inspection. We’re not using the language home inspection with state boards and things like what’s the key here is it’s not part of a real estate transaction, home’s not even listed yet. Yeah, it’s kinda like can we get this home ready for market? Right? We didn’t even know if that home can be listed. And just to clarify, the seller does not have to get any work done. If they decide not to do it, there’s still no cost to them. Right? This is this is literally to find out, if you were gonna sell this home, what do we need to be done, and here’s the cost for it and doing that Matterport that says, get that really accurate estimate, like your insurance company, right? It’s like, we know how much square footage there is here and what the condition of it is. And so here’s here’s your, your, your estimate back and the way that is presented it’s not like an inspection report as well. It’s through the platform with a list of things that we found the projected cost, and the projected ROI as well to fix them. So it’s it’s a, it’s a tool that we’re giving to inspectors, but it’s not an inspection report. So you’ve got this existing company, this skill set, right, this software, this team, that you probably have some ability to scale a little bit. This is a product you can do with your existing systems.

Ian Robertson
And just something in your favor. You know, one of the things I like about pre listing inspections, is buyer Inspections Are you can’t miss this important, this important appointment because they have two weeks to get this done. And you know, all this stuff happening. Seller inspections are always kind of like, Can you do it next week? No. Okay. How about two weeks from now? I’m on vacation. Okay, well, how about a month? It’s not as high pressure. So it sounds like getting prepared for the market is also not as high pressured. So probably easier to schedule these things in because they’re not as much of a rush. Typically, it sounds like.

Christian Adams
Yeah, it definitely not the same, you talk about Texas, where you’re seeing auction periods, still under a week of deadlines moved from midnight to five o’clock. And it’s like, yeah, I mean, people are like, pre scheduling inspections before they get a contract accepted, just in case the contract gets accepted. So yeah, it’s none of that, it’s definitely low pressure, low temperature, like you’re saying potentially lower liability, as well, because yeah, you didn’t test the thing in the basement. And we’re still recommending people get buy side inspections. What’s interesting, we think, and this is just purely anecdotal. So we’ve talked to some of the iGo community members, they’re telling us, when they do pre listing inspections, they get the buy side inspection about 30 to 40% of the time, because the buyer wants to know, well who did the first one, because I want them to come back and check that everything got done. So can a company use this to boost not only this side of the business with this new tool, but the buy side as well, because if I was giving out free pre market evaluations to a listing agent, I’m gonna make sure their team is sending me all the buy side inspections as well. Right? I think you can kind of use it to earn their business. And luckily, there’s a lot of crossover with agents, a lot of agents don’t just specialize on listings, they’ll specialize on buyers tier. And that’s another part of this program. That’s really cool. And again, it’s exclusive to us. With this program, when this veteran rolls, right, they have the ability to give, pay up close repairs to that buy side clients as well. So let’s say you’ve got an inspection back right, we’ll run it through the repetitive pricing process. And this is at no cost to the inspector as well, you can run it through the repair pricing process will present it through the Curbio app to the buyer’s agent. And let’s say there’s two things that they want to get fixed with the client, they can bring the sellers agent into that process and say, Look, guys, this is what we want done. We want Curbio to do it because they do a good job, they’re going to warranty it. But by the way, there’s no cost to your seller until we sell. So no one’s paying out of pocket for repairs whatsoever. So you’ve got this new pre market evaluation piece that no one’s had before. Now you have the ability to, to offer buy side repairs, repair, close, no interest, no fees as well, which kind of changes the entire process, if you will, because normally, somebody’s left scrambling to find someone to fix, you know what’s found in the inspection report and or somebody backs out of the deal because they don’t know the impact. But here we’re saying not only is a repair price report available for you the agent. But if you want to get this stuff up, if you want, no obligation, you can get that fixed with a few clicks of a button, and their team can manage it end to end. So when you’re negotiating as an agent, typically you’ve got the three options of like, reduced the price of the home. That doesn’t help anybody because it doesn’t put any money in the buyers pocket. They’re gonna save like $4 a month. Right? So that doesn’t make sense. The other one is have the seller fix it. Okay, who are they going to use? Cheapest person on Craigslist, they can possibly fight, right? It’s not worth anything typically. And then the other option is kind of Escrow funds at closing, you’ve got to make sure that that matches your estimate exactly. Where is the best option? You know what it’s going to cost, so does the seller and it gets done before closing, but it doesn’t cost anybody until the proceeds basically come out of the escrow funds. So it’s like another benefit to the program that we added in to say this is like the ultimate solution, especially for those inspectors that go and market to agents for business, there’s a lot here, they can lean on to get new business.

Ian Robertson
Okay, so that that’s an interesting concept. And I’m just trying to kind of wrap my brain around it because most people in my area take credit at closing, because the first two options, like you said, they don’t really work out a whole lot. I’m not going to have the seller fix something, I’m not going to take a reduction in the house price, I’m usually going to take a credit at closing like most people do. So let’s say I’m buying a house. And my agent says, Okay, well, you know, we have, you know, we need a new roof. It’s $15,000. So I go back and I negotiate and say, Well, can we get Curbio and Repair Pricer out here to give us a price on this? So what if you guys, do you guys send out a contractor to come and do an estimate? Or do you do it just based on the pictures? And? Or does the inspector come back and do another evaluation? Or how does that look?

Christian Adams
Typically, we’ll do it from the pictures and build our estimates. And that’s what we do. I mean, we did that for like five years, roofing, we’re really accurate, really accurate, now let’s say we got a retaining wall with some moisture coming out of it. When we actually highlight that in our report and say, there is no way we can estimate this remotely, but you want someone to come out, yeah, we’ll get somebody. That’s not a problem. But yeah, so it’s gonna depend on the item, but like 85, 90% of run of the mill stuff, we can estimate it really accurately. And that’s what Curbio has been using Repair Pricing for years at this point, right, is rather than having their own team, they’re like, you know, what, we trust Repair Prices pricing, it’s really accurate. And they will stand by that those estimates.

Ian Robertson
Okay, so those are great answers. I appreciate you because I’m really grilling you here, Christian. So I do have a couple more grilling questions. Like that seems like a lot of national resources, are you taking it national? I know you guys are testing in Texas, right?

Christian Adams
Yeah, so we’ve got it rolled out in Texas at this point. It’s coming in Southern California as well, Florida and Georgia. That was some of our very, very close companies that we work with them every day. We know these guys. Right? They’ll call our cellphone if there’s an issue, but Curbio is operating today in 42 markets with more coming, okay, they’ve done over $100 million in repairs. I mean, they’re like a big outfit that’s got a bunch of resources their class acts, their engineering team is fantastic. We’ve got direct API integrations with these guys. So their ability to scale this is already there. But it is market specific at this point, basically. But yeah, like national, we haven’t gone outside of like NFL cities. I mean, we kind of are already, you know, but yeah, you’re smaller markets not available yet. That may change, right. We’ve got a lot of home inspection company partners here that are probably big enough for us to essentially almost open a market for them. But we’re exploring that with a few members already. But yeah, their ability to scale this and operate is already there.

Ian Robertson
Okay. Well, and that was one of the things I was thinking about. As you were describing the program I’m like man, trying to get contractors in all of those markets. And how do you vet the contractors or, how do you, like the guy, there’s guys that you already know, that just said they can call your cell phone if something’s going on. But, you know, how do you like you want to move into Albany, New York market? Hypothetically, yeah. How do you do that?

Christian Adams
Well, if you remember, as part of this merger acquisition that we did, iGO Repair Pricer. And we also mentioned in Home Binder, as well, Home Binder’s been working with agents and inspectors for like a decade, who’ve been bringing in recommended contractors. Now there’s no cost to do that whatsoever. So we already have a captive base of like pre-verified contractors as well, Curbio has been doing the same thing for the last six years. So they’ll go in and also pre vet contracts. So we can make an introduction and say, Hey, we have these people, but they have their own processes, very rigorous and tightly controlled to essentially get these markets spun up. And they operate like a traditional GC. But with more technology and platforms behind it. They have their own platform behind it, that they run to all their subs and vendors and everybody run through that to make sure this is controlled really well.

Ian Robertson
Okay. And I mean, that sounds reasonable. There’s lots of national companies that do a lot of work all over for lots of different industries, including the construction industry and home remodeling industry. I mean, in my area, there’s several companies that that work nationally, and they just vet contractors really well, if they have a problem. They take care of it. So let me ask you how the testing is going in Texas, though. So that’s where you guys have been working for about how long on this program?

Christian Adams
Oh, wow. You mean actually live with the program?

Ian Robertson
Or any stage of testing? Like, you know, your beta version of it or live? Because you’re 100% live in Texas?

Christian Adams
We’re 100% live in Texas as of Thursday, last week. Basically, it’s Monday today. So yeah, the thing is, is very much a sneak peek at this time. So we literally just started rolling clients out on Thursday. So I don’t have a huge amount of full feedback on, end to end testing has been done for three months, and keeps on continuing. So on the buy side, things are already going at the moment, on the on the sell side, it’s still scaling up. But like I said, Curbio has been doing this themselves with, not with having the agent have to find an inspector to do this. So that’s the process that we’ve essentially re-engineered as well and made it so that the agent can just find an inspector immediately. And that gets scheduled. So we could maybe come back in a few months and give you a full update on, you know, exactly the testing has been done testing works fantastically live clients, though it just started rolling as of last Thursday.

Ian Robertson
Oh, wow. All right, cool. Well, and that’s, and that’s exactly, I’m not expecting you to have a magic answer to that. It’s just the fact that you did that much testing. And now you’re going into live, I’m very interested to see how it turns out because it really, really is an interesting concept. The way I view it, is, basically you guys are paying an inspector to go in there to do an estimate for the potential of doing that work. And then you get paid at closing. There’s not many small time contracting companies that that could do that. So it opens up a whole market for you guys, or I should say better, corners that market for you guys.

Christian Adams
Yeah, it’s a new market for home inspectors that they’ve kind of been almost shut out of. Yeah, at some point, you know, and again, if we can like make them part of the appraisal process, I think that helps the industry as a whole. Our goal here is to help home inspection company owners grow and just bring into like tools and services to the market so they can grow. That’s exactly what I feel like this is, we worked on this for a long time, I wanted to do this, I think it’s going to change the way that some homes are bought or sold, hopefully and make the inspection an integral part of that process. Like I said, we could have decided to potentially go partner with contractors instead, right. But I think we convinced them that when we have highly skilled inspectors doing this they’re just gonna get the better end, the end product for the customer and a better experience, right. And I want to be clear, we are not trying to do this to replace buy side inspections, and have buy side inspections go away, those will always be important. And we’re not trying to market this as a free inspection, right, which I think some companies will try and do at some point. This is a pre market evaluation that is not designed to replace that. And I because I think in some markets, like you said early on, when you have pre listing inspections, it doesn’t mitigate the buy side business. Right? And the buy side never happens. We’re not recommending that we’re saying no, you started to get a buy side inspection.

Ian Robertson
And that’s why I asked you for examples of the differences. Because if I am a buyer and I see a pre listing inspection, well, they already went into the north crawlspace and the south crawlspace. And there’s pictures of the attic. They’ve seen all the spots. Whereas your evaluation, it’s okay, they looked at the kitchen. They upgraded the kitchen. But what about those two crawlspaces? What about, you know, the polybutylene that’s in the attic with no insulation on it, you know, there’s going to be questions that people have. So actually, I’m just thinking about how to market it now. So home inspector, you go and you do an evaluation, you could or could not get the buyer side inspection. But very likely, what I liked about pre listing inspections is I’d almost always get that person’s next purchase, most people stay in the area. Typically, in most markets, they could good like 70% of people. So I would get that buyer site inspection for them. So now this is just introducing me into more, to more clients.

Christian Adams
That’s a really good point, I haven’t really thought about it, I was thinking about getting the buy side only because they’re buying a home because they see your report right and that kind of thing. But now yeah, it’s it’s like their picking up business from the agent and getting a new tool too, you might pick up the buy side of the house that you’ve already inspected. And yeah, potentially you’re getting their business on the buy side for the next home. So yeah, could be a trifecta.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, and each, I’ve always said each inspection that you do is a demonstration of your business for everybody watching, which is going to be the agents and the homeowner for pre listing situation. Pre listing inspections never made up a huge portion of my market. I would love to say that pre listing inspections were like 20% of my inspections, but was more like probably, you know, when the mark when it was a buyer’s market, it was probably like more like four or 5%. Since it’s been a seller’s market, like half a percent. You know, there’s never really a whole lot because there’s a stigma attached. Like you said, I can’t fix it. I don’t want to know, hopefully the buyer’s inspector misses it, whatever their reasoning is. Now it’s like okay, they might find an old roof. They might find some mold in the basement. But, you know, they’re really here doing an evaluation saying, Hey, listen, if we build a new deck on the back and tear down this one that’s falling apart, cost you 20 grand, but you should get 25 out of your listing price. So, that makes sense to me, as a marketer, I get to work with the agents, they see me more, I get to work with the potential buyer, and if about 80% of them or so 70, 80% become a buyer in that same market. So that makes sense to me. So..

Christian Adams
Yeah, you think about it as well, let’s say you’re doing $1,000 A year for your inspection company, right? And you do get to that 5% mark? Well, that’s 10 grand in extra revenue a year. Right? Even if you want to get to 5%. What if it’s so popular, because we’ve already got people who are at the 5% mark, for the pre listing stuff with a with essentially a paid product, it’s a lot more expensive and invasive as well, if you get to 10%. Right? That’s $20,000 a year in revenue, per product that didn’t exist before. And hopefully, you’re picking up the buy side, in some aspect, whether it’s from the seller or the new potential buyer. So yeah, that 5% funnel is like what we are estimating our clients to get to in the first year or five years in the business being in the pre market evaluation.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, when I was saying, you know, 5%, being pre listing inspections, not the pre pre value, pre market evaluations, but a full home inspection right before going on market. So this one, basically, I kind of view it almost like a, like a four point, kind of like, we’re going to check the big stuff. But then we’re also going to on top of the four point, so to speak, you know, give you some suggestions to make your house more appealing, get rid of that orange, shag carpeting, put down some laminate flooring and things like that.

Christian Adams
That’s what our Florida inspectors said, they’re like oh, this is the four point with a look at the kitchen. I just don’t say that, because in some areas people like what’s a four point? Right? You know?

Ian Robertson
Yeah, just for people who don’t know what a four point is, I think most inspectors do, it’s definitely a southern thing, mostly Florida, and parts of Georgia and Texas. But it’s looking at the four major portions of the home, and basically mechanicals, and roof and you don’t really get too involved in in the rest of it. But it’s an insurance inspection. But that makes sense to me. Like, as soon as you said that, doing a four point plus looking at the kitchen. That’s not bad. And I imagine you get more proficient. So you say one to two hours. I mean, the average four point I would imagine is probably under an hour. And then you add the kitchen in and report writing,

Christian Adams
We gotta scan Matterport. That’s why we’re saying one to two hours. Because I mean, it’s still on your phone, but you’ve got to go scan it. So that’s around what we’re finding in testing.

Ian Robertson
Okay. So let me ask you, then that leads me to another question. Do you get paid more for a bigger home or a duplex? Or?

Christian Adams
A duplex, it depends, duplex might be two units. Have to check on that. A bigger home? Not at this time. So but again, do you get paid less for a smaller home? No.

Ian Robertson
So you’re counting on it balancing out.

Christian Adams
Yeah it should balance out. Right. And it depends on your market, like if you happen to be in an area where there’s a bunch of very, very large homes, and that’s what the agents are selling. Maybe it’s not as positive for you. But are you picking up a lot more business because of this product? That’s exclusive, that ties that agent to you in the app from just one scan. Right? I would I would like to imagine Yes. It’s not like, this is just that one product that you have, like you were saying it’s an opportunity to demonstrate your professionalism. Right, and your capabilities as an inspector or inspection company owner, to the agent to that buyer to win more business. So is it a sales tool? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Ian Robertson
That’s, that’s how I view it as, as a sales tool. And it’s one that you get paid $150 an hour for if your average inspection is an hour and a half. So 225 at an hour and a half is $150 an hour. So to be able to have that marketing tool, that wouldn’t be too bad. So I imagine like how many a day does the average inspector do like if he’s loaded up?

Christian Adams
Some guys that want to knock out like six a day, but..

Ian Robertson
That seems a bit much.

Christian Adams
Like three, four full Home Inspections a day too, it’s gonna depend on your market, drive time, right, like population density, type of home. Is it all 1990 and old construction? That’s like three two garage style, or is it going to be bigger homes that are built in 1920? Because that’s gonna take you a while? Yeah, right. I think it’s Yeah. I would say a newer inspector could comfortably do three a day right? I mean..

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I’m thinking three or four max, six a day is.. but I mean, there’s I don’t do four full Home Inspections a day either. I don’t I don’t even like to do three I just just a long day. But um, you know, as we keep talking about this, it reminds me almost of a HUD inspection. You know, when you get when you get when you get a grant.

Christian Adams
The 203k one?

Ian Robertson
The 203k one.

Christian Adams
Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen one of their reports, but is it pretty similar to this?

Ian Robertson
No, it’s a little bit more involved. And then you keep going back. Like it’s, it’s, you’re there for the life of the project. This sounds like you’re there. Here’s some quick improvements, here’s the cost and we’ll give you money. But the 203k loans, they’re they’re quite a bit more involved. One of the reasons I don’t get involved in them is they’re just a giant pain in the butt. Because you have to be there and go back. And then people are calling you. And it’s just, it’s a lot more time than it looks like.

Christian Adams
Yeah, this is like, in, out, know what you’re doing, follow a simple template, and then build business from it. Yeah, right. That’s, that’s all here and keep this inside the inspection industry.

Ian Robertson
And for me, that’s, I would view it as, like I said before, be getting paid $150 an hour, to be able to market to this person who’s going to be moving out in the next six months to a year, they’re going to need a home inspector, and they’re going to remember me, I’m going to leave them a card, they’re going to be in my email drip campaign. I’m going to send them a card when they sell the house. And then this agent, gonna to do basically the same thing. Because now they’re, they’re going to recommend me for the next home inspection that they need. Because I was professional, and I was good. And I took care of their client. So interesting. Well, I gotta say, I did grill you a little bit more than I like to grill my guests. I did warn you that I was gonna ask some questions. But I did. I did have some burning questions. But it seems like a good concept is very novel. It’s new. Yeah, I have not seen anything like it. I’m trying to relate it to things, but it never really fits into what I’m trying to relate it to. So I’m really excited.

Christian Adams
This is why I love what I do. Ian, like, I get to build things like this and try and imagine the best possible outcome and scenarios and then go and actually build it, and then go and work with our clients when we’re rolling out later. This is super exciting for us. Like I said, I’ve had a great relationship with Curbio over the years fantastic experience. We believe in their product from what they’re doing. So yeah, we’re just super stoked to get this out the door. And that’s why I wanted to have this conversation first before we do any marketing or push it up, because I know you’re gonna push me on it right. And these are the same questions people have. But maybe they don’t get the FaceTime with me, right. So they can come to our conferences and stuff, maybe but that’s not 90% of inspectors. So yeah, so I really wanted this to have it. So you can ask those questions. So people feel comfortable. So yeah, this is a good concept, we should look at it.

Ian Robertson
Well, and I tend to be a little bit of a hard audience. Like I said, I am not I wasn’t very easy on Inspectify or, you know, Porch, definitely not easy on them or a lot of others. But you know, you guys, you guys are within our industry. We we like what you’re doing, and this concept would seem to benefit us. And I’m really looking forward to seeing how it turns out. And maybe we could do a follow up at some point say, Hey, how’s it going? Are there any changes or any improvements and talk about it? But, you know, we we get a couple 1000 downloads a week, and I’m sure this is gonna really pique the interest of a lot of inspectors out there.

Christian Adams
Yeah, yeah. So if anybody’s interested, you can actually just go to repairpricer.com/Curbio. Curbio. Yeah. Okay. And there’s a lot more information on the program there as well. And our sales teams are already like, trained up on it, too, to know exactly how the program works. So yeah. If anyone has questions, they will go look there as well. But I think we did a pretty in depth coverage today on exactly how it works and how it can help home inspectors.

Ian Robertson
No, that’s, that’s awesome. So if they want to sign up for the program, would they go to the same spot?

Christian Adams
They go to that same spot, there is a full niche request access, okay, so just there is a vetting process like Curbio has for contractors to make sure that they’re in a licensed state, they are a licensed inspector, and we check the software that we can automate it. So you can request access, like I said, some areas, it’s not rolled out yet, but you will hear from us. And you will get an invite to do a demo on this, we also are going to start within a couple of weeks, some kind of weekly webinars on this in house so that as we’re moving inspectors through the program, they can attend those for training or if somebody’s interested, they can attend those as well just find out more about it and ask questions. And on the flip side of it as well, we’ll be doing those for agents too, because agents gonna have questions on this, right? Even those that have already been using Curbio. They’re like, Wait, this is something new, I can get this for free? I’ve been paying, you know, we’re not having clients opt into our products because they don’t want to pay, now that we can basically allow the agents to get access to this. They’re going to have these questions. So yeah, we’ll we’ll be starting those in a few weeks.

Ian Robertson
Okay, so repairpricer.com/Curbio. Curbio. Correct?

Christian Adams
Correct. Right. We’re having a press release go out about this as well soon, so..

Ian Robertson
Nice. And we’ll have a link in our in our transcript and in the episode description, so everybody can find it. But Christian, is it, I’m excited. Is there anything you’d like to take us out on with the program or anything?

Christian Adams
No, not really. I just like questions. Please let us know something that you think we didn’t cover today? Let me know but we’re happy to talk about it. We think this is a really, really big positive opportunity for the industry to show what it can do. And Ian, thank you, man, like always for having me on. I appreciate the hard questions.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, no, thank you for answering them. You did a great job and thank you for being on the show again.

Christian Adams
Thanks so much.

Beon DeNood
On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button so you can catch our future episodes as well. And if you have any feedback, please send us an email at [email protected]. Also, don’t forget to check out our brand new app for home inspectors, scheduling and report writing all in one easy to use App. Check it out now at Inspectortoolbelt.com.

Ian Robertson
The views and opinions of this podcast and its guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.

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].

If you’re enjoying the conversation, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. Our podcast is available on all major podcast platforms. For more information on our services and our brand-new inspection app, please visit our website at Inspectortoolbelt.com.

*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.