PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian R
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk. Today, we have a solo podcast because there’s something important that I want to talk about. And the title of this podcast is Things Are Moving Fast. Our industry is changing in a rate that I’ve never seen before. I’m not too, too old yet, but I’m not overly young, so I’m old enough to remember the industry as it was 20 years ago, and I’m young enough to know, yeah, change happens. Things move. But there’s a change in our industry that still worries me, and I’ve brought it up many times in the podcast, and we actually just released a new program. We’ll call it a badge that you can put on your website. And we as a company, Inspector Toolbelt has made a commitment to never sell or provide any of your clients information to third parties. We keep it all within our ecosystem. We’ve never done it. We’re just making a commitment to never sell it, never use it, never monetize it.

A couple of reasons why. We’ve talked about taking back our industry many times on this podcast, and this is one of the ways that we can do it. This actually causes Inspector Toolbelt to make less money. We’ll be frank, a lot of home inspection software works on the premise of, they don’t make their money from the fees that they get from the actual inspectors, but they make it from third parties paying for the data in different ways, with integrations that get them the data, all sorts of different ways. Nobody has ever given us here on Inspector Toolbelt cash, money, in one form or another. We have built Inspector Toolbelt bootstrap, which means we pay for it ourselves. We let it grow naturally. This has been a blessing in a lot of ways. It’s kept your information private. We even had a purchase offer from Porch. We’ve had venture capital companies kind of like who bought Spectora. All these ones approach us, and we’ve always told them no, because home inspections is an industry that is so close to my heart. It’s what I’ve been in for the bulk of my adult life. So when I see our industry take these changes and take them quickly, it makes me a little bit concerned. So let’s put that guarantee, or whatever we’re going to call it, that badge of we’ll never sell your data. We’ll put that off to the side for a moment as to why that’s important.

But for a second, I want to tell you about Luddites. So if you’ve ever been called a Luddite, it’s basically somebody who pushes away from new technology. So the interesting thing about Luddites is they inadvertently set up their own demise. They were basically fabric makers, textiles, and when the textile industry, in an extremely brief period of time, would replace them with machines, they went insane. They started beating people, if I remember right, and somebody can correct me in this and you know, usually if I say something that’s slightly not correct, somebody will put a comment somewhere. But I believe they even, like killed people, or at least maimed them. It was insane. They were mad that they lost their industry to technology. But by then, it did not matter. It was the fallacy of the Luddites. What was the purpose of going out, showing how mad you are because you lost your industry to technology that you helped build after the fact, no one was going to dismantle those machines. In fact, they worked harder to protect them, and their industry was completely replaced. The Luddites, the textile industry, was never the same, and those people were gone. Now you could hire just the average Joe to stand at a machine, pull a couple levers and push a couple buttons. I worry that our industry is going to end up like that if we continue to feed it.

Now, I’ll have guys argue this with me and they say, well, you can’t be a Luddite, and I’m not talking about being a Luddite and pushing back against new technology. I love new technology. But using it as a tool and letting it replace you are two different things. For instance, Inspector Toolbelt was the first home inspection software to integrate with AI for comment rating. We’re very proud of that. No other one had done it, and we did it, but we did it in a very ethical way, so that it doesn’t train a larger model, so that other home inspectors get to use your comments. We did it in an ethical way that it isolates it to you. And you know, we did it the right way. We feel we did it the right way. But going to the InterNACHI convention in Texas, well, it was a TPREIA. It was a weird, I don’t know they renamed it. It was weird, but there was an air of every new software in the universe coming out saying, use AI to do your inspections, basically, not use it as a tool, but to do it for you. Now, try uploading a picture of a defect into ChatGPT and telling it to analyze it, you’ll be like, whoa. It can do quite a bit, but without the human involved, it makes a lot of mistakes. I mean, we could do a whole podcast on how many mistakes AI comes up with. If I had a dime for every time that somebody, one of our website clients or something, emailed us about, you know, schema markups they want put on their website, and how the data is completely wrong, I’d have a million dimes. It’s insane how wrong AI can be. And then when you go back and ask it, it’s like, oh, yeah, that was wrong. Sorry about that. We’ve all probably experienced that. So to rely so heavily on AI, first of all, is bad for the industry, and kind of cheapens it, when you remove the human element. It’s a tool, just like a Sawzall isn’t a replacement for a human being. You need the human being to guide that tool.

But the problem is, we are giving a large portion of our industry away very, very quickly, quicker than I expected. When we give our industry away to and there’s a lot of new apps, and I’m not criticizing any one of them. They make it, they make it, cool. I hope they all do it ethically. But there’s so many new apps out there, and their premise is, I’ve had one even tell us, oh yeah, we’re looking to sell and make a lot. Some of them just even come out and advertise. We sell your clients data. One says that they sell it to Home Depot for either discount or free software. So much of our industry with AI and with the data, we give away so quickly. So if we don’t want to end up like the Luddites after the fact, standing here in a few years, going, we want our industry back, you’ll never get it back. We will never get our industry back, just like the Luddites never did. But what we can do is protect our industry and the tools within it.

So textiles first of all, the quality goes down when you add machines and replace craftsmen. We’re the craftsmen in this scenario. So I have shirts that just fall apart. I’ll pay extra for a nice shirt, just falls apart. I bought a dress shirt, paid a little extra. My wife is like, oh, this is a nice one. The sleeves get all crinkly because of the inner lining on the cuffs. I’m like, what in the world? Textiles went downhill when you automate with no craftsmen behind it. That same thing is going to happen to our industry. And I’ve said it before, college kids going to get an iPad, walk around the house, scan some stuff, AI is going to analyze it, and it’s going to spit out a report. They’re going to be quote, unquote, certified or licensed, because the bar of entry is very low, still, for most of the US and Canada, some states are harder, but not others. And passing a test doesn’t make you a home inspector. And so people are going to start to accept a lower grade of garment, so to speak, a lower grade of inspection, that’s already happening, and we can get upset about it afterwards, or we can do the opposite. We can, one, not allow others to have our data. Use software ethically, and number two, don’t give our industry to AI. Now we might say, well, that’s impossible. That’s just going to happen. I hear a guy say that all the time. Here’s a fantastic example, and I’ve said this before on the podcast. My brother’s a CPA in two states and owns a tax accounting business, and one of my best friends in the world, Tom Kubiak, who’s also been on this show at least once or twice, is also a tax accountant. And I asked them, I’m just like, how do you guys get around AI? Because I can just upload a bad scan of a document and it’ll do my taxes for me. And they both laugh. They say, we pulled the reins as an industry, and I’m paraphrasing, not exact quotes, but we pulled the reins on our own industry. You can go out there and go online and get AI tax accounting software. He goes but as an industry, we protected ourselves. We use AI every day, they said, but we use it as a tool, and we are the gatekeeper to it. And they’re like, you wouldn’t believe the giant mistakes it makes. It’s some of the most advanced AI out there, because it’s dealing with financial stuff. And they’re like, you wouldn’t believe the mistakes. And so when we catch the mistake, we let people know. Okay, this is why you don’t use just AI. Let me show you what you can do, so that you don’t pay that extra $4,000 in your taxes. And then people will never trust just AI again, but they’ll trust the craftsman with the tool in his hand instead. We need to take back our industry. Before we did a podcast, and I said, you know, it might be five to 10 years, and we won’t have much of an industry left. If things continue at this pace, that’s pushing it. There are apps out there right now, fully functional that will do our job for us. I see people. There’s a homeowner’s app where the homeowner can basically do a quote, unquote home inspection, give them a full report and everything, but a machine in the hands of a non-craftsman still doesn’t get the same product. We’re going to get junky textiles, like everybody who threw the Luddites to the side. When they throw home inspectors to the side, they’re going to get junky inspections and wonder why they can’t get a good quality inspection.

So how can we make sure that we do this? Number one, if you’re an Inspector Toolbelt user, go to that badge. It’s a page on our website. Go up into our main menu on Inspectortoolbelt.com. Go to Info, and right there, We Don’t Sell Your Data. Use that badge. Display it on your website. Use Inspector Toolbelt proudly. Use a software that does not sell your clients data and does not use AI to replace you, but uses it as a valuable tool. Now we have some amazing AI tools already, and we have some amazing AI tools coming up that are going to blow your mind. They blow my mind when I look at them, when we discuss them as a team, and we do the wire frames, and we start building them out, there’s going to be some really cool stuff coming up. They’re going to be tools, not replacements. Next use an app like Inspector Toolbelt that does not share your client data. And I don’t want this to be a commercial for Inspector Toolbelt. I want it to be a commercial for us as an industry. If you don’t use Inspector Toolbelt, ask your software provider, what do you do with my data? Look at their privacy policy. You’ll see that the largest home inspection softwares out there put in their privacy policies and their terms of service, or wherever that they use our data with third parties. They monetize it in one form or another, or however they word it. Read that, know that thoroughly, choose a software that’s ethical. Number three, don’t be training the AI models for our work. And there are inspectors out there that will show examples of, you know, here’s my comments from a report, and now all of a sudden it’s available for other inspectors to write comments with. Helping other inspectors—love it. Training an AI so that a big corporation can send out college students or people who are untrained out with AI models to do our job for us—not so thrilled with.

Let’s be like the accountant industry. Let’s be the gatekeeper to the tool. Let’s be the craftsman that holds AI in our hands and does our job even better. AI has so many advantages. It can clean up our comments. Jay Wynn, a guest on our podcast here, was just talking to me about this yesterday or the day before. He’s like, Ian, it’s great because it cleans up my comments. I’m not great at writing, but I know what I saw. Beautiful. That’s what it’s meant for, stuff like that. Replacing us, we’re going to end up like the Luddites banging down the doors when we have the most amazing industry ever. Holy cow, we have the best industry. We drive around and look at cool houses, talk to people, help protect them from bad investments on houses. It’s just cool. I love the home inspection industry. Let’s not throw it away for, you know, the newest, flashiest thing out there.

So this was a little bit of a rant of a podcast, because I really do worry about our industry. And I say this because, how do I put this. I love the inspection industry, but I don’t rely 100% on it, businesswise that is, so that shows my affection for it. I want to save it because I love it, not because it makes us money. A matter of fact, this new thing that we came out with makes us lose money. This is what it’s about. Protect our industry, protect our clients. Do a fantastic job, and let’s use AI as a tool that it is. So thank you for listening to my rant, and listen in next time to Inspector Toolbelt Talk.

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.

PODCAST SUMMARY/BLOG

Change is speeding up in home inspections, and the fault line isn’t just about new gadgets or faster workflows. It’s about control: who owns client data, who sets the standard of care, and whether AI remains a tool in skilled hands or becomes a replacement for judgment. We’ve made a clear commitment to never sell or share client data with third parties, even though that decision cuts into revenue. Why take that path? Because the value of a professional inspection rests on trust—between inspector and client, and between our trade and the public. Once data becomes a commodity, the incentive shifts from serving the homeowner to feeding an ad and referral machine. That erodes confidence and opens the door to lower bars, quick scans, and reports that look polished but miss critical context.

There’s a useful cautionary tale in the Luddites. They weren’t wrong to fear how machines could push out craftsmen; they were wrong to fight too late and in the wrong way. When textile workers smashed looms, the market had already moved on to cheaper, faster output, and no one was going to roll back the clock. Our industry risks a similar fate if we surrender the gatekeeper role to platforms that monetize data and position AI as a replacement rather than an assistant. We can welcome innovation without confusing speed for quality. An app that identifies common defects from photos is handy; an app that convinces consumers that a guided selfie tour equals a full inspection is a downgrade wrapped in novelty.

AI is already useful in our space when used ethically. Comment cleanup, consistency checks, and smarter templating help inspectors communicate more clearly while keeping their voice and liability judgment intact. That’s very different from training general models on proprietary report content or client photos, which can leak subtle knowledge into tools that anyone can use to mimic expertise without doing the field work. The biggest risk isn’t that AI makes mistakes—though it does, often confidently—but that those mistakes are scaled to thousands of reports without a professional to catch them. The craft isn’t just spotting a stain; it’s knowing the story behind it, the probable cause, and the consequences if ignored.

There’s also a data economy reshaping expectations. Some software markets “free” or discounted tools funded by selling client information to retailers and service networks. That creates conflicts of interest. When your platform profits from your pipeline, you become the product. Inspectors should read privacy policies closely, ask direct questions about third-party data sharing, and choose providers that keep data within the service you pay for. Owning your client relationship is not old-fashioned—it’s essential risk management. It also communicates something powerful to agents and buyers: your loyalty isn’t for sale.

So what’s the playbook to keep the human at the center while using the best tools? First, be public about data ethics. Display a clear badge or statement that says you don’t sell client information. That signals integrity and differentiates your business in a crowded market. Second, use AI to enhance, not outsource. Let it refine your language, suggest clarity, and check for contradictions. Don’t hand over analysis or training data that could be repackaged into a product that competes with you. Third, elevate standards. Share side-by-side examples that show how a seasoned inspector’s report captures nuance that an automated pass misses—moisture sources, safety implications, or maintenance context. Consumers can spot the difference when you show them.

Finally, follow the accountants’ model. Many CPAs use advanced automation every day, but they remain the gatekeepers. They demonstrate where software makes costly errors and educate clients on why expertise matters. That stance builds trust and demand for skilled work. Home inspectors can do the same: embrace AI where it saves time and lifts quality, keep ownership of client data, and make craftsmanship your brand. If we do that together, we won’t be smashing looms after the market moves on; we’ll be steering the tools that make our work sharper, our clients safer, and our profession stronger.