S01E18 - Navigating Disputes: How Final Checklists Protect Home Inspectors

Transcript

Welcome to Moose Tales. I'm Jon with Two Moose Home Inspections and I have some short home inspection topics that I've been bottling up. So, let's dive right in.

At Two Moose Home Inspections. We have a final checklist that we use for every home inspection. And why is that? Because we're human. And humans make mistakes.

Sometimes as a home inspector. You wake up in the middle of the night and you say, my gosh, did I turn off that oven?

my gosh, did I lock that house? my gosh. Did I do A, B, or C, D thing? And if you have something that can definitively state, yes, you did, then you can go back to bed, you can rest easy, and all is well.

It's important to keep in mind that checklists are not a new thing in industry. There are a whole bunch of self-help books about how checklists can change your world. But let's just consider this.

Pilots use them every single time. Doctors use them every single time. And now home inspectors use them every single time. So, let's talk about what we have on our final checklist.

First off, consistency is key. And what I mean by that is every single time you have to follow the exact same process so that way there is no confusion about whether or not something was or was not done. And what I mean by that is that our process is at the very end.

We always take these photos and these videos of these things on the final checklist. So that way there is no question where they done were they not done because everything is time stamped. And that way, whenever the very last video, which is us locking up the door, is made, we can see, in the last 5 minutes of the meeting, the house, they check all of these things and then lock the door.

That gives us perfect confidence that everything that was supposed to be done was done and that we weren't fiddling around with other things, changing settings or causing issues because everything has been checked. Then we walked out of the house, we locked it up and we're done.

First on the list is appliances. Is the range turned off? Is the oven turned off? Is the dishwasher turned off? And is the refrigerator and freezer on? And the reason this is so important is because I don't want to burn down a house with the oven range. I don't want to flood the house with a malfunctioning dishwasher. And I definitely don't want to have to replace hundreds of dollars of food.

If we accidentally tripped the GFCI causing the refrigerator or freezer to then shut off making all that food go bad

next is electrical are all the GFCI reset. And what I mean by that is are all of the ground fault circuit interrupters put back to the condition in which we found them whenever we started the inspection, because if they aren't then certain appliances or certain things inside the house may not be functioning whenever the homeowner comes back and we'd like to notify people about that.

Also, are all the lights turned off? Now, here's something we're not going to take a photo of every single light inside the house because that's just a bit much. So, whenever we talk about consistency, we go from top to bottom. We check every single room as a part of a multistep process, checking every single room for multiple things.

And we make sure that all the lights are turned off. Have the lights been left on? Probably. But in general, we have a really, really good system to ensure that those lights are turned off whenever they're supposed to be turned off. Sometimes we get notes, leave the lights on, and we'll actually note that if we were told to leave the lights on

next, each HVAC, heating, ventilation and air conditioning. We took a photo of the initial setting of the thermostat, and we take a photo of the final setting of the thermostat. This allows us to verify that all thermostats that have been adjusted have been put back to the way that we found them.

We also want to make sure that all fireplaces are turned off.

plumbing is next. If the water supply was turned off before we arrived, we want to make sure that we put it back to that condition. So, again, we were going to have an initial say in a final state If the water was on, we leave it as is. Additionally, was that hot tub still operating the way it was supposed to?

Because sometime if you tripped GFCI hot tubs turn to a big cube of ice and that is something that we want to avoid

Each of our add on services has their own final checklist. These final checklists allow us to verify that all the proper procedures were completed, that all the photos that needed to be taken were taken, and that all the tools got back to the vehicle.

And so, an example might be whenever we collect a water sample, where do we collect the water sample? When did we collect the water sample? Was the aerator removed? Was it not removed? And a whole bunch of other things along those lines.

The next one is our general inspection final checklist. Did we get all the tools back to the vehicle? Did we review the invoice to ensure that we did everything that we were supposed to do? And did we check for carbon dioxide detectors and smoke detectors?

Because that is a very, very important safety thing. And we want to make sure that our clients are informed.

After all those final checklist items are completed, it's then time for the physical security of that property.

All the doors need locked, all the windows need locked. And we need to have a video saying we locked all the windows, and we locked all the doors. The video doesn't have to show all the windows and doors. It just needs to be a statement showing one of the doors or, for instance, us in the truck saying property was given over to the realtor, property was given over to the seller.

Any of those things would be adequate. It's just enough to say our inspectors are thinking about the physical security of the property and they have done their due diligence to make sure the house is secure the way that it was supposed to be.

If there were any urgent issues that needed to be addressed, for instance, there's an active leak.

We were unable to lock the house. We let the realtor, or the interested parties know about the issue so that way it can be resolved. And then the final thing is, is that we have a checklist that says, did we contact the customer to say, hey, do you have any questions about the property? What would you like to go over?

Here's all the information that I did find. Let's do a recap. If you weren't able to make it to the inspection, let's get something set up so that way we can talk about it. Well, I'm still at the property or at a later time, whenever it's more convenient for you.

some home inspectors in the industry are advocating that we wear body worn cameras and we record the entire home inspection process so that way nobody can question anything the home inspector did.

My answer to that is, no, I do not like that. And there's many reasons why. But the first and foremost is it's a logistical nightmare. What is your retention policy for those videos? How are you going to store and delete those and how are you going to search through them to get the relevant information that you need to be able to defend yourself in court or whatever it may be?

I think that it opens us up to more liability than it reduces, and I just don't think that it can be properly applied to a home inspection business, especially for many single operator home inspection businesses. I think the better option is, is to take relevant photos of the things that are actually of risk and have a very systematic approach to how you were going to do every aspect of the home inspection.

Therefore, every single home inspection you've done speaks to the fact that you follow this exact same regimented approach without having to have terabytes worth of data for that home inspection video recording on your body warm chest cam, not also to mention the risk of privacy issues and whether or not you're recording small children or recording other people that don't want to be in the video.

There's just a whole nightmare in its own.

The way in which things get added to our final checklist is normally an uncomfortable event has occurred and therefore it gets put into our final checklist.

A great example would be the mystery pooper. Nobody knows who the mystery pooper is, but eventually the mystery pooper was caught, and it turns out to be an appraiser that was coming into the homes after we did the home inspections and just had an inability to remember to flush the toilet.

thankfully somebody’s camera inside their house was able to identify that that's who it was.

And we are now off the hook. But boy, was that an uncomfortable conversation?

Another thing that occurs is people don't want to make repairs to their homes. They don't want to lose money on a transaction. And one of the easiest ways to say that they aren't going to do something is to discredit the home inspector. If you were to say, well, your home inspector messed up A, B or C thing, and because of that, it could have cost us tens of thousands of dollars.

Now, granted, it didn't cost us any money at all, and there actually wasn't an issue, but an issue could have occurred. And because an issue could have occurred, I am now unwilling to make any of these repairs because your home inspector could have created an issue that actually wasn't an issue but could have. And therefore, I'm not going to work with you because you put somebody in the house that is untrustworthy, because I'm saying that they are because I'm discrediting the home inspector.

So, what are some examples of this and why it is that we have a final checklist in the first place?

We have had people say 3 hours after we left the home, you didn't turn the thermostats back on and our house is now 20 degrees, and all of our pipes are frozen. 3 hours after we left the house that we can validate that we took photos of all the thermostats and that it was 72 degrees in that property.

That is thermodynamically impossible for any of those pipes to freeze. But nevertheless, that is the statement that was made.

You, as a home inspector, left the garage door open. I mean, yeah, nothing was stolen, and nobody broke into the house. And you do have a photo and a video of the garage doors being closed and you have the dash cam from your truck verifying that the garage door was closed.

But I just don't want to pay for these repairs that you found.

Your home inspectors ransacked my entire house, and it is an absolute mess. Well, thanks to the 360-degree photos that we take on every single home inspection,

We can actually show that as soon as we step foot onto your property, you can see that it was a mess to begin with and that wasn't us, nor was it the realtor that was with us.

And my goodness, was that a good laugh between the realtor and us whenever we talked about it?

You left the range on and almost burned down my house.

And therefore, I'm not going to pay for these repairs. Well, our timestamped photos say that the range was actually turned off. So, I'm not really sure who turned on your range. And I'm really sorry to hear that for you. But I still think that these people are going to negotiate for you to make these repairs to your house.

You left a sink running and that caused my entire house to flood. Well, here are the procedures and steps that we do. And here are the photos and here's all the information. And that's just not possible. So, I don't think that it was our fault that that happened. But I also don't think that that happened because nothing was actually damaged in your house.

my hot tub froze because of your home inspection. And now it's an ice cube and you're going to have to buy a brand-new hot tub. No, that's not the case. We have a video of the hot tub operating as soon as we left the property. And I think that your neighbor's video actually shows that there are some people jumping your fence and getting into the hot tub.

You might want to talk to them first.

There are countless numbers of ways in which people try to discredit the home inspector. And we understand why they discredit the home inspector or why they tried too at least. And so, we are human, and we do make mistakes, but we follow a final checklist the same way that a pilot or a doctor would, and therefore a lot of these are just frivolous.

And again, we understand why. We understand some of the pressures that people are going through. But of course, everybody has their own pressure, their own emotions, their own feelings. And so, we can't fully understand. But whenever somebody does something like that, we don't necessarily think that they're malicious. We think that there's just some stress in their life, some issues that they're having.

And we completely or relatively understand why it is that they might want to try to disparage a home inspector. But our final checklist is what we do to protect ourselves from somebody's bad day, because as stated in previous podcasts, I run a business and that's great. But what I really do is provide for families. Sure, my family, but also the families of my home inspectors.

They have partners, they have kids, they have needs.

and I'm not going to let someone's bad day ruin their ability to put food on the table for their families. So that final checklist is not only to make sure that we don't mess up as humans that can make mistakes, but also to ensure that the business stays afloat.

That's a pod.