I regret having my home inspection done by Steve as he performed a subpar job and missed many critical items as I will detail below. I would classify his work as lazy and unprofessional at a premium price. I would not recommend hiring Steve.
My inspection was done on 8/23/22.
1. His plan from the start was to spend 1-2 hours in the home, then go back to his office and inspect the photos. I have no doubt he would have done this had I not stayed at the property. An inspection cannot be done in 2 hours on premise by one person and it certainly cannot be done by photos. Steve's report is consistent with someone who is doing the bare minimum. He snaps pictures of everything on his checklist and throws them into a report and that is it. His 'walk through' was not that at all it was randomly pointing out things in the house. Discussing the master bath in the living room and the basement in the kitchen and spending a long time on the blinds that the seller left.
2. Steve's equipment is subpar. He is using an older personal iPhone as his primary tool. For someone who relies so heavily on photographs, he needs a camera that can provide high resolution photos. I would say that this is a necessity of any inspector. A major concern of mine, as most new home buyers should, was the roof. When I pressed him on the inspection of the roof he became defensive and was aghast at sending all the photos of the roof as "it would be like 4 emails". The photos of the roof in my scenario are extremely important as it is a tile roof and walking the roof could cause damage- for a guy that won't move a bottle of Windex out of the way there is no way Steve would do this. I had some damaged tiles, the report did not include any close up of the damaged area to check the water barrier underneath. His photographs of cracks do not include a tape measure but instead Steve's fingers. Extremely disappointing.
3. He missed issues that I had to point out to him. He stated to me, "the grade is perfect". I had to point out three areas where the grade was an issue. He quickly took photographs without a tape measure and mumbled some excuse on why he missed the three areas. His placement of the radon test was also an issue that I had to point out. Steve did not bring an extension cord which is standard for radon inspection. The radon test was at the foot of the stairs in the basement where there is considerable traffic and access to fresh air from the rest of the house. I also had to point out to him where there were issues with the pour of the concrete- missing the spacer between the patio and driveway causing damage to the foundation. I had to point out a number of areas of moisture entry and again I get mumbled responses on why he missed them. There were additional misses but these are critical.
4. Overall, whether you consider equipment, thoroughness, or preparedness to do a job, Steve is unprofessional. This guy's pants were falling off and he was grabbing them up after every step he took. I would not hire him again and I would not recommend him. read more
