If your thinking about spending the extra money to have this company perform your home inspection, I would recommend that you think again. We spent an additional $200.00 - $300.00 to have this company inspect our home and found no additional value in the service we received.
My wife and I spoke to at least 10 different companies before settling on United Professional Real Estate Inspectors. Each of us spoke to Russ Colliau the owner of the company who explained his extensive construction back round and how his company goes above and beyond what other inspection companies do. We requested that he be the one to perform our inspection, and he assured us that he would. We settled on this company and the additional costs for the added piece of mind that they would be more thorough, and the owner would be the one doing the inspection.
The owner showed up for our inspection with another inspector, he stayed for about 1 hour and left. He returned about 1 hour later, stayed for about 10 minutes and then left for good. The inspector who actually did the inspection needed help figuring out how to turn on the stove, and had a very difficult time providing tangible answers to questions somebody in his position should be able to answer. At one point he told us how glad he was that the owner showed up to help a little. A clear indication that the owner never actually intended to be the one to perform our inspection.
We were told how they utilize the latest special tools such as moisture detectors and thermal imaging devices to perform their inspections and how the drainage system would be stressed by leaving multiple faucets on for an extended time to ensure the plumbing from the home to sewer was in tact. Apparently the special tools were not needed for our inspection, as we did not see them utilized, and multiple faucets in the home were not run for extended amounts of time to stress the drainage.
Don't let the reviews that say this company is more thorough, and will thus take more time to do your inspection fool you. They took 3 hours to inspect our 2600 square foot home. Every company I spoke to estimated this same amount of time. Our inspection would have taken less time if the back-up inspector spent less time making small talk. There was no a post inspection review. We were asked if we had any questions, and how we planned to make our payment.
The issues mentioned so far could have been remedied if we would have received an inspection report that was definitive and enabled us to go to the sellers and show them that certain items needed to be addressed. The report we received was 2 days late, and was a huge disappointment. What we received was a 25 page document that was full of vague canned statements and minimal photos that left us with little to no leverage with the sellers. Instead of stating a problem, the report made multiple CYA statements such as "appears to be a problem, consult a licensed expert".
I sent the owner a message asking why the report was so non-specific, and received a canned response similar to many of the statements made in the report. I responded again explaining my concerns and expectations. I did not hear from him again until 4 days later by phone and it wasn't a good time for me, so he offered to call back. This was on April 28. It is now May 14 and I still haven't heard from him. We shouldn't have paid for the service before receiving the report.
The timeline of having a home inspected and sharing the information with the sellers before moving forward with an appraisal is short. The lack of response forced us to move forward with our purchase without a satisfactory inspection report, which cost us a substantial amount of money.
This company can talk a good game but in the end can not back it up with any more value than the next guy; in addition their words are meaningless.
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