by 
I recieved a call today from a seller of a property I inspected recently. She was having trouble understanding my home inspection report. She had several complaints for me. First, for her, the front of the house has three sides. The left, right and middle sides? So when I remarked in my report that the foundation sill plate was below grade at the front side it left her asking at what side of the front?. That’s when the conversation went south for me as I didn’t realize at the time that the front of a home has three sides. I just assumed that if you looked at the front of the building you could ascertain for yourself where the grade was high. That assumption alone cost me twenty minutes on the phone. Alas, she may have a point. The report could well have said “at the front right side”
Next up was the comment that the seller’s discloure statement wasn’t present at the time of inspection. This is a standard comment inserted into the report to confirm that no one presented me with any additional information as to the past or current condition of the property. Heaven forbid, this comment was incorrect as she had the disclosure in her files and someone should have asked her for it. She apparently wanted me to retrack the statement because the wording of it made it look like she was hiding something. There goes another ten minutes trying to explain that the purpose of the statement was for my protection against possible false claims of someone saying that I had read them and had full knowledge of all contained seller disclosed conditions.
To explain why window bars at the bedroom windows are a reportable safety concern even though the previous home inspector didn’t point it out when they bought the home took more than one attempt, four to be exact. She says to me, just because you have to have a step stool to get to the top cotter pins doesn’t mean the iron bars won’t release quickly after all four pins have been pulled. What could I say to that, this was after my forth attempt.
Well she-devil went on to some other non issues and trying to keep my voice down was hard. I could feel myself ratch it up a bit at times. Even knowing I was raising my voice it was hard to stop. I hate to give up so I hung in there until she quit. I did ask her to call back if she needed more clarification, which is kinda like turning the other cheek so to speak.
Oh, my point. I think I’ll take a closer look at the wording of my comments to see if a little more explination might help. For instance the security window bars. A better explination of what a quick release is and why it would be necessary with a smoke filled room. “Devil’s in the details”
Copyright © 2005 by Bob Kille. To read other home inspection related articles or to view home inspection software and book publications by Mr. Kille, click on this link. www.inspectorsuccess.com