Answers to Today's Real Estate: homeinspectionlaws

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Wisconsin passes Home Inspection Integrity Act, good or bad news?

Before this year, in Wisconsin, anyone with a ladder and a pickup truck could be a home inspector. (p.s. same in California). The Wisconsin idea is that if they force home inspectors to get “proper” training ahead of time, they somehow will be more credible and provide proof of reliability. Hmmmmmm.

In theory, I agree that a trained home inspector does have more credibility than not. I totally disagree about their assertion of “proof of reliability”. You can still have an inspector who shows up late, forgets an appointment, leaves out sections of the report, etc. I know plenty of licensed people who are not worth a salt.

We have this here in Arizona, inspectors must be licensed and follow the AZ Standards of Practice. In Wisconsin, the Association of Realtors and a home inspection training company call API Home Inspection Training got together to create the Wisconsin Standards. Interesting, no one from the actual Home Inspection Industry was involved. Not sure how I feel about that. Seems like the API wants government to force purchase of their product. Yuck.

My biggest objections to the Wisconsin law:

It requires a Summary Page in the Report. We all know that Buyers, Sellers and Realtors do not read the home inspection reports. They just want to skip to the sexy stuff and skip the details. I would have preferred that we leave out the Summary Page and let everyone actually read the report. Why the hell are we writing these reports if people don’t read them.
The NON-Home Inspectors have statutorily defined the word “defect” and it is now legally required. I dislike that because a condition is not necessarily a defect. A defect to one Buyer maybe different than a defect to another Buyer. This is a very big leap.
The Integrity Act attempts to codify common language when it comes to descriptions. This is literally impossible. One size does not fit all. Common language cannot possibly cover every home condition. Inspectors must be able to accurately observe and describe findings that are uniquely specific to the house. What’s next, are they gonna make all the Home Inspection Software Companies plug in their “one size fits all” descriptions. Does anyone really think that every house and every condition is exactly the same?

Kudos to Wisconsin for attempting licensure. But as usually with any government overreach, their lust for power and control is setting up a bad precedent. That’s my opinion, would love to hear yours.

p.s. Geoff Nowlin is a licensed AZ Home Inspector.