Licensing Debate: Cookie Cutter Effect
If inspectors are licensed it will be a step towards "sameness" throwing everyone into the same pot and partially eliminating the differences that distinguish us? It is this desirable? What if someone gets into the law a standard report format? Then we just become inspectors, all the same and price is the main difference. Is that a desirable outcome?
posted by Hollis at 10:15 PM
5 Comments:
That's an interesting thought - one that I hadn't given much consideration to. I've heard a lot of talk about the Texas law and how the inspectors allowed the real estate people too much influence in creating the legislation. Didn't they then end up with a state mandated report format?
No - I don't think that would be a desirable outcome and I don't think most of the Texas inspectors think so either.
Does anyone else have anymore information about, or insight into, this?
Hollis
I was in Texas last month, talking to very folks that were involved in this fracas. They all regret the first developemnt of the Texas laws - mandated report formats, limited issues to which they could speak...there was clearly an issue of 'sameness' and it diminished the industry by reducing it to a checklist report.
However, Texans and Texas Home Inspectors spent almost 10 years re-writing that legislation - so there is a newer, better version of the Texas law that still provides for the protection of the clients while providing much more reasonable latitude for the home inspectors. Gone are the mandated reports. Gone are the limits of performance. There is a still a 'baseline' home inspection but now there are no limits or prohibitions from good HI's to exceed those minimum standards.
On a further note, Texas also now has a 2-tier home inspection industry. The upper tier is based solely on building codes and new construction inspections. It turns out that Texas does not liscense or regulate builders - consequently, there are a lot of complaints against builders. So much so that the legislators enacted a mediation board to handle the compaints as a first-line of defense. The uppper-tier hoime inspectors serve as techniocal advisors to the mediation boards, in order to ensure the 'facts' are clean and straight.
Peter
The Texas SOP is drastically different than ASHI, NAHI, NACHI or the current state Certified regulations. Texas is a good example of what we don't want. They recently made some improvements but still not desirable.
Door bells, pools, outdoor cooking equipment, outbuildings, interior and exterior paint condition, insulation in exterior walls, telephone & cable wiring, among many many other things all have to be inspected and reported on in Texas. Other things with their SOP is too open for interpretation leaving the inspector vunerable. A good example of why we should consider coming together as one, try to get VAR on our side (as Peter said) and pave the way of our future before it gets handed to us. Just my personal opinion.
Why do we license professionals? Do you want to be treated by a “doctor” who is practicing without a license? What about your airline pilot? Do you want him/her to fly you to California with 200 hours of flight simulator “training” on their home computer? When you drive across the James River bridge, are you glad that it was designed by a licensed structural engineer, or would you be comfortable if it were designed by some guy in his basement who was pretty good with his Erector set when he was a kid?
Is licensing the cure-all? No, but it’s a starting point, a foundation. Experience and reputations are built on this foundation. All attorneys are licensed, but there are some who are known to be the best. If you were wrongly accused of a crime, you would seek the best lawyer, and gladly pay more. If your child required brain surgery, would you rather have Johns Hopkins’s world famous pediatric neurosurgeon, Ben Carson, or a young resident? Does it even matter, they are both licensed? Does anybody recognize the names, Allen, Allen, Allen and Allen? They are “cookie cutters” within their own law firm, but head and shoulders above the rest of the licensed lawyers in the state of Virginia. Again, licensing is a foundation from which to build, but never should be considered the finished product. Currently, our industry has no foundation, no starting point.
Bob Anderson
It does not have to be a "cookie cutter". Licensing should be a minimum standard that has to be met to work in the professon, like John Canor stated. It should not be handcuffes on how we perform our inspections and run our bussiness. But the standards have to be meaningful.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home