That might be a good part time job for me in retirement. This area is booming and there is always a need for inspections. I know I need to get certified. I also know a real estate guy who can probably send me work.
Every state has different requirements, but many only require the national standard certification. You may have to pay licensing fees and keep insurance to operate independently. In my state you have to work as an associate in a home inspection company for at least one year and perform at least 100 inspections as further qualifications to operate independently.
Keep in mind that some inspections involve crawling underneath a house or climbing into an attic, and depending on where you live, crawling under an 80-year-old house with a leaky septic line on a hot summer day can be quite an unpleasant experience. They’d have to pay me a lot to do that.
That’s the least of it. I am a licensed real estate broker and have worked as a buyer’s agent on and off for years. Let me tell you - and I don’t know what the market is like where you are - but it’s insane here, and among other things, that means a lot of flippers. And flippers mean you’re going to be inspecting some fucked up houses. I don’t just mean the houses itself are fucked up, I mean the people who lived there fucked them up. I’ve routinely had to go inside hoarder-houses piled floor to ceiling with disgusting garbage, with backed-up sewer lines, with dead animals, with mold that gives you cancer just looking at it - and that’s just to show buyers the properties. And people WANT these properties! People get into bidding wars over them! And you, my friend, as the inspector, won’t just be peeking inside. You will be crawling around in it. Just keep that in mind.
Good home inspectors can make bank. But it’s not a job for the faint of heart.
for the most part we don’t have many houses here in really bad shape. some people buy houses from the 60s-70s and tear them down to build new because the lots are bigger. Almost all of that era don’t have HOAs so they just need to follow building codes and town codes which are not a lot. Older lots can be an acre or two while new lots even for big houses can be 1/4 to 1/2 acre. One neighborhood nearby seems to always have 1 or more houses being rebuilt from the ground up.
Roof needs inspection, too. You couldn’t get me to go up on my own two-story metal roof and peer down the chimney. I did stuff like that in my youth, but when I hit my sixties (hit and run, I’m sayin’) I decided to really retire, and skip the heavy lifting.
Dan
people are using drones to inspect roofs. I am getting solar panels and they used a drone for that.