This is from a friend, so I don’t know how accurate the situation was explained to me.
Said friend just bought a house and had it inspected before signing. He moved in then tells me the roof needs fixing, that it has holes and damage; and it needs fixed to the tune of $15k.
If true this seems like an obvious thing the inspector should have caught and reported on. I would be pretty pissed that the inspector missed it and would want to have some recourse for the missed damage…otherwise, what’s the point of having an inspection done if they don’t find serious damage.
What can happen here? would my friend have any recourse with the inspector? or the previous homeowner? He doesn’t seem very hopeful that anything can be done.
The inspector may or may not be liable. It varies by states.
Here’s another gotcha. Have your friend reread the contract with the inspection company. They often put in a liability limit, limited to the cost of the inspection.
On the other hand, some inspectors have insurance to cover situations like this.
I’m in the real estate industry but not a lawyer, and this is a complex enough topic that I think an actual lawyer experienced in real estate matters is probably the only definitive answer.
However I have contracted with, and worked with, many home inspectors and processed many real estate transactions.
Generally speaking, the home inspector does have a professional obligation to have prepared an accurate, up to the standards of their profession, home report. This report would be expected to be free of negligence. However there are usually specific exemptions and disclosures in these reports. Home inspectors generally aren’t expected to do things like comprehensive “specialty” examinations of the property. Generally the signed agreement with the home inspector will indicate that they are doing a visual inspection of the property only to the standards of the Standards of Practice of the American Society of Home Inspectors. They will usually explicitly state this is not a building code inspection, and that their standards obligate them to find things that can be visually noted and determined.
If the damage to the roof would be obvious from an external, visual inspection of the roof tiles or etc, and the inspector’s report doesn’t contain anything on it, that could be a type of negligence and it could be possible that they could be liable for some of the repairs. The “could be” statements there are where it gets very complex and where only, really, a lawyer is going to be able to know for sure.
FYI, and this is harder to do in some of today’s seller’s markets, but if you’re really worried about finding potential issues with a home, the home inspection can be thought of as the first step. You can actually request that the seller allow you to hire further specialty technicians, HVAC techs, plumbers, electricians, roofing guys etc to go over those systems with a more expert eye. The cost of those inspections will often be around what you paid for your home inspection (which will be over $500 in most markets), and the seller generally does not have to allow these inspections. In a normal market, they usually would allow them (you eat the costs so all it really costs the seller is time, hence why in seller’s markets where people are buying homes in cash with no inspection agreements 2-3 days after they hit the market, you wouldn’t be able to do this.) Whether it is “worth it” to have all those additional inspections done is really hard to say, and is a question of personal finances, your expectations going into the home in terms of upkeep needed in the immediate term and etc.
We just had a Home Inspectors that could check the Chimney.
Do Infra-red checks of the walls for hot spots (looking for electrical issues) also Radon was checked.
Then we had an Oil Tank guy come in and comb the grounds.
Also pest inspection
The house we sold had septic, so they had a septic inspector and a chimney inspector come in, the regular house inspector, pest inspector and a Roof expert.
The home inspection company I have used the most frequently offers the infrared check and termite inspection as additional services you can buy, they wouldn’t normally do chimney / septic / oil or propane tanks.
Chimney inspections where no fireplace are often done by the Inspection companies here. The Infra-red check was an add-on and the termite inspection was also, but an additional guy to do it.
If a chimney or wood stove, unfortunately these inspections are usually done by Chimney companies and unsurprisingly suspect.
IANAL, but I think everything will depend on the contract between your friend and the home inspector – what was promised vs. what was done.
Here’s a pretty relevant article about home inspectors and walking/not walking a roof for inspection:
Since approaches and methods will vary, it really comes down to what the inspector is or isn’t offering, and how that’s represented in the contract with the customer.
Yeah, when I sold my place the inspector specifically noted he did not inspect the roof (it’s tall and has a pretty high pitch) and recommended that any interested party should hire a licensed roofing contractor for further inspection. In this particular case the roof was pretty new, so it was not a major concern to anyone. But what I liked about him is that he was consistently careful to explain just what he did and more importantly what he did not do.