Depends. If their commission comes out of a sale, they have an inherent interest in you buying a property as quickly as possible.
I agree.
If Vorlon was trying to buy my house, i would let him nit pick and dither all he wants but the house STAYS on the market. 
My main gripe about inspections is that, IME, buyers use it not as an insurance to make sure they aren’t buying a lemon but as a further negotiation tactic to try to dribble the price down further.
As a seller, this puts me in a dilemma. Do I assume they will try to do this therefore stick to a higher price during negotiation? I don’t like doing that because they may negotiate on the up and up and I don’t want to risk driving away a legit buyer because I am holding back some assuming they will nit pick during inspection.
Certainly. You have to be careful when using a buyer’s agent also. I just wanted to make people aware of their existence.
Disclaimer: Realtor[sup]TM[/sup] here, but states vary, and your state may not work the way mine does.
Except for your weasel word “probably,” not true.
An agent must hand you one of two disclosure forms to sign before negotiations begin, either a “Customer” or a “Client” form. This form describes, in excruciating detail, who the agent works for, and what his duties are to each party.
If you are his client, he is working for your interests. If you are his customer, he is not. In either case, there are ethical considerations that prevent fraud or deliberate misrepresentation of anything.
In a simplified form, as his client, you are entitled to facts and opinion. As a customer, you are entitled only to facts, not opinions.
It is unethical for a real estate agent to RECOMMEND a home inspector. He can give you a list of qualified home inspectors, but he cannot recommend one for exactly the reasons you mention.
This causes a problem, as I am often asked, “Come on, really, cut out the bullshit, who do you recommend?” About all I can say is I have worked with inspector X and his work was satisfactory, or I have not worked with inspector Y, but he is qualified.
Okay, basically what happened was that a recent disaster exposed a lot of things that I should have known about going in, and expected my home inspector to tell me. At least a heads-up, you know?
The house in question gave me good vibes as far as neighborhood, space, layout, price. It was in the right district so my kid wouldn’t have to change schools. But it was a place where the previous owner had done a lot of remodeling over the years. Obviously he’d done it himself, and done some things in a very strange way and probably not to code.
This was the kind of stuff I needed to know about. What shape the house was in, not just on the surface but underneath, and what it would take to get it into perfect shape.
The thing is, I buy a house about every 15 years, so I tend to forget the kinds of things I need to look for. But a good home inspector looks at houses every day, and does know what to look for.
So…I find a guy, talk to him, he seems quite knowledgeable. He tells me what he can and cannot do. He’s a retired home builder, he knows structural engineering, plumbing, electric, mechanical. He’s expensive, and he’s also busy. So we make a date for him to inspect the house, say X date.
Now there were access problems, as the house was being rented out and the owner had to give 24 hours notice before going in for anything. I understood this, because it’s a pain to have a house on the market and probably a double pain when the only thing you’re going to get out of it is kicked out of the house by the new owner. So I called my agent so she could call the seller’s agent so we could get the 24-hour notice thing done, and gave her the name of my guy and the time we’d agreed on. I wanted to be there, too.
She came back quick with “Oh no, that won’t work, we need to get the inspection done by X minus 3 because…” some good reason. Some perfectly believable reason. So she recommended this other person and said she thought he could get in there sooner.
Okay. My guy was booked because he was good. Did it occur to me that her guy was NOT booked because he was NOT good? No, it did not.
He was a fucking PERSONAL TRAINER who wanted to get into home inspections. All you have to do, apparently, is buy a three-ring binder that says “Home Inspection Report” and go through and check the boxes. (I did not know this until I complained about him.)
There were things that came up, and I eventually told my agent all about them, and she pretended to be horrified and said, “Oh, no, I’ll take this guy off my list and never use him again.” But unfortunately, we relied on a lot of what he told us.
And he wasn’t completely hopeless. He said things like, “Well, I’m not an electrical specialist by any means. But this electricity looks kinda squirrely and I think you ought to have an expert check it out.” (Whole 'nother story, also long and sad.)
But he also missed quite a few REALLY BIG THINGS, which have now come to light as a result of a plumbing disaster (the disaster was something no one could have predicted, it just exposed the other issues). And it’s too late. It’s been four years. It’s stuff that would have been helpful to know, and easier to deal with then than now.
I’ve calmed down a little but sheesh.
Aye, there’s the rub. Does your state have a licensing program for home inspectors? If so, was this guy licensed? If not, why did you hire him?
If I’m reading correctly that’s not the guy the OP hired. The OP did not hire the retired home builder they found independently, instead they hired a personal trainer recommended by the realtor after the realtor changed the appointment time.
Regardless of who actually did the inspection, was he licensed? (I can’t figure out from the OP if any inspection was actually done, and if not, why the rant?)
I guess my second (or third?) post was TLDR so basically: I engaged someone who sounded good. I don’t know if they are licensed, but some of the home inspectors are in a professional group which supposedly has standards.
My RE agent did an end run around me–because of the time frame, she said. Made sense at the time. My guy couldn’t get there until, say, Friday, she thought the inspection needed to be done before that, and she had a guy. HER guy was a personal trainer who wanted to get into home inspections. He did not know his stuff.
So yes, an inspection was done. It was about the same quality as an inspection I would do, except mine would have taken longer. Things were missed. About half the stuff he said was “Well, I’m not an expert, but I think somebody should look at that.”
Exactly why I wanted an expert to do the inspection.