Customer Reviews

The Home Inspection Book: A Guide for Professionals

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Before I start my review, here is a bit of background and introduction so that readers may or may not relate.
I've been working in the real estate industry for over 8 years and now starting a Home Inspection Service company.

Being quite familiar with the administrative and financial side of creating your own business and having a fairly educated idea about the home inspection industry, my next step was to get proper training on performing Home Inspections and the components of a property.

So I spent days and days browsing and evaluating dozen of web sites offering all kind of Home Inspection training, ranging from $275 to over $4,000! (I settled with AHIT but that's another story)
And also started to check dozen of books on How to become a Home Inspector.

Among other things, I went to my local Barnes and Noble and stumbled upon this book...

To make a long story short, this is probably the BEST (mark my words) investment you WILL EVER make as far as being introduced to the Home Inspection process is concerned.

This book tells you everything about home components with dozens of detailled architectural type of drawings and illustrations; it shows you how to properly conduct a home inspection, starting from the exterior, going through all of the interiors and finishing with all the optional enviromental testings a Home Inspector could perform... and much more...

It's divided in chapters for each systems inside the house (roof, electrical, plumbing, etc.. etc.. each with dozen illustrations) it gives you relevants key words and each chapter ends with a small multi-choice type of exam.

The books itself ends with a study workbook, going through all the chapters, reviewing all relevants key terms, exam type true-false questions, How would you respond situations and other practical questions.

And finally it ends with a Final 50 questions Exam with multi-choice answers that puts you in a real life examination condition, a very nice preparation for states exams.

AND ALL THAT.. FOR...$25?!?

It's an unbelievable deal, trust me! If you plan on becoming a Home Inspector, do yourself a favor and get this book!

All in all it takes aprox. less than 3 weeks (reading and taking notes at a reasonnable pace, and also attending a full time job) to go through it and then you would have MORE THAN basic knowlegde on how to become a home inspector and how to perform a home inspection.

I would however strongly suggest that after you read it and feel comfortable with the key terms, learning objectives and final exams that you enroll into a more hands-on type of training so that you see in real life what it takes to become a Home Inspector and have real examples of the type of homes and components that you will encounter in the field, as this book with its 396 pages can't possibly cover all the details and it only scratches the surfaces of the multiples components inside a house.

As for the next step, I'd suggest you get your hands on more in-depth and detailled courses about home systems to truelly complete your training.


Good Luck future Home Inspectors!

This book is great.

The book is very well written and uses diagrams/pictures to drive the points home. Sadly there are other home inspection books out there with very few pictures and illustrations. This book however not only tells you what to look for it shows you...and after all a picture is worth 1,000 words.

If you are buying or selling real estate this book will help you understand how an inspector will inspect the house.

If you plan to take either an on-line or in classroom home inspection course, this is an excellent tutorial and reference; comes with quizzes after each chapter and a workbook at the end.

I was looking for a book that surveys all aspects of home inspections in clear, easy-to-read language, and points me to the next steps for those items where I want to go further. This book is it. It also sparked a number of new ideas that might be interesting to pursue.

I purchased this book with the idea of exploring the Home Inspection business to be sure it was something I wanted to pursue before I plunk down hundreds of dollars on a correspondance course, . Although I have no doubt I have much more to learn, I have gained a lot of knowledge from this book that will stay with me the rest of my life. I feel I can compentently inspect a house now; indeed, there are about ten things I have picked out on my own house that our home inspector either missed or neglegted to mention because he gets much of his work from the real estate agent who was listing our house, and one of those things would have been a deal-breaker, something that will cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix the right way. Because of this book, which cost me less than $20.00, that will never happen to me again, so it's easy to see how well worth the money this book is. Anybody reading this who is thinking about becoming a home inspector or perhaps already is, please, please do it for the right reasons (to help people make informed decisions about the most important purchase of their lives) and not because you think it will be an easy, labor-free career. Don't work for the real estate agents; work for the people that hired you. If you do your work well and become as knowledgeable as youy can, word will get out and you won't have to rely on shady deals with the real estate agents to get work.

I have always made it a policy to personally go over any home I am about to buy, from crawl space to attic. This book is a great helper for that endeavor. There is a good start to an inspection checklist at the front of the book. Each section is logically organized and material is presented from an inspector's point of view. I have no need for the self-tests and such, but they did provide a solid reminder of what I read and I'm sure that will come back to me when I am checking out a house. A+. Go ahead and get this one and save the bucks on the 'dumbed down' home inspection books. If you have a basic understanding of homes and a rudimentary knowledge of how they are built, you won't have any problems appreciating and applying the info in this book.

I always read this before going on an inspection of a residence. Great detail and explanations. Great companion is "Building Failures" by Ransom, CodeCheck series, and "How Your House Works."