WEBVTT
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All right, and welcome to Jim Sells the Suncoast.
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Today I am honored to have Rich Carroll with me.
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He is with home team, home inspections.
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He's been doing this since 2019.
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And he has Sarasota Manatee, Venice really the whole Suncoast area.
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So welcome, rich.
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Thank you.
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So glad you're here.
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If anybody that's bought a home knows, one of the things they do is you have to get an inspection.
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You want to know what's going on, what you have in your home.
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what are the most common issues that you encounter during an inspection on the Sun Coast?
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Probably the thing that I feel like is the most important is looking at the roofs.
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The roof, it's your most important, expensive component of your house.
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And it's very important to your insurance company.
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It's the one that they're focused on.
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And it's the place where.
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Not only is it expensive, but if it does fail on you, you end up with some pretty expensive repairs.
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Actually, the roof's probably the biggest thing.
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Trying to get a good look at the roof and let people know how long they have within reason, we've had three hurricanes in the last couple of years, that even the best home inspector goes out and says, 10 years, three hurricanes hit two years.
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It's hard on them.
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But the idea of trying to understand that complexity of your home, that's probably the biggest thing is the roof after that.
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Plumbing, one of the things that we have down here is we have a lot of older homes with cast iron pipes.
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So letting people understand how their plumbing works, that's very important.
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I'm asked almost every day, who do you suggest for HVAC systems and stuff like that too?
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Because, you're talking, if you have a single system, it's 10 grand.
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If you have a double system, it's 20 and you can just count the number of condenses you have and multiply it by eight to$10,000.
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Those are expensive, so people wanna know about that too.
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right.
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How do coastal conditions like humidity and salt water, how do they impact the longevity of the home?
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So everybody's seen, like the rust or in some cases it's corrosion.
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Older houses in a lot of our neighborhoods were built around 2000, give or take.
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And if you start looking at all the corners, back when they were doing stucco on those corners, you had metal corners and they would stucco up to that metal corner and paint over it.
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So when you go out and you look at a house in the corner starting to rust, and you got rust bleeding through.
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That's the corrosion from that salt, air and moisture getting in there and really working on that metal there.
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My editor's great.
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we're gonna look like we were brilliant and seamless.
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Anyway where was I going?
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So the metal corners.
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Stucco.
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So the metal corners.
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You're gonna see a lot of corrosion there.
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And there'll be like little rust lines and stuff there.
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especially if you get out close to the water.
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a condenser, an air conditioning condenser that's.
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Five, six years old is gonna have some pretty significant rust on it just because that salt air is just so hard on the metal and it's gonna attack anything metal closer water, right?
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The more that you're gonna have to keep things painted and coated up real good so that they don't rust.
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Condensers.
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I've seen that were seven years old, looking like they were 30 years old.
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The other thing is electrical panels and stuff that are outside.
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So anything like that, any metal conduit, any electrical panels, those things will rust through, rust out, and then they'll start giving you problems because once you get moisture and electricity, you don't have to be a master electrician to know that isn't a good combination.
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What's the biggest red flag you look for when you're inspecting a home out here on the Suncoast?
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Okay, moisture more.
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Anything else?
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One of the things we love, we got the ocean.
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Love the water.
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We got some great rivers.
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If you own a kayak, it's wonderful place to live.
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Even the rainy days are cool.
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I'm from the west coast, so we're used to drizzle nine months out of the year, whereas here, I mean it rains, it's done.
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Go back outside.
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It's cool.
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But that's probably the biggest red flag is you want to make sure the water is staying where it's supposed to water inside the house.
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Any kind of moisture whatsoever is going to be destructive.
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So the first thing that we'll do is, in fact, everybody that I train walks through the house, first thing we do is we start looking at the ceiling for water stains and watermarks.
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Same thing with walls.
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any kinda large deterioration on a wall probably, is some kind of a water staining.
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Then if we find anything, first thing we do is throw a moisture meter on it.
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Let's just make sure there's no water there, because even if it's not a roof leak, even if it's not a leak through a wall or a slab.
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Something like that.
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There's a lot of times when you end up with leaks in pipes, inside lines.
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I had one about a month ago that, man, I couldn't find the leak, but after a while, it's just wait a minute.
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Do you hear it?
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And you can hear this.
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And it's a steady drip inside a wall.
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You can hear it, but you couldn't see it until we got down along the baseboard, where behind the baseboard it was clearly leaking.
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Moisture's, the biggest thing, any kind of discoloration that makes you think moisture, that makes you question marks, and that's what you gotta start looking for
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when you see moisture inside.
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If you've got that moisture buildup on there.
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Usually it takes a minute for it to happen.
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Even with a roof leak.
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Unless you have just boom, right?
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You have a lot of wind catastrophic failure of the roof.
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You lose a chunk and it starts raining inside.
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Most of the time you'll start with a little dribble and you'll get a little moisture.
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I've had several times where the owner said, I had no idea this was going on.
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and you look at them and you say, I believe you.
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the thing is a lot of us, if you have a bigger house, you may not go into every room every day, all the time.
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And then when you do go in there, I'm like the worst house guest to have.
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Don't everyone invite a home inspector over for dinner?
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'cause the first thing they're doing right is number right here.
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They're looking at your ceiling.
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they're looking for any kind of anything that could be a defect in a home inspection.
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But that's the thing is people aren't attuned to necessarily seeing stains.
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That's probably a roof leak and likely is not.
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It could be as simple as just a nail rusted out or a nail got loose and then it starts dripping through and that's that.
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The other one is plumbing leaks.
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And a lot of times you have drain line leaks, and if it's a drain line leak, you may not notice a drain line leak because it only leaks when there's water in there.
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So underneath everybody's sink is full of stuff.
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And you may be a week, two weeks, a month, into something before you go Oh.
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Everything I own is wet under here.
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What's going on?
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And by that time, since the cabinets are some are nice, but a lot of the components for the cabinets are made out of particle board, and that does not hold the water very well.
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So the first day it's fine, just wipe it off.
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Even the third day is probably fine, just wipe it off.
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After that, it's starting to get into the wood itself and break that out and cause all kinds of grief.
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So water, usually my experience is it takes a little bit of time to really cause some damage because either we don't recognize it because we don't see it, or once we do recognize it, we wanna wait and see for a day or two to make sure that we know what's going on.
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And then sometimes it's hard to get it fixed, yeah.
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Yeah, so I think that says something when the inspector comes through and says, there may be damage up there, it's moist.
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Follow up on it.
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Yeah and I always tell people too.
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And this was something that I learned from running factories was if you have a spot where it leaked, I guarantee you that is probably your next likely spot to look for leaks too.
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So yeah, problems tend to happen in the same spot.
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How do you assess the quality and condition of a roof?
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Overall, and what on the roof are you looking at?
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You're looking at the top, you're looking inside up in the attic.
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What are the, any specific things you're looking for?
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the first thing when we first start out is we'll take a walk around the house.
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We're looking at the gutters themselves and the soffits and the fascia to see what kind of condition those are in.
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With a lot of wind lately, we've seen a lot of soffits that are either missing or just damaged and bent up shape.
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Gutters, of course we keep an eye on, you wanna look for any gutters that look like they might be bleeding water back into the house, so that can be an issue too.
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Then typically what I will do under normal circumstances, I'll go up on, walk on the roof and take a look at the roof itself.
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I'm looking for broken tiles, crack tiles, missing tiles.
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if it's not a tile roof, then I'll be looking at shingles and again, it's the same thing.
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It's missing shingles.
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It's torn shingles.
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If any place where the shingles are lifted, we get a lot of wind.
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So a lot of times you can lift, you can touch those shingles and if it comes up in your hand and you can get your fingers under it, that's bad.
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So we're looking for anything that's lifted and then anything that looks like it could be a hole or should be a hole, if there's any kind of places where it's worn out.
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After that, we start looking for a thing called granular loss, and that's on your shingles.
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There's a sand up there and the way the shingle works is it's an asphalt and fiberglass shingle.
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once the sand goes away, the ultraviolet light starts working on that fiberglass and that asphalt and it stops shed and water like it's supposed to.
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And the longevity of the roof, the amount of time it's going to last is directly related to how much of that sand you still have on those shingles.
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And so we're looking at that, trying to assess that.
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And then just generally given age of the roof, of how old is it?
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how much longer will it last?
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Give people kind of an idea of what they're looking at right?
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When a roof's 40,000 plus dollars.
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You wanna know when that bill collector's coming.
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Yeah.
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And you wanna get as much use out of it as you can,
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And that's what I tell people too, in a lot of cases, the.
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roof, whether you are going to just do a repair or replace a roof.
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Once the repair costs x, then it's better to just replace it.
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And then finally what we'll do is we'll go in the attic and we'll look for leaks in the attic.
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In most cases, if you see a leak, you're not gonna see it on top of a roof.
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You can see missing shingles, you can see something, but leaks and stuff start out being easier to see in the attic.
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If you think about it, a nail is, how wide.
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And so if you have a nail hole in the top of a roof, it's gonna be pretty darn hard to see that little tiny hole, right?
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But on the inside of the attic, the water goes in and then it spreads and it makes a big wet stain there.
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really having people that go through your attic and take a good look there, that's probably the best way to find any kind of a problem that's already there.
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Okay.
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If your house does not have access to the attic, or if you don't have access in all the places, you may want to think about where could I put a scuttle, which is just the porthole that you go up into the attic.
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where is a good, safe place to put one of those?
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that's one of the maintenance points of your house.
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You don't want to have somebody go look at it once in a while.
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Don't wait 20 years to find a problem.
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And to where the ceiling's falling down and now the entire bedroom ceiling is now your right.
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Yep.
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How do you inspect a Holmes foundation?
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Yeah.
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And the inspection is very similar.
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We're looking for any kind of moisture.
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Most of the time for the slabs, we're looking for anything that could be loose crack tiles inside your house, any big cracks in there.
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Those are signs that there's a problem with it.
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We also, as we're walking around the outside of it, we want to see how your gutters are working.
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Are they dropping water right at the edge of the slab, because if it's undermining, we're gonna tell you, put some dirt back in there, get that pushed back up there and fix the grade so that we can push that water further away from the house.
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you don't want to make the, pressure of the house against the slab itself.
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You want to get the ground, the dirt, the slab.
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All to be one continuous load-bearing device to spread that weight out.
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The other thing you gotta watch out for is just settling cracks.
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'cause there's always gonna be some of those, so you wanna watch out for any kind of settling cracks, anything that looks like it's clearly a crack there.
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And then finally, the last thing you're looking for is any moisture at the baseboards or at the base of the floor.
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If you see staining, things like that.
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I'll be honest with you, I find more roof problems than slab problems.
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For sure.
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But every once in a while, you go out there and you'll find somebody that's got four corners of their house that down by the slab that's chipped out or broke up or cracked.
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And, that needs a little bit of attention.
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You'd have somebody a contractor that's experienced with fixing those structural problems out there and have them actually.
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Fix it.
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Not just, don't just stuck over it.
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You need to actually support it.
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are there any specific building materials or construction styles that are more prone to problems in this area?
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I suppose I would start out wood frame versus block.
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Wood frame houses are always gonna be more susceptible'cause they're made out of termite food, that's something that you want to be prepared for.
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So if you have a house that's predominantly wood, it, they have several here that have been here since, the twenties.
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So it's not that they won't exist.
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And I've been up in Tampa too, and they have some that are before the twenties that have been around and entire neighborhoods that are all wood.
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It's not that you can't have a wood house, you just need to protect it from the termites, and that means, regular treatments and somebody checking it and things like that.
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So that would probably be my first, if you're gonna look at what you would watch out for, after that, I'd be concerned if you're very close to water or the coast if you don't have your house set up for impact protection.
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And then as time goes on, I think what we're gonna see is those houses on the coast too have to be lifted up and raised up higher because That those storm surges were.
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They were devastating.
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I've been in several houses that have taken one to four feet of water and, it's just, it's almost a start over point at the house.
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they gut'em and start just repairing them all the way from scratch, and I think that, what you're gonna see is a lot of that particular style of building where you have mobile homes and you have houses that are sitting, the Florida style house with the low slope roof really small down there next to the water.
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I think that's gonna go away.
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So those are the two things I would say right off the bat That you're gonna see less and less of.
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And then after that, the interesting thing I think is that you're gonna see the insurance companies push around and tend to define what we will and won't have for building here.
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It's what you can afford to And some of that is, based on science and some of it's based a little bit on emotion it feels and There's gonna be some give and take there for sure too.
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So the insurance companies are gonna start picking what can be where and how you can do it.
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Because we just won't be able to afford to insure something.
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And for most of us that can't show up with, 500,$600,000 of cash, you're gonna have to have insurance because you're gonna have to have a mortgage.
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there are a couple of things that are probably happening in the industry that are a little bit, I am not saying good or bad one way or the other, but the building practices are faster than they ever were.
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And planned redundancy or the planned obsolescence is happening a little bit more.
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Some of the components that we use in our houses used to last a very long time, and they just flat don't last as long anymore.
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Be prepared once their AC units hit 10 years, once their water heaters hits 10 years old.
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You need to be prepared.
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Honestly, I had one that was 27 years old in Oregon before I changed it out.
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used to be very common is to have, those things last a lifetime.
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They're just not anymore.
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And so I would say those are things that you have to be planning and preparing for.
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you need to look at what makes the most sense.
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I've said to people for a long time if the insurance companies only give you 20 years on your shingle roof, Do you really want a 35 year shingle, a 20 year shingle or a 50 year shingle.
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there's a trade off there and you gotta figure out what makes the most sense and that, that's a personal choice, I think, right at this point still.
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gonna be in the mix of what you're considering.
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Exactly.
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And a lot of times it comes down to a math test.
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If I spend this much money and I buy this thing, is it really better?
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And you have to do your research.
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When,
00:16:50.160 --> 00:16:52.259
so when you're, I love older style stuff too.
00:16:52.340 --> 00:16:56.110
Personally, some of these places with the older style homes, I think they're cool looking.
00:16:56.110 --> 00:16:57.879
They give you that flavor of Florida, yeah.
00:16:57.940 --> 00:17:04.089
So I hate to see everything change and turn into something else, but you know that, that's part of life, right?
00:17:04.139 --> 00:17:07.019
How do you evaluate the plumbing and electrical systems in a home?
00:17:07.619 --> 00:17:10.879
There are several of them that are flagged by insurance companies.
00:17:10.879 --> 00:17:11.569
They don't like them.
00:17:11.970 --> 00:17:16.720
They're for various rea usually and it sounds like I'm saying the insurance people are bad guys and they're not.
00:17:17.075 --> 00:17:18.154
What it is what it is.
00:17:19.220 --> 00:17:20.329
They're worse than bad guys.
00:17:20.329 --> 00:17:21.559
They understand math.
00:17:21.950 --> 00:17:22.519
That's right.
00:17:22.519 --> 00:17:24.920
That's why they're bad people is they get math.
00:17:24.920 --> 00:17:25.970
It makes sense to'em.
00:17:26.269 --> 00:17:33.000
If you have so many of X and less than 1% of them start fires, that's a good one.
00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:38.190
But if you have so many of Y and 22% of them start fires, they don't want you to use those anymore.
00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:41.460
They're doing us a favor in reality, right?
00:17:41.519 --> 00:17:53.009
So if you have a Federal Pacific panel, if you have a stab lock panel, if you have a GTE Sylvania panel, those are flagged, those are all flagged challengers flagged now too.
00:17:53.349 --> 00:17:56.840
These are all flagged because they have a higher incidence of failure.
00:17:57.299 --> 00:17:58.769
So what do we do?
00:17:58.769 --> 00:18:01.829
We go into a house, we look to see what kind of a panel you have.
00:18:02.100 --> 00:18:04.890
We'll take a look at it, we'll open it up, see how it's wired.
00:18:04.920 --> 00:18:07.319
The world does not love solid strand aluminum wiring.
00:18:07.420 --> 00:18:14.225
It is notorious for, again, starting fires and not being as safe as regular copper wires.
00:18:14.225 --> 00:18:15.575
So people want copper.
00:18:16.444 --> 00:18:17.434
That being said.
00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:24.670
There are ways to remediate that aluminum too, but again, it's not as well liked as the other.
00:18:25.079 --> 00:18:29.009
So we're gonna look for copper, aluminum, solid strand or multis strand.
00:18:29.110 --> 00:18:34.240
Then once we get done with that, we're gonna check all your outlets and make sure all the lights go on and the fans go on.
00:18:34.240 --> 00:18:37.779
So basically make sure any electrical appliance is functioning.
00:18:38.329 --> 00:18:40.735
Keep in mind your inspector is looking for functioning.
00:18:41.674 --> 00:18:45.055
That doesn't mean if it's ugly, that's not our job, yeah.
00:18:45.110 --> 00:18:46.340
What do you think about how it looks?
00:18:46.340 --> 00:18:53.130
I said, you know what, to be honest with you if you want me to decorate your house, you better get used to wagon wheels and steer horns, because that's what I like.
00:18:54.610 --> 00:18:58.345
And at that point, nobody cares about my opinion on aesthetics and how it looks.
00:18:58.394 --> 00:19:00.585
But in your inspector, that's what his job is.
00:19:00.585 --> 00:19:01.875
Does it or does it not function?
00:19:01.965 --> 00:19:04.365
And if it functions it's doing its part.
00:19:04.704 --> 00:19:07.674
We're gonna look for any place where there's any kind of fire hazards.
00:19:07.674 --> 00:19:09.625
Are there exposed wires somewhere?
00:19:09.625 --> 00:19:13.255
Do you have the right kind of covers on your exterior outlets?
00:19:13.740 --> 00:19:14.519
Lights work.
00:19:14.789 --> 00:19:16.319
Do they function like they're supposed to?
00:19:16.319 --> 00:19:20.490
That's really our goal there is to make sure that the electrical system is working and functional.
00:19:20.860 --> 00:19:22.600
We're gonna make sure everything's grounded.
00:19:22.600 --> 00:19:28.210
We're gonna make sure it's wired correctly to the extent that we look at it, which is to say outlets and.
00:19:29.140 --> 00:19:29.980
Fans now,
00:19:30.160 --> 00:19:30.519
right?
00:19:31.009 --> 00:19:32.539
We're not going to take things apart.
00:19:32.539 --> 00:19:34.819
That's one thing that your home inspector shouldn't do.
00:19:34.819 --> 00:19:36.289
We're allowed to observe.
00:19:36.289 --> 00:19:46.700
But if you want somebody to go into the wall and take apart the electrical system or open up, inspection from conduit and stuff like that, you need to get an electrician to do that.
00:19:46.700 --> 00:19:47.920
Our job is to say, Hey.
00:19:48.490 --> 00:19:51.480
Here's something that you need to get an electrician to take a look at.
00:19:51.509 --> 00:19:52.350
'cause it does not look right.
00:19:53.100 --> 00:19:55.500
We expect it to do X and it did Y
00:19:56.370 --> 00:19:57.390
Same thing with plumbing.
00:19:57.450 --> 00:19:58.470
Exact same thing.
00:19:58.519 --> 00:20:02.900
If we go and we look at it and say that is not hooked up, how we would normally see it?
00:20:03.980 --> 00:20:07.759
We think you should have a plumber look at it to make sure that's gonna continue working for you.
00:20:08.390 --> 00:20:15.394
That's one of the other things, people that are doing houses, if you're building a house, they have certain milestones they're looking for, right?
00:20:15.394 --> 00:20:19.785
And a week before the house is ready to close, you walk people through and that's a milestone.
00:20:19.785 --> 00:20:23.144
And the house closes, that's a milestone and they hit 12 months.
00:20:23.144 --> 00:20:24.375
And that's another milestone.
00:20:24.434 --> 00:20:27.795
Once the house closes, it goes from the building manager to the warranty side.
00:20:27.884 --> 00:20:31.515
And then once it's a year old, then the warranty's right gone on.
00:20:31.515 --> 00:20:32.414
Almost everything.
00:20:33.045 --> 00:20:34.575
Our look at, it's a little bit different.
00:20:34.575 --> 00:20:38.394
We look at is it functioning and how long and how is it functioning?
00:20:38.394 --> 00:20:39.805
So if we look at a new build.
00:20:40.255 --> 00:20:46.674
Is that gonna work for the next five years, or is that going to fail three years down the road?
00:20:46.674 --> 00:20:51.295
It's a, there's a different perspective too, at the way people look at things, and I think that's important too.
00:20:51.715 --> 00:20:55.684
Yeah, and I think one of the things you're alluding to is did it work in the manner it's supposed to work,
00:20:56.225 --> 00:20:56.735
Yeah.
00:20:56.735 --> 00:20:58.505
And that's where it comes down to, right?
00:20:58.505 --> 00:21:01.055
It's, does it work in the manner that it was intended.
00:21:01.355 --> 00:21:05.215
And that sometimes Is an absolute firm.
00:21:05.215 --> 00:21:05.545
Yes.
00:21:05.545 --> 00:21:07.394
And other times it's not so much.
00:21:07.765 --> 00:21:12.505
And maybe you look at it and just say, you know what, I don't care if the light and the fan come on every time you hit the button.
00:21:12.815 --> 00:21:16.634
What's important to me is that the light comes on and as long as that's working, don't care.
00:21:16.975 --> 00:21:19.625
And that's where your inspection is.
00:21:19.625 --> 00:21:20.404
Yours too.
00:21:20.404 --> 00:21:21.424
You can do.
00:21:21.475 --> 00:21:26.215
Do you do anything with the overall energy efficiency of a home when you're doing an inspection?
00:21:26.845 --> 00:21:30.904
I do not, but there are several people out there that do efficiency, Okay.
00:21:31.505 --> 00:21:32.615
Type of inspections.
00:21:32.615 --> 00:21:35.615
It's a different animal I would say.
00:21:36.414 --> 00:21:39.565
Not as popular here as other places.
00:21:39.565 --> 00:21:48.815
I know in California when I was there, they had people that, that's all they focused on was just the efficiency and the carbon footprint of your house.
00:21:48.825 --> 00:21:50.255
And how to minimize that.
00:21:50.454 --> 00:21:53.875
I don't really do that, but I know that you can find people that will,
00:21:55.495 --> 00:22:00.265
how can homeowners prepare for a home inspection so that it's a smooth process?
00:22:01.884 --> 00:22:06.924
So there's a handful of things that we're gonna have to do.
00:22:07.285 --> 00:22:11.545
We're gonna have to be able to get to the majority of the stuff in your house, right?
00:22:11.595 --> 00:22:21.674
Where in some cases you're told declutter the house, and so you take everything outta the house and you put it in the garage, but you stack it all on the water heater and against the electrical panel.
00:22:22.275 --> 00:22:30.115
First off, we're gonna want to go up in the attic'cause if we do a wind or just a regular home inspection, we need to be able to get it in the attic and.
00:22:31.090 --> 00:22:32.380
Don't take this the wrong way.
00:22:32.380 --> 00:22:41.890
I'm pretty good about getting into weird spots, but I am not going to crawl into an attic if I have to crawl over your 240,000 Corvette.
00:22:42.250 --> 00:22:43.360
It's just not gonna happen.
00:22:43.460 --> 00:22:49.850
and I'm telling you, it hurts a lot worse to fall out of an attic and land on a$240,000 car.
00:22:50.045 --> 00:22:58.410
Than it does on a Pinto, so we're gonna not crawl over those, and to be fair, the point I'm trying to make is we need access to stuff.
00:22:59.490 --> 00:23:02.549
For your four point, we have to be able to get to your water heater.
00:23:02.850 --> 00:23:06.420
We have to get to the air handler and the condenser.
00:23:06.809 --> 00:23:08.730
We have to be able to get to all the plumbing.
00:23:09.480 --> 00:23:15.120
We have to be able to get to the electrical panel and we're gonna have to be able to get there enough that we can take the cover of it off.
00:23:15.660 --> 00:23:16.920
I had a house today with a.
00:23:17.509 --> 00:23:23.450
Stacked washer and dryer, and it's right up against an electrical panel and it's all hooked up to water.
00:23:23.450 --> 00:23:33.430
And I just had to say, yeah, I gotta be able to get into there and I don't move washer and dryer because those hoses are notorious for breaking.
00:23:34.039 --> 00:23:37.579
And after talking with the realtor.
00:23:38.170 --> 00:23:39.789
She just said the listing agent's coming over.
00:23:39.789 --> 00:23:41.410
I'll talk to him about it and see what we can do.
00:23:41.410 --> 00:23:45.980
And I thought as long as we all know and we're all going to do this together, I'm happy to help.
00:23:46.029 --> 00:23:52.480
What I'm saying is I just don't wanna be responsible for a broken water line that I can't really do anything about.
00:23:52.579 --> 00:23:57.350
So needless to say, before I even got a chance to go in there and talk to him, he goes, oh, not a problem.
00:23:57.350 --> 00:23:58.370
I'll move it outta the way He moves.
00:23:58.370 --> 00:23:58.819
It outta the way.
00:23:58.819 --> 00:24:03.910
And then the guy that was with me we always go out and clean, we go out two at a time at least.
00:24:03.990 --> 00:24:12.269
So broke the hose, and so they had to run in there really quick and do the quick shut out, down the water as fast as you can on this house.
00:24:12.299 --> 00:24:14.850
And so it's just one of those things, right?
00:24:15.180 --> 00:24:18.329
There, there's things that are just notorious that we have to get to.
00:24:18.569 --> 00:24:21.329
So electrical panel, you have to be able to get to and take the cover off.
00:24:21.769 --> 00:24:23.090
Need to be able to get in the attics.
00:24:23.450 --> 00:24:24.319
That's the first thing.
00:24:24.319 --> 00:24:29.090
The first thing you can do to make it a smooth process is make sure that we can get to everything we need to.
00:24:29.840 --> 00:24:37.019
The next thing I would say is make sure that some of the stuff that's, if you have something that's really weird and it's hard to figure out how to work.
00:24:37.470 --> 00:24:47.360
If The refrigerator work, you have to crawl up on a ladder and crank a handle up in the attic and then stand on one foot and spin around.
00:24:47.930 --> 00:24:48.170
Yeah.
00:24:48.509 --> 00:24:57.049
Make sure that, that stuff is very easy for us to figure out because if it's really difficult for us to figure out how to make something work, we're just gonna say, does not function.
00:24:57.049 --> 00:24:59.059
Recommend you talk to the owner about how to make it work.
00:24:59.110 --> 00:25:01.269
Where did we hide the switch to the pool light?
00:25:02.110 --> 00:25:05.490
Where did we hide the switch to the blower, to the spa?
00:25:05.950 --> 00:25:06.910
I had one the other day.
00:25:06.910 --> 00:25:07.779
It was hilarious.
00:25:07.940 --> 00:25:10.039
There's not a switch over in the pool stuff.
00:25:10.039 --> 00:25:13.029
There's not a switch on the one one of the bathrooms had a light switch in it.
00:25:13.079 --> 00:25:18.930
it just so happened that when the person that was working with me was testing all the switches in the bathroom, they go, what does this do?
00:25:19.480 --> 00:25:21.069
I'm like, the floor went on.
00:25:21.069 --> 00:25:21.910
How did that happen?
00:25:21.960 --> 00:25:31.140
And so you back in, find who touched what and so if you have stuff like that make it as simple as possible because otherwise you end up with this.
00:25:31.140 --> 00:25:31.829
It doesn't work.
00:25:32.355 --> 00:25:36.009
and'cause there's a limit to how long we're gonna look for a switch that's somewhere.
00:25:36.340 --> 00:25:43.049
I one time went up and there's A-G-F-C-I reset above the kitchen in the attic again.
00:25:43.299 --> 00:25:46.059
We flagged that and said, listen, you need to take that out of there.
00:25:46.090 --> 00:25:51.039
'cause A-G-F-C-I that says you have to go up from the attic to reset your hood, fan for your oven.
00:25:51.299 --> 00:25:52.944
That's a bad place for it.
00:25:54.295 --> 00:26:02.995
But if you have something like that, let us know ahead of time, because otherwise you're gonna get home and that hood fan's not gonna work for three weeks and then it's gonna dawn on you.
00:26:03.835 --> 00:26:04.855
Oh, that's where that is.
00:26:05.065 --> 00:26:13.184
The other thing I would say too is we're not gonna move furniture or appliances, so if there's something that clearly you need to be able to get to.
00:26:13.630 --> 00:26:14.884
Have a clear path to it.
00:26:15.334 --> 00:26:16.864
And we open all the windows.
00:26:16.963 --> 00:26:24.144
If one of my guys was to stand with his boots, even with booties on it, on top of your couch to open a window, I'd have to choke'em out.
00:26:24.144 --> 00:26:25.193
That's just, they know it.
00:26:25.254 --> 00:26:25.794
I know it.
00:26:25.794 --> 00:26:28.064
It's just that's how it goes down, that's just not cool.
00:26:28.619 --> 00:26:31.828
Access to stuff that's gonna be the most important thing.
00:26:32.239 --> 00:26:35.838
Anything that's really odd, I would leave instructions on how things work.
00:26:36.139 --> 00:26:51.249
I certainly wouldn't try to hide anything because if you hide stuff, then it just looks like you're trying to do something dishonest, and so then you end up with something in the inspection report that says, I accidentally had to move this cabinet so that I could show you this giant hole in the wall.
00:26:51.818 --> 00:26:52.179
Yeah.
00:26:52.834 --> 00:26:56.844
And maybe you didn't mean to, maybe it wasn't being tricky, but it certainly does.
00:26:56.894 --> 00:26:59.144
Sure that plants that seed.
00:26:59.244 --> 00:26:59.754
Yeah.
00:26:59.754 --> 00:27:02.903
And doesn't it work best when we all are honest and upfront?
00:27:02.903 --> 00:27:04.794
Just say, Hey, this is a condition of the house.
00:27:04.844 --> 00:27:10.733
Fixing the roof and making sure there's no leaks should include making sure that you've, painted the ceilings and all that.
00:27:10.733 --> 00:27:11.574
Disclose it.
00:27:12.203 --> 00:27:13.314
Like you're supposed to.
00:27:13.554 --> 00:27:16.223
one of the things that I see that plants more.
00:27:17.244 --> 00:27:25.818
Concern in our client's mind is when they go into a house and they see stains on the ceiling, they don't like that and they're like, oh man, the roof probably leaks.
00:27:25.879 --> 00:27:27.409
They replaced it a year and a half ago.
00:27:27.409 --> 00:27:29.929
It probably doesn't, they just haven't painted the ceilings.
00:27:30.489 --> 00:27:31.629
I would think about that.
00:27:31.739 --> 00:27:38.149
You have a realtor take their advice, they're gonna tell you not to leave a problem where it's obvious and where there's gonna be a question
00:27:38.149 --> 00:27:38.358
from.
00:27:38.409 --> 00:27:48.409
So to sum that one up, attic access, electrical panel access AC access, and, water heater access, those are gonna be real important.
00:27:48.409 --> 00:27:52.818
Then access to anything inside the house that needs to be looked at.
00:27:53.058 --> 00:27:59.209
I would make sure that you have your water on and that you have your water bill paid and you have your gas on.
00:27:59.209 --> 00:28:04.608
You have your gas bill paid because we get to a house and we are doing the inspection.
00:28:05.193 --> 00:28:10.624
If the water's off, say for instance, if the county stuck a pin in it, we're not gonna cut the pin.
00:28:10.874 --> 00:28:16.673
We're not, no matter what the county, everybody can say it's okay, but it's not okay.
00:28:16.713 --> 00:28:17.703
We're not gonna go around.
00:28:17.754 --> 00:28:18.443
The county.
00:28:18.744 --> 00:28:20.844
And that means everything on your fourth point just failed.
00:28:20.844 --> 00:28:27.294
Your water heater, your hot water, your sink, everything just is gonna show up as did not work'cause you don't have water.
00:28:27.324 --> 00:28:27.744
Sure.
00:28:27.923 --> 00:28:34.374
And it sounds like they should be working with their real estate agent with clear communication to guide'em through.
00:28:34.423 --> 00:28:39.044
Are there any inspections that are often overlooked but should be prioritized in this area?
00:28:41.983 --> 00:28:47.254
So I'd like I talked there about insurance inspections.
00:28:47.254 --> 00:28:51.963
First you have a four point inspection if your house is over five years old.
00:28:52.054 --> 00:28:57.334
If your house is 20 years old, definitely ask your insurance agent, do I need a four point?
00:28:59.449 --> 00:29:03.348
My understanding is 20 years old, you definitely have to have one.
00:29:03.399 --> 00:29:07.568
Nowadays, when you get much over five, eight years old, you're gonna have to have one.
00:29:08.233 --> 00:29:09.584
Work with your insurance agent.
00:29:09.584 --> 00:29:16.744
Make that phone call before we get there because almost everybody tries to bundle and save you a little bit of money by being there.
00:29:17.104 --> 00:29:18.693
But that's a very important thing.
00:29:18.693 --> 00:29:34.294
There's nothing worse than finding out that you waited to get your four point'cause you're gonna save yourself a couple of dollars and then you're week from closing and your insurance is gonna be$8,000 a year because of the four point.
00:29:35.068 --> 00:29:38.159
So that's all something you should think about a little bit.
00:29:38.159 --> 00:29:39.689
I would definitely get your four point.
00:29:40.119 --> 00:29:43.119
If you look at a four point, it is like pass fail for the house.
00:29:43.119 --> 00:29:46.449
So if we go into a house and we do the four point and we find.
00:29:47.463 --> 00:29:51.844
Something wrong with the electrical system, something wrong with the plumbing system that's pass fail.
00:29:52.084 --> 00:29:55.084
The insurance company's gonna say before we insure the house.
00:29:55.574 --> 00:29:56.328
You need to fix that.
00:29:56.574 --> 00:29:56.693
it.
00:29:56.824 --> 00:29:58.774
That's now I'm not an insurance guy.
00:29:59.449 --> 00:30:08.858
I can't say that's always how everybody works, but 99% of them that I've been involved with, and I do three or four of these a day they all want that fixed.
00:30:08.909 --> 00:30:18.389
If you have a roof that is newer than a 2002, you're always better off to get a wind mitigation.
00:30:18.389 --> 00:30:29.519
I don't know of anybody that charges so much money in their wind mitigation that it won't offset the deductions you're gonna get on your homeowner's insurance with wind mitigation if you have a newer roof.
00:30:30.254 --> 00:30:44.959
Wind mitigation is a way of reducing your insurance costs because your insurance has to give you deductions for each one of the categories that you are qualified for on a win mitigation.
00:30:44.959 --> 00:30:54.973
So although we can't tell you, oh, it's gonna be$18, we can tell you are gonna get a deduction for this because you know it, it's all kinda legislated in there.
00:30:55.064 --> 00:30:55.604
So right.
00:30:56.249 --> 00:31:05.308
Definitely worth your while for those two PE inspections are a good idea, especially if you have wood or you're close to where there's going to be termites.
00:31:05.358 --> 00:31:14.649
I firmly think that as a rule, they're pretty reasonably priced It's better to find out that you got nothing and at least you have a, you're starting from square one.
00:31:14.699 --> 00:31:16.798
the peace of mind of knowing that too goes along.
00:31:16.804 --> 00:31:17.568
Just, yeah.
00:31:17.608 --> 00:31:19.798
Do you hear or might chewing on the wood.
00:31:19.828 --> 00:31:20.129
Yeah.
00:31:20.169 --> 00:31:27.009
Other inspections, if your house is pre 82, pre 84, I would definitely recommend a sewer scope.
00:31:28.834 --> 00:31:42.274
your home inspection may or may not determine if you have cast iron pipe, but they definitely won't be able to tell you without a sewer scope if the cast iron pipe is deteriorated to the point where it be replaced.
00:31:42.903 --> 00:31:52.443
The way we build drain lines in Florida, especially pre 82, was you have big three and four inch lines that are.
00:31:53.358 --> 00:31:55.699
Sunk into the slab of your home.
00:31:56.389 --> 00:31:57.558
They're made outta cast iron.
00:31:57.558 --> 00:31:59.899
Cast iron tends to live about 50 years.
00:32:01.499 --> 00:32:05.969
So anything that's 50 years old is worth having it scoped.
00:32:06.528 --> 00:32:14.419
scoping them is expensive, but it's not as expensive as if you have to have somebody take a concrete saw to the, to your living room.
00:32:14.869 --> 00:32:16.649
So it's probably.
00:32:17.144 --> 00:32:22.514
One of the least sexy inspections to do.
00:32:23.354 --> 00:32:29.923
But in my mind, for the times that people call me and say, Hey, I got a cracked cast iron pipe you didn't tell me about.
00:32:29.923 --> 00:32:34.854
And it's I didn't tell you it was cracked because you didn't get a sewer scope.
00:32:35.433 --> 00:32:46.703
And I did tell you that the age of your house has a, possibility of having cast iron, and we recommend that you have somebody scope it and plumber evaluate it.
00:32:48.489 --> 00:32:51.189
Unfortunately you're on your own with that one.
00:32:51.219 --> 00:32:57.538
'cause we did say that and the risk versus reward is huge, I guess is what I would say with cast iron pipe.
00:32:57.538 --> 00:32:58.828
So I would be aware of that.
00:32:59.159 --> 00:33:05.459
I'd also consider that a red flag if somebody says, Hey, you got cast iron in the vents, or you got cast iron in the attic.
00:33:06.088 --> 00:33:13.919
Not everybody, when they re-pipe a house will change those because they don't deteriorate as much'cause they're not in constant contact with water.
00:33:14.028 --> 00:33:18.028
But, it still could mean that you have cast iron everywhere.
00:33:18.568 --> 00:33:22.683
Be aware, ask some questions see if it makes sense.
00:33:22.683 --> 00:33:35.433
I've just been going by luck until, I started getting into the home inspection business and learning a little bit more about this, and now it's man, I would definitely like to have one of these older places, but I would definitely not buy someone.
00:33:35.433 --> 00:33:38.913
Built in the seventies and not have somebody stick a camera down there just to see.
00:33:38.943 --> 00:33:39.153
Yeah.
00:33:39.183 --> 00:33:41.433
go in knowing what's there and be forewarned.
00:33:42.149 --> 00:33:44.068
Knowledge is always gonna be power, right?
00:33:44.548 --> 00:33:44.699
Yep.
00:33:44.788 --> 00:33:46.969
You can make any decision you want.
00:33:46.969 --> 00:33:51.949
If you have all the knowledge of which way going to, probably the outcome, it's worth it.
00:33:52.639 --> 00:34:04.524
But the cast iron ones, it's expensive if it doesn't work out those are probably the biggest ones that I would say, the other stuff that you can get, you can have an HVAC guy come out and go through your HVAC system.
00:34:04.973 --> 00:34:10.804
But by and large and this is my opinion, it's not really a statement of science.
00:34:11.043 --> 00:34:17.614
But once they start hitting 10 years, you need to be prepared because you could get 18 or 20 years out of it.
00:34:17.614 --> 00:34:17.703
But.
00:34:18.364 --> 00:34:21.753
That means you're taking good care of it, you're taking very good care of it.
00:34:21.753 --> 00:34:26.373
You're having an HVAC guy come out and service it regularly, and you're watching it.
00:34:26.433 --> 00:34:32.253
If that isn't the case, you better be prepared after 10 years to put another one in.
00:34:32.253 --> 00:34:33.994
And those are expensive decisions.
00:34:34.103 --> 00:34:34.764
Without a doubt.
00:34:34.764 --> 00:34:35.333
Oh, absolutely.
00:34:36.143 --> 00:34:41.278
You can get an electrician to come in and do a electric electrical evaluation of the entire house too.
00:34:41.608 --> 00:34:44.509
But again, I don't really see that as being the huge ones.
00:34:44.538 --> 00:34:50.509
I would consider the cast iron pipe to be one that I would look at definitely get a pest inspection.
00:34:50.568 --> 00:34:51.768
I think those are worthwhile.
00:34:52.458 --> 00:34:53.489
But those are the big ones.
00:34:53.489 --> 00:34:53.909
I see.
00:34:55.078 --> 00:34:55.409
Cool.
00:34:55.918 --> 00:34:56.548
Rich.
00:34:57.014 --> 00:34:58.364
Thank you for joining me today.
00:34:58.364 --> 00:34:59.953
I really appreciate you coming out.
00:35:00.164 --> 00:35:04.114
I learn every time I talk with people who are experts in their field and what they're doing.
00:35:04.114 --> 00:35:09.324
So the home inspection vital when you're going into a home, as you just said, knowledge is power.
00:35:09.384 --> 00:35:10.583
Know what you're getting into.
00:35:10.853 --> 00:35:14.023
Anything else you would say about a home inspection before we sign off?
00:35:14.603 --> 00:35:20.349
Just a, and this isn't so much a home inspection is it's more of a commercial for realtors.
00:35:20.449 --> 00:35:31.309
They do a job they have a function in this process and they can help you navigate some pretty tricky questions that come up, and that's the, what they're there for.
00:35:31.648 --> 00:35:40.434
I may not always say you should have this inspection or that inspection outside, but I really feel strongly that you should always have a realtor.
00:35:40.563 --> 00:35:58.994
when we work on jobs where people don't have a realtor It's really difficult for folks because there's a lot of really hard decisions to make and a lot of things that need to be explained to you, not just on the house itself, Finding the house is the first and maybe the easy part but finding out about the house, finding out how to own the house.
00:35:58.994 --> 00:36:00.403
If you really own the house.
00:36:00.728 --> 00:36:05.148
The legalities of owning a house what kind of expenses you're gonna have for the house.
00:36:05.489 --> 00:36:10.943
I really feel the realtors, the ones that I work with that are very good, are really experts at.
00:36:11.278 --> 00:36:13.349
Helping you negotiate the whole process.
00:36:13.349 --> 00:36:21.148
They keep a lot of balls up in the air for making the process work, so everybody's got their own role in this process.
00:36:21.148 --> 00:36:23.123
You got Insurance people that are helping you.
00:36:23.123 --> 00:36:27.543
You got title people, you got attorneys, you got, your inspection folks.
00:36:27.543 --> 00:36:32.923
there's a lot of moving parts and having the right team to help you is huge, my opinion.
00:36:32.983 --> 00:36:33.373
Absolutely.
00:36:33.818 --> 00:36:35.557
Same thing with the inspection teams.
00:36:35.608 --> 00:36:37.108
There's a lot of good inspectors out there.
00:36:37.108 --> 00:36:40.827
I like to think we do a very reputable job and nothing that we have to be ashamed of.
00:36:41.248 --> 00:36:43.737
There's other people out there that do a very reputable job.
00:36:43.737 --> 00:36:45.327
Nothing to be ashamed of too.
00:36:45.387 --> 00:36:54.157
And, just take the time to make sure that your guy is insured, that he's licensed, that he's got some level of experience.
00:36:54.378 --> 00:36:57.083
None of us would want to go to the eye doctor that's doing his.
00:36:57.543 --> 00:36:59.222
Third lasing surgery, right?
00:36:59.302 --> 00:37:04.992
They all have to have number three, but number 30,000 makes you feel a little more confident.
00:37:05.048 --> 00:37:05.250
yeah, so I
00:37:05.893 --> 00:37:11.202
would look for somebody that's got some experience and at least a way of vetting themselves so that they can get through the process.
00:37:11.202 --> 00:37:13.632
Those are the things that just pop into my mind right now.
00:37:13.632 --> 00:37:15.242
Appreciate you inviting me.
00:37:15.242 --> 00:37:17.492
It's always fun to talk to people about houses.
00:37:17.543 --> 00:37:19.972
it's turned into, a big part of my life.
00:37:19.972 --> 00:37:21.173
So it's important.
00:37:22.103 --> 00:37:22.432
Yeah.
00:37:22.543 --> 00:37:22.873
Thank you.
00:00:54.865 --> 00:00:57.420
All right, and welcome to Jim Sells the Suncoast.
00:00:57.570 --> 00:01:00.210
Today I am honored to have Rich Carroll with me.
00:01:00.210 --> 00:01:02.429
He is with home team, home inspections.
00:01:02.760 --> 00:01:04.920
He's been doing this since 2019.
00:01:05.409 --> 00:01:10.189
And he has Sarasota Manatee, Venice really the whole Suncoast area.
00:01:10.370 --> 00:01:11.359
So welcome, rich.
00:01:12.170 --> 00:01:12.620
Thank you.
00:01:13.609 --> 00:01:14.539
So glad you're here.
00:01:14.590 --> 00:01:18.849
If anybody that's bought a home knows, one of the things they do is you have to get an inspection.
00:01:18.909 --> 00:01:22.000
You want to know what's going on, what you have in your home.
00:01:22.460 --> 00:01:27.300
what are the most common issues that you encounter during an inspection on the Sun Coast?
00:01:28.539 --> 00:01:33.150
Probably the thing that I feel like is the most important is looking at the roofs.
00:01:33.150 --> 00:01:37.800
The roof, it's your most important, expensive component of your house.
00:01:37.879 --> 00:01:40.280
And it's very important to your insurance company.
00:01:40.280 --> 00:01:41.870
It's the one that they're focused on.
00:01:42.289 --> 00:01:44.150
And it's the place where.
00:01:44.615 --> 00:01:50.405
Not only is it expensive, but if it does fail on you, you end up with some pretty expensive repairs.
00:01:50.465 --> 00:01:52.234
Actually, the roof's probably the biggest thing.
00:01:52.234 --> 00:02:07.115
Trying to get a good look at the roof and let people know how long they have within reason, we've had three hurricanes in the last couple of years, that even the best home inspector goes out and says, 10 years, three hurricanes hit two years.
00:02:07.574 --> 00:02:08.384
It's hard on them.
00:02:08.715 --> 00:02:16.515
But the idea of trying to understand that complexity of your home, that's probably the biggest thing is the roof after that.
00:02:16.564 --> 00:02:21.365
Plumbing, one of the things that we have down here is we have a lot of older homes with cast iron pipes.
00:02:21.365 --> 00:02:25.444
So letting people understand how their plumbing works, that's very important.
00:02:25.544 --> 00:02:30.944
I'm asked almost every day, who do you suggest for HVAC systems and stuff like that too?
00:02:30.944 --> 00:02:34.495
Because, you're talking, if you have a single system, it's 10 grand.
00:02:34.495 --> 00:02:43.974
If you have a double system, it's 20 and you can just count the number of condenses you have and multiply it by eight to$10,000.
00:02:44.015 --> 00:02:46.865
Those are expensive, so people wanna know about that too.
00:02:46.914 --> 00:02:47.335
right.
00:02:47.935 --> 00:02:53.034
How do coastal conditions like humidity and salt water, how do they impact the longevity of the home?
00:02:53.724 --> 00:03:00.335
So everybody's seen, like the rust or in some cases it's corrosion.
00:03:00.385 --> 00:03:05.585
Older houses in a lot of our neighborhoods were built around 2000, give or take.
00:03:05.615 --> 00:03:13.385
And if you start looking at all the corners, back when they were doing stucco on those corners, you had metal corners and they would stucco up to that metal corner and paint over it.
00:03:13.745 --> 00:03:18.245
So when you go out and you look at a house in the corner starting to rust, and you got rust bleeding through.
00:03:18.724 --> 00:03:24.275
That's the corrosion from that salt, air and moisture getting in there and really working on that metal there.
00:03:24.585 --> 00:03:25.365
My editor's great.
00:03:25.365 --> 00:03:27.105
we're gonna look like we were brilliant and seamless.
00:03:27.155 --> 00:03:28.425
Anyway where was I going?
00:03:28.495 --> 00:03:29.490
So the metal corners.
00:03:29.784 --> 00:03:30.325
Stucco.
00:03:30.375 --> 00:03:31.185
So the metal corners.
00:03:31.185 --> 00:03:32.594
You're gonna see a lot of corrosion there.
00:03:32.594 --> 00:03:34.575
And there'll be like little rust lines and stuff there.
00:03:34.945 --> 00:03:36.985
especially if you get out close to the water.
00:03:37.405 --> 00:03:40.034
a condenser, an air conditioning condenser that's.
00:03:40.409 --> 00:03:51.040
Five, six years old is gonna have some pretty significant rust on it just because that salt air is just so hard on the metal and it's gonna attack anything metal closer water, right?
00:03:51.040 --> 00:03:55.909
The more that you're gonna have to keep things painted and coated up real good so that they don't rust.
00:03:55.960 --> 00:03:56.650
Condensers.
00:03:56.650 --> 00:04:00.200
I've seen that were seven years old, looking like they were 30 years old.
00:04:00.530 --> 00:04:03.500
The other thing is electrical panels and stuff that are outside.
00:04:03.500 --> 00:04:17.339
So anything like that, any metal conduit, any electrical panels, those things will rust through, rust out, and then they'll start giving you problems because once you get moisture and electricity, you don't have to be a master electrician to know that isn't a good combination.
00:04:17.389 --> 00:04:21.349
What's the biggest red flag you look for when you're inspecting a home out here on the Suncoast?
00:04:22.009 --> 00:04:23.139
Okay, moisture more.
00:04:23.589 --> 00:04:24.099
Anything else?
00:04:24.589 --> 00:04:26.500
One of the things we love, we got the ocean.
00:04:26.769 --> 00:04:27.519
Love the water.
00:04:27.519 --> 00:04:28.629
We got some great rivers.
00:04:28.659 --> 00:04:30.849
If you own a kayak, it's wonderful place to live.
00:04:31.269 --> 00:04:32.800
Even the rainy days are cool.
00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:39.040
I'm from the west coast, so we're used to drizzle nine months out of the year, whereas here, I mean it rains, it's done.
00:04:39.370 --> 00:04:40.149
Go back outside.
00:04:40.149 --> 00:04:40.534
It's cool.
00:04:41.074 --> 00:04:47.144
But that's probably the biggest red flag is you want to make sure the water is staying where it's supposed to water inside the house.
00:04:47.144 --> 00:04:50.415
Any kind of moisture whatsoever is going to be destructive.
00:04:50.894 --> 00:04:59.894
So the first thing that we'll do is, in fact, everybody that I train walks through the house, first thing we do is we start looking at the ceiling for water stains and watermarks.
00:04:59.944 --> 00:05:00.964
Same thing with walls.
00:05:01.094 --> 00:05:07.284
any kinda large deterioration on a wall probably, is some kind of a water staining.
00:05:07.704 --> 00:05:11.305
Then if we find anything, first thing we do is throw a moisture meter on it.
00:05:11.484 --> 00:05:17.819
Let's just make sure there's no water there, because even if it's not a roof leak, even if it's not a leak through a wall or a slab.
00:05:17.849 --> 00:05:18.329
Something like that.
00:05:18.479 --> 00:05:22.464
There's a lot of times when you end up with leaks in pipes, inside lines.
00:05:22.464 --> 00:05:27.834
I had one about a month ago that, man, I couldn't find the leak, but after a while, it's just wait a minute.
00:05:27.834 --> 00:05:28.464
Do you hear it?
00:05:28.644 --> 00:05:29.454
And you can hear this.
00:05:32.185 --> 00:05:34.164
And it's a steady drip inside a wall.
00:05:34.194 --> 00:05:41.364
You can hear it, but you couldn't see it until we got down along the baseboard, where behind the baseboard it was clearly leaking.
00:05:42.234 --> 00:05:49.794
Moisture's, the biggest thing, any kind of discoloration that makes you think moisture, that makes you question marks, and that's what you gotta start looking for
00:05:52.314 --> 00:05:54.114
when you see moisture inside.
00:05:54.354 --> 00:05:56.685
If you've got that moisture buildup on there.
00:05:57.464 --> 00:05:59.774
Usually it takes a minute for it to happen.
00:05:59.824 --> 00:06:01.055
Even with a roof leak.
00:06:01.084 --> 00:06:04.174
Unless you have just boom, right?
00:06:04.174 --> 00:06:07.024
You have a lot of wind catastrophic failure of the roof.
00:06:07.024 --> 00:06:09.514
You lose a chunk and it starts raining inside.
00:06:09.844 --> 00:06:13.625
Most of the time you'll start with a little dribble and you'll get a little moisture.
00:06:14.034 --> 00:06:17.904
I've had several times where the owner said, I had no idea this was going on.
00:06:18.185 --> 00:06:19.984
and you look at them and you say, I believe you.
00:06:21.049 --> 00:06:27.120
the thing is a lot of us, if you have a bigger house, you may not go into every room every day, all the time.
00:06:27.479 --> 00:06:30.959
And then when you do go in there, I'm like the worst house guest to have.
00:06:31.049 --> 00:06:33.209
Don't everyone invite a home inspector over for dinner?
00:06:33.239 --> 00:06:35.500
'cause the first thing they're doing right is number right here.
00:06:35.739 --> 00:06:36.909
They're looking at your ceiling.
00:06:36.909 --> 00:06:41.209
they're looking for any kind of anything that could be a defect in a home inspection.
00:06:41.819 --> 00:06:45.680
But that's the thing is people aren't attuned to necessarily seeing stains.
00:06:45.729 --> 00:06:48.669
That's probably a roof leak and likely is not.
00:06:49.060 --> 00:06:56.139
It could be as simple as just a nail rusted out or a nail got loose and then it starts dripping through and that's that.
00:06:56.799 --> 00:06:58.649
The other one is plumbing leaks.
00:06:58.709 --> 00:07:07.229
And a lot of times you have drain line leaks, and if it's a drain line leak, you may not notice a drain line leak because it only leaks when there's water in there.
00:07:07.449 --> 00:07:10.569
So underneath everybody's sink is full of stuff.
00:07:10.959 --> 00:07:17.289
And you may be a week, two weeks, a month, into something before you go Oh.
00:07:17.859 --> 00:07:19.689
Everything I own is wet under here.
00:07:19.739 --> 00:07:20.549
What's going on?
00:07:20.849 --> 00:07:29.419
And by that time, since the cabinets are some are nice, but a lot of the components for the cabinets are made out of particle board, and that does not hold the water very well.
00:07:29.419 --> 00:07:32.719
So the first day it's fine, just wipe it off.
00:07:32.719 --> 00:07:35.089
Even the third day is probably fine, just wipe it off.
00:07:35.419 --> 00:07:40.659
After that, it's starting to get into the wood itself and break that out and cause all kinds of grief.
00:07:40.709 --> 00:07:56.879
So water, usually my experience is it takes a little bit of time to really cause some damage because either we don't recognize it because we don't see it, or once we do recognize it, we wanna wait and see for a day or two to make sure that we know what's going on.
00:07:56.879 --> 00:07:59.529
And then sometimes it's hard to get it fixed, yeah.
00:07:59.639 --> 00:08:04.859
Yeah, so I think that says something when the inspector comes through and says, there may be damage up there, it's moist.
00:08:05.229 --> 00:08:06.039
Follow up on it.
00:08:06.370 --> 00:08:08.329
Yeah and I always tell people too.
00:08:09.724 --> 00:08:21.174
And this was something that I learned from running factories was if you have a spot where it leaked, I guarantee you that is probably your next likely spot to look for leaks too.
00:08:21.174 --> 00:08:24.544
So yeah, problems tend to happen in the same spot.
00:08:24.754 --> 00:08:27.154
How do you assess the quality and condition of a roof?
00:08:27.464 --> 00:08:29.254
Overall, and what on the roof are you looking at?
00:08:29.254 --> 00:08:32.284
You're looking at the top, you're looking inside up in the attic.
00:08:32.345 --> 00:08:35.014
What are the, any specific things you're looking for?
00:08:35.384 --> 00:08:39.185
the first thing when we first start out is we'll take a walk around the house.
00:08:39.305 --> 00:08:44.575
We're looking at the gutters themselves and the soffits and the fascia to see what kind of condition those are in.
00:08:44.894 --> 00:08:51.384
With a lot of wind lately, we've seen a lot of soffits that are either missing or just damaged and bent up shape.
00:08:51.865 --> 00:08:59.185
Gutters, of course we keep an eye on, you wanna look for any gutters that look like they might be bleeding water back into the house, so that can be an issue too.
00:08:59.695 --> 00:09:07.095
Then typically what I will do under normal circumstances, I'll go up on, walk on the roof and take a look at the roof itself.
00:09:07.095 --> 00:09:11.085
I'm looking for broken tiles, crack tiles, missing tiles.
00:09:11.134 --> 00:09:15.169
if it's not a tile roof, then I'll be looking at shingles and again, it's the same thing.
00:09:15.169 --> 00:09:16.580
It's missing shingles.
00:09:16.634 --> 00:09:17.685
It's torn shingles.
00:09:17.955 --> 00:09:20.685
If any place where the shingles are lifted, we get a lot of wind.
00:09:20.685 --> 00:09:27.735
So a lot of times you can lift, you can touch those shingles and if it comes up in your hand and you can get your fingers under it, that's bad.
00:09:27.735 --> 00:09:36.764
So we're looking for anything that's lifted and then anything that looks like it could be a hole or should be a hole, if there's any kind of places where it's worn out.
00:09:37.215 --> 00:09:42.195
After that, we start looking for a thing called granular loss, and that's on your shingles.
00:09:42.345 --> 00:09:48.134
There's a sand up there and the way the shingle works is it's an asphalt and fiberglass shingle.
00:09:48.615 --> 00:09:57.445
once the sand goes away, the ultraviolet light starts working on that fiberglass and that asphalt and it stops shed and water like it's supposed to.
00:09:57.595 --> 00:10:05.575
And the longevity of the roof, the amount of time it's going to last is directly related to how much of that sand you still have on those shingles.
00:10:05.995 --> 00:10:08.575
And so we're looking at that, trying to assess that.
00:10:08.575 --> 00:10:12.055
And then just generally given age of the roof, of how old is it?
00:10:12.105 --> 00:10:13.455
how much longer will it last?
00:10:13.455 --> 00:10:16.065
Give people kind of an idea of what they're looking at right?
00:10:16.845 --> 00:10:18.945
When a roof's 40,000 plus dollars.
00:10:19.800 --> 00:10:22.139
You wanna know when that bill collector's coming.
00:10:22.150 --> 00:10:22.420
Yeah.
00:10:22.420 --> 00:10:24.370
And you wanna get as much use out of it as you can,
00:10:24.400 --> 00:10:28.905
And that's what I tell people too, in a lot of cases, the.
00:10:29.800 --> 00:10:34.190
roof, whether you are going to just do a repair or replace a roof.
00:10:34.240 --> 00:10:38.230
Once the repair costs x, then it's better to just replace it.
00:10:38.769 --> 00:10:42.430
And then finally what we'll do is we'll go in the attic and we'll look for leaks in the attic.
00:10:43.480 --> 00:10:47.920
In most cases, if you see a leak, you're not gonna see it on top of a roof.
00:10:48.350 --> 00:10:54.190
You can see missing shingles, you can see something, but leaks and stuff start out being easier to see in the attic.
00:10:54.379 --> 00:10:57.759
If you think about it, a nail is, how wide.
00:10:58.060 --> 00:11:03.879
And so if you have a nail hole in the top of a roof, it's gonna be pretty darn hard to see that little tiny hole, right?
00:11:04.360 --> 00:11:10.720
But on the inside of the attic, the water goes in and then it spreads and it makes a big wet stain there.
00:11:11.280 --> 00:11:18.950
really having people that go through your attic and take a good look there, that's probably the best way to find any kind of a problem that's already there.
00:11:19.820 --> 00:11:20.150
Okay.
00:11:20.150 --> 00:11:30.540
If your house does not have access to the attic, or if you don't have access in all the places, you may want to think about where could I put a scuttle, which is just the porthole that you go up into the attic.
00:11:30.730 --> 00:11:33.280
where is a good, safe place to put one of those?
00:11:33.280 --> 00:11:34.960
that's one of the maintenance points of your house.
00:11:34.960 --> 00:11:37.150
You don't want to have somebody go look at it once in a while.
00:11:37.220 --> 00:11:38.990
Don't wait 20 years to find a problem.
00:11:39.280 --> 00:11:43.629
And to where the ceiling's falling down and now the entire bedroom ceiling is now your right.
00:11:43.680 --> 00:11:43.860
Yep.
00:11:44.970 --> 00:11:46.889
How do you inspect a Holmes foundation?
00:11:47.100 --> 00:11:47.370
Yeah.
00:11:47.370 --> 00:11:49.080
And the inspection is very similar.
00:11:49.080 --> 00:11:50.759
We're looking for any kind of moisture.
00:11:51.090 --> 00:11:57.810
Most of the time for the slabs, we're looking for anything that could be loose crack tiles inside your house, any big cracks in there.
00:11:57.810 --> 00:12:00.030
Those are signs that there's a problem with it.
00:12:00.300 --> 00:12:04.800
We also, as we're walking around the outside of it, we want to see how your gutters are working.
00:12:04.850 --> 00:12:16.920
Are they dropping water right at the edge of the slab, because if it's undermining, we're gonna tell you, put some dirt back in there, get that pushed back up there and fix the grade so that we can push that water further away from the house.
00:12:16.970 --> 00:12:21.690
you don't want to make the, pressure of the house against the slab itself.
00:12:21.690 --> 00:12:24.360
You want to get the ground, the dirt, the slab.
00:12:24.440 --> 00:12:28.590
All to be one continuous load-bearing device to spread that weight out.
00:12:28.840 --> 00:12:32.425
The other thing you gotta watch out for is just settling cracks.
00:12:32.455 --> 00:12:39.565
'cause there's always gonna be some of those, so you wanna watch out for any kind of settling cracks, anything that looks like it's clearly a crack there.
00:12:39.685 --> 00:12:45.295
And then finally, the last thing you're looking for is any moisture at the baseboards or at the base of the floor.
00:12:45.345 --> 00:12:47.115
If you see staining, things like that.
00:12:47.754 --> 00:12:50.845
I'll be honest with you, I find more roof problems than slab problems.
00:12:50.995 --> 00:12:51.355
For sure.
00:12:51.355 --> 00:13:00.465
But every once in a while, you go out there and you'll find somebody that's got four corners of their house that down by the slab that's chipped out or broke up or cracked.
00:13:00.465 --> 00:13:02.445
And, that needs a little bit of attention.
00:13:02.445 --> 00:13:08.960
You'd have somebody a contractor that's experienced with fixing those structural problems out there and have them actually.
00:13:09.590 --> 00:13:10.040
Fix it.
00:13:10.100 --> 00:13:12.320
Not just, don't just stuck over it.
00:13:12.320 --> 00:13:13.759
You need to actually support it.
00:13:14.030 --> 00:13:19.950
are there any specific building materials or construction styles that are more prone to problems in this area?
00:13:24.550 --> 00:13:28.240
I suppose I would start out wood frame versus block.
00:13:29.305 --> 00:13:35.995
Wood frame houses are always gonna be more susceptible'cause they're made out of termite food, that's something that you want to be prepared for.
00:13:35.995 --> 00:13:43.665
So if you have a house that's predominantly wood, it, they have several here that have been here since, the twenties.
00:13:43.665 --> 00:13:45.605
So it's not that they won't exist.
00:13:45.605 --> 00:13:52.565
And I've been up in Tampa too, and they have some that are before the twenties that have been around and entire neighborhoods that are all wood.
00:13:52.565 --> 00:14:00.355
It's not that you can't have a wood house, you just need to protect it from the termites, and that means, regular treatments and somebody checking it and things like that.
00:14:00.355 --> 00:14:14.025
So that would probably be my first, if you're gonna look at what you would watch out for, after that, I'd be concerned if you're very close to water or the coast if you don't have your house set up for impact protection.
00:14:14.235 --> 00:14:23.575
And then as time goes on, I think what we're gonna see is those houses on the coast too have to be lifted up and raised up higher because That those storm surges were.
00:14:24.460 --> 00:14:25.389
They were devastating.
00:14:25.389 --> 00:14:32.759
I've been in several houses that have taken one to four feet of water and, it's just, it's almost a start over point at the house.
00:14:32.810 --> 00:14:49.360
they gut'em and start just repairing them all the way from scratch, and I think that, what you're gonna see is a lot of that particular style of building where you have mobile homes and you have houses that are sitting, the Florida style house with the low slope roof really small down there next to the water.
00:14:49.360 --> 00:14:50.530
I think that's gonna go away.
00:14:51.040 --> 00:14:55.764
So those are the two things I would say right off the bat That you're gonna see less and less of.
00:14:55.860 --> 00:15:06.705
And then after that, the interesting thing I think is that you're gonna see the insurance companies push around and tend to define what we will and won't have for building here.
00:15:06.735 --> 00:15:16.065
It's what you can afford to And some of that is, based on science and some of it's based a little bit on emotion it feels and There's gonna be some give and take there for sure too.
00:15:16.065 --> 00:15:20.625
So the insurance companies are gonna start picking what can be where and how you can do it.
00:15:20.625 --> 00:15:23.595
Because we just won't be able to afford to insure something.
00:15:23.955 --> 00:15:33.435
And for most of us that can't show up with, 500,$600,000 of cash, you're gonna have to have insurance because you're gonna have to have a mortgage.
00:15:33.545 --> 00:15:43.509
there are a couple of things that are probably happening in the industry that are a little bit, I am not saying good or bad one way or the other, but the building practices are faster than they ever were.
00:15:43.560 --> 00:15:48.175
And planned redundancy or the planned obsolescence is happening a little bit more.
00:15:48.425 --> 00:15:54.210
Some of the components that we use in our houses used to last a very long time, and they just flat don't last as long anymore.
00:15:54.365 --> 00:15:58.894
Be prepared once their AC units hit 10 years, once their water heaters hits 10 years old.
00:15:58.945 --> 00:16:00.085
You need to be prepared.
00:16:01.075 --> 00:16:06.865
Honestly, I had one that was 27 years old in Oregon before I changed it out.
00:16:06.865 --> 00:16:10.355
used to be very common is to have, those things last a lifetime.
00:16:10.394 --> 00:16:11.310
They're just not anymore.
00:16:11.790 --> 00:16:16.195
And so I would say those are things that you have to be planning and preparing for.
00:16:16.195 --> 00:16:18.705
you need to look at what makes the most sense.
00:16:18.705 --> 00:16:30.945
I've said to people for a long time if the insurance companies only give you 20 years on your shingle roof, Do you really want a 35 year shingle, a 20 year shingle or a 50 year shingle.
00:16:30.955 --> 00:16:37.644
there's a trade off there and you gotta figure out what makes the most sense and that, that's a personal choice, I think, right at this point still.
00:16:37.644 --> 00:16:39.835
gonna be in the mix of what you're considering.
00:16:40.500 --> 00:16:41.160
Exactly.
00:16:41.310 --> 00:16:43.860
And a lot of times it comes down to a math test.
00:16:43.910 --> 00:16:47.420
If I spend this much money and I buy this thing, is it really better?
00:16:47.550 --> 00:16:49.200
And you have to do your research.
00:16:49.440 --> 00:16:49.650
When,
00:16:50.160 --> 00:16:52.259
so when you're, I love older style stuff too.
00:16:52.340 --> 00:16:56.110
Personally, some of these places with the older style homes, I think they're cool looking.
00:16:56.110 --> 00:16:57.879
They give you that flavor of Florida, yeah.
00:16:57.940 --> 00:17:04.089
So I hate to see everything change and turn into something else, but you know that, that's part of life, right?
00:17:04.139 --> 00:17:07.019
How do you evaluate the plumbing and electrical systems in a home?
00:17:07.619 --> 00:17:10.879
There are several of them that are flagged by insurance companies.
00:17:10.879 --> 00:17:11.569
They don't like them.
00:17:11.970 --> 00:17:16.720
They're for various rea usually and it sounds like I'm saying the insurance people are bad guys and they're not.
00:17:17.075 --> 00:17:18.154
What it is what it is.
00:17:19.220 --> 00:17:20.329
They're worse than bad guys.
00:17:20.329 --> 00:17:21.559
They understand math.
00:17:21.950 --> 00:17:22.519
That's right.
00:17:22.519 --> 00:17:24.920
That's why they're bad people is they get math.
00:17:24.920 --> 00:17:25.970
It makes sense to'em.
00:17:26.269 --> 00:17:33.000
If you have so many of X and less than 1% of them start fires, that's a good one.
00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:38.190
But if you have so many of Y and 22% of them start fires, they don't want you to use those anymore.
00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:41.460
They're doing us a favor in reality, right?
00:17:41.519 --> 00:17:53.009
So if you have a Federal Pacific panel, if you have a stab lock panel, if you have a GTE Sylvania panel, those are flagged, those are all flagged challengers flagged now too.
00:17:53.349 --> 00:17:56.840
These are all flagged because they have a higher incidence of failure.
00:17:57.299 --> 00:17:58.769
So what do we do?
00:17:58.769 --> 00:18:01.829
We go into a house, we look to see what kind of a panel you have.
00:18:02.100 --> 00:18:04.890
We'll take a look at it, we'll open it up, see how it's wired.
00:18:04.920 --> 00:18:07.319
The world does not love solid strand aluminum wiring.
00:18:07.420 --> 00:18:14.225
It is notorious for, again, starting fires and not being as safe as regular copper wires.
00:18:14.225 --> 00:18:15.575
So people want copper.
00:18:16.444 --> 00:18:17.434
That being said.
00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:24.670
There are ways to remediate that aluminum too, but again, it's not as well liked as the other.
00:18:25.079 --> 00:18:29.009
So we're gonna look for copper, aluminum, solid strand or multis strand.
00:18:29.110 --> 00:18:34.240
Then once we get done with that, we're gonna check all your outlets and make sure all the lights go on and the fans go on.
00:18:34.240 --> 00:18:37.779
So basically make sure any electrical appliance is functioning.
00:18:38.329 --> 00:18:40.735
Keep in mind your inspector is looking for functioning.
00:18:41.674 --> 00:18:45.055
That doesn't mean if it's ugly, that's not our job, yeah.
00:18:45.110 --> 00:18:46.340
What do you think about how it looks?
00:18:46.340 --> 00:18:53.130
I said, you know what, to be honest with you if you want me to decorate your house, you better get used to wagon wheels and steer horns, because that's what I like.
00:18:54.610 --> 00:18:58.345
And at that point, nobody cares about my opinion on aesthetics and how it looks.
00:18:58.394 --> 00:19:00.585
But in your inspector, that's what his job is.
00:19:00.585 --> 00:19:01.875
Does it or does it not function?
00:19:01.965 --> 00:19:04.365
And if it functions it's doing its part.
00:19:04.704 --> 00:19:07.674
We're gonna look for any place where there's any kind of fire hazards.
00:19:07.674 --> 00:19:09.625
Are there exposed wires somewhere?
00:19:09.625 --> 00:19:13.255
Do you have the right kind of covers on your exterior outlets?
00:19:13.740 --> 00:19:14.519
Lights work.
00:19:14.789 --> 00:19:16.319
Do they function like they're supposed to?
00:19:16.319 --> 00:19:20.490
That's really our goal there is to make sure that the electrical system is working and functional.
00:19:20.860 --> 00:19:22.600
We're gonna make sure everything's grounded.
00:19:22.600 --> 00:19:28.210
We're gonna make sure it's wired correctly to the extent that we look at it, which is to say outlets and.
00:19:29.140 --> 00:19:29.980
Fans now,
00:19:30.160 --> 00:19:30.519
right?
00:19:31.009 --> 00:19:32.539
We're not going to take things apart.
00:19:32.539 --> 00:19:34.819
That's one thing that your home inspector shouldn't do.
00:19:34.819 --> 00:19:36.289
We're allowed to observe.
00:19:36.289 --> 00:19:46.700
But if you want somebody to go into the wall and take apart the electrical system or open up, inspection from conduit and stuff like that, you need to get an electrician to do that.
00:19:46.700 --> 00:19:47.920
Our job is to say, Hey.
00:19:48.490 --> 00:19:51.480
Here's something that you need to get an electrician to take a look at.
00:19:51.509 --> 00:19:52.350
'cause it does not look right.
00:19:53.100 --> 00:19:55.500
We expect it to do X and it did Y
00:19:56.370 --> 00:19:57.390
Same thing with plumbing.
00:19:57.450 --> 00:19:58.470
Exact same thing.
00:19:58.519 --> 00:20:02.900
If we go and we look at it and say that is not hooked up, how we would normally see it?
00:20:03.980 --> 00:20:07.759
We think you should have a plumber look at it to make sure that's gonna continue working for you.
00:20:08.390 --> 00:20:15.394
That's one of the other things, people that are doing houses, if you're building a house, they have certain milestones they're looking for, right?
00:20:15.394 --> 00:20:19.785
And a week before the house is ready to close, you walk people through and that's a milestone.
00:20:19.785 --> 00:20:23.144
And the house closes, that's a milestone and they hit 12 months.
00:20:23.144 --> 00:20:24.375
And that's another milestone.
00:20:24.434 --> 00:20:27.795
Once the house closes, it goes from the building manager to the warranty side.
00:20:27.884 --> 00:20:31.515
And then once it's a year old, then the warranty's right gone on.
00:20:31.515 --> 00:20:32.414
Almost everything.
00:20:33.045 --> 00:20:34.575
Our look at, it's a little bit different.
00:20:34.575 --> 00:20:38.394
We look at is it functioning and how long and how is it functioning?
00:20:38.394 --> 00:20:39.805
So if we look at a new build.
00:20:40.255 --> 00:20:46.674
Is that gonna work for the next five years, or is that going to fail three years down the road?
00:20:46.674 --> 00:20:51.295
It's a, there's a different perspective too, at the way people look at things, and I think that's important too.
00:20:51.715 --> 00:20:55.684
Yeah, and I think one of the things you're alluding to is did it work in the manner it's supposed to work,
00:20:56.225 --> 00:20:56.735
Yeah.
00:20:56.735 --> 00:20:58.505
And that's where it comes down to, right?
00:20:58.505 --> 00:21:01.055
It's, does it work in the manner that it was intended.
00:21:01.355 --> 00:21:05.215
And that sometimes Is an absolute firm.
00:21:05.215 --> 00:21:05.545
Yes.
00:21:05.545 --> 00:21:07.394
And other times it's not so much.
00:21:07.765 --> 00:21:12.505
And maybe you look at it and just say, you know what, I don't care if the light and the fan come on every time you hit the button.
00:21:12.815 --> 00:21:16.634
What's important to me is that the light comes on and as long as that's working, don't care.
00:21:16.975 --> 00:21:19.625
And that's where your inspection is.
00:21:19.625 --> 00:21:20.404
Yours too.
00:21:20.404 --> 00:21:21.424
You can do.
00:21:21.475 --> 00:21:26.215
Do you do anything with the overall energy efficiency of a home when you're doing an inspection?
00:21:26.845 --> 00:21:30.904
I do not, but there are several people out there that do efficiency, Okay.
00:21:31.505 --> 00:21:32.615
Type of inspections.
00:21:32.615 --> 00:21:35.615
It's a different animal I would say.
00:21:36.414 --> 00:21:39.565
Not as popular here as other places.
00:21:39.565 --> 00:21:48.815
I know in California when I was there, they had people that, that's all they focused on was just the efficiency and the carbon footprint of your house.
00:21:48.825 --> 00:21:50.255
And how to minimize that.
00:21:50.454 --> 00:21:53.875
I don't really do that, but I know that you can find people that will,
00:21:55.495 --> 00:22:00.265
how can homeowners prepare for a home inspection so that it's a smooth process?
00:22:01.884 --> 00:22:06.924
So there's a handful of things that we're gonna have to do.
00:22:07.285 --> 00:22:11.545
We're gonna have to be able to get to the majority of the stuff in your house, right?
00:22:11.595 --> 00:22:21.674
Where in some cases you're told declutter the house, and so you take everything outta the house and you put it in the garage, but you stack it all on the water heater and against the electrical panel.
00:22:22.275 --> 00:22:30.115
First off, we're gonna want to go up in the attic'cause if we do a wind or just a regular home inspection, we need to be able to get it in the attic and.
00:22:31.090 --> 00:22:32.380
Don't take this the wrong way.
00:22:32.380 --> 00:22:41.890
I'm pretty good about getting into weird spots, but I am not going to crawl into an attic if I have to crawl over your 240,000 Corvette.
00:22:42.250 --> 00:22:43.360
It's just not gonna happen.
00:22:43.460 --> 00:22:49.850
and I'm telling you, it hurts a lot worse to fall out of an attic and land on a$240,000 car.
00:22:50.045 --> 00:22:58.410
Than it does on a Pinto, so we're gonna not crawl over those, and to be fair, the point I'm trying to make is we need access to stuff.
00:22:59.490 --> 00:23:02.549
For your four point, we have to be able to get to your water heater.
00:23:02.850 --> 00:23:06.420
We have to get to the air handler and the condenser.
00:23:06.809 --> 00:23:08.730
We have to be able to get to all the plumbing.
00:23:09.480 --> 00:23:15.120
We have to be able to get to the electrical panel and we're gonna have to be able to get there enough that we can take the cover of it off.
00:23:15.660 --> 00:23:16.920
I had a house today with a.
00:23:17.509 --> 00:23:23.450
Stacked washer and dryer, and it's right up against an electrical panel and it's all hooked up to water.
00:23:23.450 --> 00:23:33.430
And I just had to say, yeah, I gotta be able to get into there and I don't move washer and dryer because those hoses are notorious for breaking.
00:23:34.039 --> 00:23:37.579
And after talking with the realtor.
00:23:38.170 --> 00:23:39.789
She just said the listing agent's coming over.
00:23:39.789 --> 00:23:41.410
I'll talk to him about it and see what we can do.
00:23:41.410 --> 00:23:45.980
And I thought as long as we all know and we're all going to do this together, I'm happy to help.
00:23:46.029 --> 00:23:52.480
What I'm saying is I just don't wanna be responsible for a broken water line that I can't really do anything about.
00:23:52.579 --> 00:23:57.350
So needless to say, before I even got a chance to go in there and talk to him, he goes, oh, not a problem.
00:23:57.350 --> 00:23:58.370
I'll move it outta the way He moves.
00:23:58.370 --> 00:23:58.819
It outta the way.
00:23:58.819 --> 00:24:03.910
And then the guy that was with me we always go out and clean, we go out two at a time at least.
00:24:03.990 --> 00:24:12.269
So broke the hose, and so they had to run in there really quick and do the quick shut out, down the water as fast as you can on this house.
00:24:12.299 --> 00:24:14.850
And so it's just one of those things, right?
00:24:15.180 --> 00:24:18.329
There, there's things that are just notorious that we have to get to.
00:24:18.569 --> 00:24:21.329
So electrical panel, you have to be able to get to and take the cover off.
00:24:21.769 --> 00:24:23.090
Need to be able to get in the attics.
00:24:23.450 --> 00:24:24.319
That's the first thing.
00:24:24.319 --> 00:24:29.090
The first thing you can do to make it a smooth process is make sure that we can get to everything we need to.
00:24:29.840 --> 00:24:37.019
The next thing I would say is make sure that some of the stuff that's, if you have something that's really weird and it's hard to figure out how to work.
00:24:37.470 --> 00:24:47.360
If The refrigerator work, you have to crawl up on a ladder and crank a handle up in the attic and then stand on one foot and spin around.
00:24:47.930 --> 00:24:48.170
Yeah.
00:24:48.509 --> 00:24:57.049
Make sure that, that stuff is very easy for us to figure out because if it's really difficult for us to figure out how to make something work, we're just gonna say, does not function.
00:24:57.049 --> 00:24:59.059
Recommend you talk to the owner about how to make it work.
00:24:59.110 --> 00:25:01.269
Where did we hide the switch to the pool light?
00:25:02.110 --> 00:25:05.490
Where did we hide the switch to the blower, to the spa?
00:25:05.950 --> 00:25:06.910
I had one the other day.
00:25:06.910 --> 00:25:07.779
It was hilarious.
00:25:07.940 --> 00:25:10.039
There's not a switch over in the pool stuff.
00:25:10.039 --> 00:25:13.029
There's not a switch on the one one of the bathrooms had a light switch in it.
00:25:13.079 --> 00:25:18.930
it just so happened that when the person that was working with me was testing all the switches in the bathroom, they go, what does this do?
00:25:19.480 --> 00:25:21.069
I'm like, the floor went on.
00:25:21.069 --> 00:25:21.910
How did that happen?
00:25:21.960 --> 00:25:31.140
And so you back in, find who touched what and so if you have stuff like that make it as simple as possible because otherwise you end up with this.
00:25:31.140 --> 00:25:31.829
It doesn't work.
00:25:32.355 --> 00:25:36.009
and'cause there's a limit to how long we're gonna look for a switch that's somewhere.
00:25:36.340 --> 00:25:43.049
I one time went up and there's A-G-F-C-I reset above the kitchen in the attic again.
00:25:43.299 --> 00:25:46.059
We flagged that and said, listen, you need to take that out of there.
00:25:46.090 --> 00:25:51.039
'cause A-G-F-C-I that says you have to go up from the attic to reset your hood, fan for your oven.
00:25:51.299 --> 00:25:52.944
That's a bad place for it.
00:25:54.295 --> 00:26:02.995
But if you have something like that, let us know ahead of time, because otherwise you're gonna get home and that hood fan's not gonna work for three weeks and then it's gonna dawn on you.
00:26:03.835 --> 00:26:04.855
Oh, that's where that is.
00:26:05.065 --> 00:26:13.184
The other thing I would say too is we're not gonna move furniture or appliances, so if there's something that clearly you need to be able to get to.
00:26:13.630 --> 00:26:14.884
Have a clear path to it.
00:26:15.334 --> 00:26:16.864
And we open all the windows.
00:26:16.963 --> 00:26:24.144
If one of my guys was to stand with his boots, even with booties on it, on top of your couch to open a window, I'd have to choke'em out.
00:26:24.144 --> 00:26:25.193
That's just, they know it.
00:26:25.254 --> 00:26:25.794
I know it.
00:26:25.794 --> 00:26:28.064
It's just that's how it goes down, that's just not cool.
00:26:28.619 --> 00:26:31.828
Access to stuff that's gonna be the most important thing.
00:26:32.239 --> 00:26:35.838
Anything that's really odd, I would leave instructions on how things work.
00:26:36.139 --> 00:26:51.249
I certainly wouldn't try to hide anything because if you hide stuff, then it just looks like you're trying to do something dishonest, and so then you end up with something in the inspection report that says, I accidentally had to move this cabinet so that I could show you this giant hole in the wall.
00:26:51.818 --> 00:26:52.179
Yeah.
00:26:52.834 --> 00:26:56.844
And maybe you didn't mean to, maybe it wasn't being tricky, but it certainly does.
00:26:56.894 --> 00:26:59.144
Sure that plants that seed.
00:26:59.244 --> 00:26:59.754
Yeah.
00:26:59.754 --> 00:27:02.903
And doesn't it work best when we all are honest and upfront?
00:27:02.903 --> 00:27:04.794
Just say, Hey, this is a condition of the house.
00:27:04.844 --> 00:27:10.733
Fixing the roof and making sure there's no leaks should include making sure that you've, painted the ceilings and all that.
00:27:10.733 --> 00:27:11.574
Disclose it.
00:27:12.203 --> 00:27:13.314
Like you're supposed to.
00:27:13.554 --> 00:27:16.223
one of the things that I see that plants more.
00:27:17.244 --> 00:27:25.818
Concern in our client's mind is when they go into a house and they see stains on the ceiling, they don't like that and they're like, oh man, the roof probably leaks.
00:27:25.879 --> 00:27:27.409
They replaced it a year and a half ago.
00:27:27.409 --> 00:27:29.929
It probably doesn't, they just haven't painted the ceilings.
00:27:30.489 --> 00:27:31.629
I would think about that.
00:27:31.739 --> 00:27:38.149
You have a realtor take their advice, they're gonna tell you not to leave a problem where it's obvious and where there's gonna be a question
00:27:38.149 --> 00:27:38.358
from.
00:27:38.409 --> 00:27:48.409
So to sum that one up, attic access, electrical panel access AC access, and, water heater access, those are gonna be real important.
00:27:48.409 --> 00:27:52.818
Then access to anything inside the house that needs to be looked at.
00:27:53.058 --> 00:27:59.209
I would make sure that you have your water on and that you have your water bill paid and you have your gas on.
00:27:59.209 --> 00:28:04.608
You have your gas bill paid because we get to a house and we are doing the inspection.
00:28:05.193 --> 00:28:10.624
If the water's off, say for instance, if the county stuck a pin in it, we're not gonna cut the pin.
00:28:10.874 --> 00:28:16.673
We're not, no matter what the county, everybody can say it's okay, but it's not okay.
00:28:16.713 --> 00:28:17.703
We're not gonna go around.
00:28:17.754 --> 00:28:18.443
The county.
00:28:18.744 --> 00:28:20.844
And that means everything on your fourth point just failed.
00:28:20.844 --> 00:28:27.294
Your water heater, your hot water, your sink, everything just is gonna show up as did not work'cause you don't have water.
00:28:27.324 --> 00:28:27.744
Sure.
00:28:27.923 --> 00:28:34.374
And it sounds like they should be working with their real estate agent with clear communication to guide'em through.
00:28:34.423 --> 00:28:39.044
Are there any inspections that are often overlooked but should be prioritized in this area?
00:28:41.983 --> 00:28:47.254
So I'd like I talked there about insurance inspections.
00:28:47.254 --> 00:28:51.963
First you have a four point inspection if your house is over five years old.
00:28:52.054 --> 00:28:57.334
If your house is 20 years old, definitely ask your insurance agent, do I need a four point?
00:28:59.449 --> 00:29:03.348
My understanding is 20 years old, you definitely have to have one.
00:29:03.399 --> 00:29:07.568
Nowadays, when you get much over five, eight years old, you're gonna have to have one.
00:29:08.233 --> 00:29:09.584
Work with your insurance agent.
00:29:09.584 --> 00:29:16.744
Make that phone call before we get there because almost everybody tries to bundle and save you a little bit of money by being there.
00:29:17.104 --> 00:29:18.693
But that's a very important thing.
00:29:18.693 --> 00:29:34.294
There's nothing worse than finding out that you waited to get your four point'cause you're gonna save yourself a couple of dollars and then you're week from closing and your insurance is gonna be$8,000 a year because of the four point.
00:29:35.068 --> 00:29:38.159
So that's all something you should think about a little bit.
00:29:38.159 --> 00:29:39.689
I would definitely get your four point.
00:29:40.119 --> 00:29:43.119
If you look at a four point, it is like pass fail for the house.
00:29:43.119 --> 00:29:46.449
So if we go into a house and we do the four point and we find.
00:29:47.463 --> 00:29:51.844
Something wrong with the electrical system, something wrong with the plumbing system that's pass fail.
00:29:52.084 --> 00:29:55.084
The insurance company's gonna say before we insure the house.
00:29:55.574 --> 00:29:56.328
You need to fix that.
00:29:56.574 --> 00:29:56.693
it.
00:29:56.824 --> 00:29:58.774
That's now I'm not an insurance guy.
00:29:59.449 --> 00:30:08.858
I can't say that's always how everybody works, but 99% of them that I've been involved with, and I do three or four of these a day they all want that fixed.
00:30:08.909 --> 00:30:18.389
If you have a roof that is newer than a 2002, you're always better off to get a wind mitigation.
00:30:18.389 --> 00:30:29.519
I don't know of anybody that charges so much money in their wind mitigation that it won't offset the deductions you're gonna get on your homeowner's insurance with wind mitigation if you have a newer roof.
00:30:30.254 --> 00:30:44.959
Wind mitigation is a way of reducing your insurance costs because your insurance has to give you deductions for each one of the categories that you are qualified for on a win mitigation.
00:30:44.959 --> 00:30:54.973
So although we can't tell you, oh, it's gonna be$18, we can tell you are gonna get a deduction for this because you know it, it's all kinda legislated in there.
00:30:55.064 --> 00:30:55.604
So right.
00:30:56.249 --> 00:31:05.308
Definitely worth your while for those two PE inspections are a good idea, especially if you have wood or you're close to where there's going to be termites.
00:31:05.358 --> 00:31:14.649
I firmly think that as a rule, they're pretty reasonably priced It's better to find out that you got nothing and at least you have a, you're starting from square one.
00:31:14.699 --> 00:31:16.798
the peace of mind of knowing that too goes along.
00:31:16.804 --> 00:31:17.568
Just, yeah.
00:31:17.608 --> 00:31:19.798
Do you hear or might chewing on the wood.
00:31:19.828 --> 00:31:20.129
Yeah.
00:31:20.169 --> 00:31:27.009
Other inspections, if your house is pre 82, pre 84, I would definitely recommend a sewer scope.
00:31:28.834 --> 00:31:42.274
your home inspection may or may not determine if you have cast iron pipe, but they definitely won't be able to tell you without a sewer scope if the cast iron pipe is deteriorated to the point where it be replaced.
00:31:42.903 --> 00:31:52.443
The way we build drain lines in Florida, especially pre 82, was you have big three and four inch lines that are.
00:31:53.358 --> 00:31:55.699
Sunk into the slab of your home.
00:31:56.389 --> 00:31:57.558
They're made outta cast iron.
00:31:57.558 --> 00:31:59.899
Cast iron tends to live about 50 years.
00:32:01.499 --> 00:32:05.969
So anything that's 50 years old is worth having it scoped.
00:32:06.528 --> 00:32:14.419
scoping them is expensive, but it's not as expensive as if you have to have somebody take a concrete saw to the, to your living room.
00:32:14.869 --> 00:32:16.649
So it's probably.
00:32:17.144 --> 00:32:22.514
One of the least sexy inspections to do.
00:32:23.354 --> 00:32:29.923
But in my mind, for the times that people call me and say, Hey, I got a cracked cast iron pipe you didn't tell me about.
00:32:29.923 --> 00:32:34.854
And it's I didn't tell you it was cracked because you didn't get a sewer scope.
00:32:35.433 --> 00:32:46.703
And I did tell you that the age of your house has a, possibility of having cast iron, and we recommend that you have somebody scope it and plumber evaluate it.
00:32:48.489 --> 00:32:51.189
Unfortunately you're on your own with that one.
00:32:51.219 --> 00:32:57.538
'cause we did say that and the risk versus reward is huge, I guess is what I would say with cast iron pipe.
00:32:57.538 --> 00:32:58.828
So I would be aware of that.
00:32:59.159 --> 00:33:05.459
I'd also consider that a red flag if somebody says, Hey, you got cast iron in the vents, or you got cast iron in the attic.
00:33:06.088 --> 00:33:13.919
Not everybody, when they re-pipe a house will change those because they don't deteriorate as much'cause they're not in constant contact with water.
00:33:14.028 --> 00:33:18.028
But, it still could mean that you have cast iron everywhere.
00:33:18.568 --> 00:33:22.683
Be aware, ask some questions see if it makes sense.
00:33:22.683 --> 00:33:35.433
I've just been going by luck until, I started getting into the home inspection business and learning a little bit more about this, and now it's man, I would definitely like to have one of these older places, but I would definitely not buy someone.
00:33:35.433 --> 00:33:38.913
Built in the seventies and not have somebody stick a camera down there just to see.
00:33:38.943 --> 00:33:39.153
Yeah.
00:33:39.183 --> 00:33:41.433
go in knowing what's there and be forewarned.
00:33:42.149 --> 00:33:44.068
Knowledge is always gonna be power, right?
00:33:44.548 --> 00:33:44.699
Yep.
00:33:44.788 --> 00:33:46.969
You can make any decision you want.
00:33:46.969 --> 00:33:51.949
If you have all the knowledge of which way going to, probably the outcome, it's worth it.
00:33:52.639 --> 00:34:04.524
But the cast iron ones, it's expensive if it doesn't work out those are probably the biggest ones that I would say, the other stuff that you can get, you can have an HVAC guy come out and go through your HVAC system.
00:34:04.973 --> 00:34:10.804
But by and large and this is my opinion, it's not really a statement of science.
00:34:11.043 --> 00:34:17.614
But once they start hitting 10 years, you need to be prepared because you could get 18 or 20 years out of it.
00:34:17.614 --> 00:34:17.703
But.
00:34:18.364 --> 00:34:21.753
That means you're taking good care of it, you're taking very good care of it.
00:34:21.753 --> 00:34:26.373
You're having an HVAC guy come out and service it regularly, and you're watching it.
00:34:26.433 --> 00:34:32.253
If that isn't the case, you better be prepared after 10 years to put another one in.
00:34:32.253 --> 00:34:33.994
And those are expensive decisions.
00:34:34.103 --> 00:34:34.764
Without a doubt.
00:34:34.764 --> 00:34:35.333
Oh, absolutely.
00:34:36.143 --> 00:34:41.278
You can get an electrician to come in and do a electric electrical evaluation of the entire house too.
00:34:41.608 --> 00:34:44.509
But again, I don't really see that as being the huge ones.
00:34:44.538 --> 00:34:50.509
I would consider the cast iron pipe to be one that I would look at definitely get a pest inspection.
00:34:50.568 --> 00:34:51.768
I think those are worthwhile.
00:34:52.458 --> 00:34:53.489
But those are the big ones.
00:34:53.489 --> 00:34:53.909
I see.
00:34:55.078 --> 00:34:55.409
Cool.
00:34:55.918 --> 00:34:56.548
Rich.
00:34:57.014 --> 00:34:58.364
Thank you for joining me today.
00:34:58.364 --> 00:34:59.953
I really appreciate you coming out.
00:35:00.164 --> 00:35:04.114
I learn every time I talk with people who are experts in their field and what they're doing.
00:35:04.114 --> 00:35:09.324
So the home inspection vital when you're going into a home, as you just said, knowledge is power.
00:35:09.384 --> 00:35:10.583
Know what you're getting into.
00:35:10.853 --> 00:35:14.023
Anything else you would say about a home inspection before we sign off?
00:35:14.603 --> 00:35:20.349
Just a, and this isn't so much a home inspection is it's more of a commercial for realtors.
00:35:20.449 --> 00:35:31.309
They do a job they have a function in this process and they can help you navigate some pretty tricky questions that come up, and that's the, what they're there for.
00:35:31.648 --> 00:35:40.434
I may not always say you should have this inspection or that inspection outside, but I really feel strongly that you should always have a realtor.
00:35:40.563 --> 00:35:58.994
when we work on jobs where people don't have a realtor It's really difficult for folks because there's a lot of really hard decisions to make and a lot of things that need to be explained to you, not just on the house itself, Finding the house is the first and maybe the easy part but finding out about the house, finding out how to own the house.
00:35:58.994 --> 00:36:00.403
If you really own the house.
00:36:00.728 --> 00:36:05.148
The legalities of owning a house what kind of expenses you're gonna have for the house.
00:36:05.489 --> 00:36:10.943
I really feel the realtors, the ones that I work with that are very good, are really experts at.
00:36:11.278 --> 00:36:13.349
Helping you negotiate the whole process.
00:36:13.349 --> 00:36:21.148
They keep a lot of balls up in the air for making the process work, so everybody's got their own role in this process.
00:36:21.148 --> 00:36:23.123
You got Insurance people that are helping you.
00:36:23.123 --> 00:36:27.543
You got title people, you got attorneys, you got, your inspection folks.
00:36:27.543 --> 00:36:32.923
there's a lot of moving parts and having the right team to help you is huge, my opinion.
00:36:32.983 --> 00:36:33.373
Absolutely.
00:36:33.818 --> 00:36:35.557
Same thing with the inspection teams.
00:36:35.608 --> 00:36:37.108
There's a lot of good inspectors out there.
00:36:37.108 --> 00:36:40.827
I like to think we do a very reputable job and nothing that we have to be ashamed of.
00:36:41.248 --> 00:36:43.737
There's other people out there that do a very reputable job.
00:36:43.737 --> 00:36:45.327
Nothing to be ashamed of too.
00:36:45.387 --> 00:36:54.157
And, just take the time to make sure that your guy is insured, that he's licensed, that he's got some level of experience.
00:36:54.378 --> 00:36:57.083
None of us would want to go to the eye doctor that's doing his.
00:36:57.543 --> 00:36:59.222
Third lasing surgery, right?
00:36:59.302 --> 00:37:04.992
They all have to have number three, but number 30,000 makes you feel a little more confident.
00:37:05.048 --> 00:37:05.250
yeah, so I
00:37:05.893 --> 00:37:11.202
would look for somebody that's got some experience and at least a way of vetting themselves so that they can get through the process.
00:37:11.202 --> 00:37:13.632
Those are the things that just pop into my mind right now.
00:37:13.632 --> 00:37:15.242
Appreciate you inviting me.
00:37:15.242 --> 00:37:17.492
It's always fun to talk to people about houses.
00:37:17.543 --> 00:37:19.972
it's turned into, a big part of my life.
00:37:19.972 --> 00:37:21.173
So it's important.
00:37:22.103 --> 00:37:22.432
Yeah.
00:37:22.543 --> 00:37:22.873
Thank you.
