I received a testimonial from one of my clients today that is a perfect illustration of what a ‘testimonial’ should tell the reader.
Before I get into this particular testimonial, I want to talk about what is wrong about so many Home Inspection Testimonials.
The homebuyer will write a glowing letter about the Home Inspector and the Inspection prior to actually purchasing the house and moving into the house. With this, the homebuyer is endorsing what he/she thinks the inspector did for them.
The homebuyer may move into the house and begin recommending ‘their’ inspector prior to actually experiencing anything going wrong with the house.
The ‘author’ of the testimonial ‘signs’ the testimonial ‘Bill G.’, leaving the reader to wonder if the testimonial is fictional.
The ideal testimonial contains the author’s full-name.
The ideal home inspection testimonial tells the reader why the homebuyer believes that the Inspector performed an exceptional inspection.
The ideal home inspection testimonial comes from a homebuyer who is picky, has experienced previous home inspections by another inspector, and has moved into the home and lived in the home long enough to actually experience how the home performs.
For the most part home inspectors are making calls on whether or not the features of a home are to the code book. Mark knows this area well but it is not the reason for my recommendation. In addition to knowing the code book, he has extensive background of what is quality work and the keenest eye for noticing out-of-level of anyone I have ever seen. I used Mark on two 5-15 year old homes, in both cases he showed me deep underlying structural problems that made me move on. Then I did the unusual, I hired him to inspect a brand new home that had just passed city code inspection. He found so many issues with the builder quality that they had a team in working on the house for a week. I might be one of the pickiest people on the planet. Now after living in the house for 3 months, I can say he found and caused to be cleared every issue that this new house had. I am very happy with this house, and I’m sure I would not have been happy with it had I not hired him.
Patrick Ross
After having read my client’s testimonial, I would like to illustrate a couple of important points. First of all, many homebuyers forego hiring a Home Inspector when purchasing brand-new homes.
Why? Homebuilders have become adept at convincing their home buying customers that… “Hiring your own home inspector is ‘not necessary’ because we have our own private home inspectors inspecting the house while it was constructed.” Or…”You have a 10 year warranty. If anything goes wrong, you will be covered by the warranty.”
The other point is this. This particular homebuilder, when presented with an extensive list of defects, jumped into gear and made all the corrections to my client’s satisfaction.
Lastly, all homebuilders make mistakes. All homes are built with defects. What separates the men from the boys is how the builder deals with the Home Inspection Report findings and the homebuyer’s concerns.
Apparently, this builder thought enough of his/her reputation to make the house right and do right by their homebuying customer.
