Ian R: Welcome to another edition of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. We love bringing great value to home inspectors. So if you’re listening, you’re really going to love this show. Today, we have Harold Van Dyk with us. And he’s going to talk to us about a service that if you’re not doing it now, you really should be doing it because it is probably the best ancillary service that a home inspector could be performing. I don’t even know if we can call it an ancillary service. But Harold, welcome. Thank you.

Harold Van Dyk: Hey, Thank you. Glad to be here.

Ian R: Yeah. So before we get into the service, which I had been a fan of for many years, and you know, we were talking earlier about it, how it’s been really ramping up and helping home inspectors, we’d like to get to know you a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Harold Van Dyk: Well, yeah, I spent about 20 something years in aviation, flying jets and working hard for other people and then lost a medical certificate and decided to go into my next love, which was, you know, well, construction and knowledge of home. So I right away, got the home inspection business and been at that for 24 years. Been a good business. And yeah, that’s really where I started. And then this business has been taken over. So kind of switching gears here a little bit.

Ian R: Yeah. And that’s, that’s nothing to sneeze at. Almost a quarter of a century in the home inspection field. That’s quite a bit.

Harold Van Dyk: Yeah, it is. It went by fast. Or did it go by fast?

Ian R: Time does fly, especially if you’re having fun because I know you well enough to know that you love what you do, you love helping people and you love homes. That’s why you got into construction you said?

Harold Van Dyk: Yeah. Helping those first-time homebuyers and answering questions and guiding them through it. And we always had a lot of fun at home inspections, even when you found a lot of things. You made it kind of enjoyable for them as best as you could. And people still had to walk away. But yeah, I always will look forward to getting up in the morning and going out there and doing another one for somebody.

Ian R: You know, and I love having you on the show because I love having other home inspectors that became home inspection vendors on the show, because you get it you’re one of us, you know, I’m an inspector too. And, you know, you just kind of get it you talk our talk, you walk our walk, and you’re not wondering, okay, how does this industry work? Because you’re you’re living it day in and day out?

Harold Van Dyk: That’s right. Yes. So I understand, you know, the difficulties of the business and what it takes to make money and what kind of services and other things, you know, can help the home inspector be profitable and have a strong business?

Ian R: Yeah. And then this is a perfect example of helping home inspectors have a strong business, because we’re going to talk about MFD foundation service. So before we get into that, what is an MFD Foundation cert? And don’t you need to be an engineer to do those?

Harold Van Dyk: Well, yeah, the company name is actually we’ve changed it to manufacture home certifications from MFD. Just so people understand a little bit more what it’s about. And in order to sign them for the loans, the legally. Yes, the engineer must be licensed in that state where that home is located. A lot of engineering firms as well as us work with home inspectors to do the fieldwork. Engineers can use anybody, they want to do the fieldwork if they’re comfortable with them. We use the home inspector simply because they’re in that business to a degree and they understand the homes and the construction. That’s a pre-qualifying factor for us.

Ian R: It’s interesting because I’ve done these before, personally. It’s really not that hard. The engineer just need some basic information, you go get that information, you provide them withthe information, and it’s done. It really doesn’t take that long, and it allows him to do his job.

Harold Van Dyk: Yeah, it really doesn’t, you can pull up to one of these homes, walk around, take all the pictures, you need the measurements you need. Stick your head in the crawlspace and most of the time, you don’t even have to crawl into the crawl space to get the pictures we need. Go back out to your car, get on the web portal through your phone or iPad, whatever you’re using, upload everything and be gone in 30 to 40 minutes. I mean, these don’t take long at all.

Ian R: Yeah. And we’ll actually talk about how long they take and how much potential income is there for the home inspector. It’s important to note that this is not something that people opt-in for. Like in a market that we’re in people are skipping inspections because they’re not required to. This is different, this is actually a requirement, right?

Harold Van Dyk: That is correct. Yeah, the loans are required any federally backed loan, that lender must have the engineering certificate for the foundation. Sometimes they need it for the additions like FHA loans. Sometimes they need both. Lenders can use pre-existing ones, but many don’t. Every time they do it alone, including refinance even for a refinance for the same people. They want new ones, at least if it’s more than six months. 12 months old. So there’s a lot of repeat business. People want to finance, whether it’s for purchase or whatever a refinance, they have to get them. Many lenders are requiring them now on conventional loans, especially the addition side of it, so

Ian R: Just so that we can kind of broadly define manufactured home because you know, sometimes if we’re not in that field specifically, or maybe we’re a newer home inspector listening. What’s a manufactured home?

Harold Van Dyk: Well, yeah, everybody thinks of trailers. You know, that would be everything prior to June 15 1976, what’s really known as a mobile pump, there were no standards, no requirements for how they were built. So they weren’t built even to local building codes, they were just pulled out of the factory pulled down the street and set up and people lifted up. Then the federal government got involved with HUD, and through HUD, they developed a code, so to speak, a building code for how these things had to be built in the standards and the requirements. That’s when they termed manufactured home comes into play. So anything after June 15 1976, it’s considered manufactured. Modular would be just like your stick-built home but built in a factory. So it’s something totally different. So, you know, we’re talking pretty much strictly manufactured, although some banks do want the tie-downs on the mobile homes, but very few are finding it some. So there’s not many, many calls for that.

Ian R: Gotcha. I’m glad you’re you’re mentioning that because I guess that’s where some of the confusion comes in. Mostly, I find it in the real estate, interesting industry, most of us as home inspectors, kind of, we get that. But it’s good to clarify. It’s not modular homes. We’re not talking about just standard houses. It’s a manufactured home. So before we get into some questions that I have for you, because I’d love to hear this program and how it can add benefit to an inspection business. Why is this? Your right before the podcast, you were telling us how this is booming right now, this business? Why is it booming right now to do manufactured home foundation certifications?

Harold Van Dyk: Well, for a number of reasons. One is manufactured homes, it’s about the only thing most people are being able to afford today, people are moving out to the country, they’re buying these things. Here in Grand Rapids, you know, you can spend 250, or 350, for a small little home in the city, or you can spend 150-175 20 miles north of town and then have a manufactured home on 10 acres. You know, so for a lot of these people, it’s just economics. But a lot of these people want to live out of the city at this point. You know, so the amount of activity in manufactured homes is up quite a bit. And a lot of these people tend to sell more frequently than stick-built homes, they tend to refinance more frequently, you know, and because it’s a quarter, or the loan, I mean, we’re up 50% this year already, and it’s growing. It’s just incredible.

Ian R: If I could give perspective on that Harold’s been doing this for a long time, as a company, so grown 50% In this year isn’t a matter of, oh, he started this last year, and now we’re at 50%. This is many years, and they’re up 50% this year. It’s really, if you’re hurting right now, with your home inspection business, take the time to look into this program, because this might be the thing that can kind of keep you going through some lean times. It really is a great program.

Harold Van Dyk: Yeah. You know, when I started 24 years ago, in the home inspection business, I was doing these for another engineering firm that uses home inspectors. Those engineering firms, the home inspector is just a subcontractor. So the client has to work with the engineering firm, hire them, talk to them, work with them, that doesn’t always go real well, because engineers are engineers, hey, we need them. The great people can’t live without them. But they’re not people-oriented people. They would pay the home inspector about 125 bucks to do these. It didn’t take too long. But I realized there’s got to be a better way. I knew a local engineer who he and I have some common interests. I said to him, Hey, why don’t I pay you 150 bucks for each one of these certifications, I’ll charge the going rates, I’ll go out, do all the paperwork, I’ll put the report together and you sign. You know whether it passes or fails, and I’ll pay you 150 bucks for each one. And so all of a sudden, you know, my profit was actually up to 275 to 400 per inspection for 30 to 40-minute thing, and that’s what we did. Then a number of years ago, we got together and said, you know, we got to make this available to all home inspectors, they’re the guys that need to make the money on these things, number one. Number two, the client is going to be able to order it directly from the home inspector, they’re going to get better service, quicker service, you know, more responsive service. Most of the engineering reports that you see from the other engineering companies, and I lender sent one to me the other day, a single page letter with three paragraphs on it, people are paying four or five 600 bucks for these. They couldn’t believe what our report was like. They did it through another inspector, of course. They said, this is the most professional thing we’ve seen. They said, we’re going to use this home inspector for all of these. That’s because all of the pictures that you take for these, front of the home of address of the HUD data tags, elevations of the support, peers have a high tie-down system, all of those go in that report. So it looks like a home inspection report, eight to 12 pages long, and then the engineers letter is at the end. So you know, when you click dry stack CMUs there, and you upload the pictures of it. The people can understand exactly what you’re talking about, they can see. So they they get a lot more for their money that way. The other part is, when the engineering firms, you’re generally a solid week, often two to three weeks to get reports. Where with us, we have such an automated system and set up with a web portal and all those types of things. We turn reports around in eight to 12 hours, and a lot of guys will tell you, we’ve done it in sometimes, you know, one hour to two hours, but we’re getting enough now it’s eight to 12. So if they get a call from the client, and they’re out there in two days, you know, it’s only 30-40 minute inspection. So you can generally fit it in in a short period of time. Within three days, the clients got the report. That’s the other thing we hear so much of, from lenders and clients, they just cannot believe the turnaround time, the quality of the report, and the level of service because they’re dealing with the home inspector. It’s really been a win-win for absolutely everybody other than the other engineering firms

Ian R: Poor other engineering firms, they’ll have to deal with it. Because this is an amazing program. I want to still down exactly what Harold just told us there. Number one, it takes about half an hour. Number two, you’re going to be making three to 400 bucks. Number three, they just happen and people need them all the time. And the engineer takes care of his side, and you just collect data. So basically, it shows up on-site, take some pictures, fill out some data in about 30 to 40 minutes, and then off you go. That’s a pretty sweet deal. I can verify 30 to 40 minutes, that’s about right, I used to add them right to the end of my day, I go to a couple of home inspections and try to arrange things. So that oh, okay, I’ll be there and I’ll do that at the end of the day. I’ll add, you know, hey, I only had one inspection today. So I’ll go out and do a couple of these. It really, it really is just filling at the end of your day, it doesn’t take that long.

Harold Van Dyk: That’s right. And clients don’t need to be there for these, and most of the time they aren’t. So that really helps you got a lot more flexibility, because of that

Ian R: I did find that a very convenient about is you basically show up and if they are there, they really don’t care that you’re there. It’s not like the home inspection. They’re like, Oh, this guy’s taking a picture of a data plate. Alright, have a good day.

Harold Van Dyk: Yeah, If you don’t understand or don’t want to share anything with the clients, what we tell inspectors all you got to say, Well, I just do the fieldwork for the engineer, and the engineer is the one who makes the decisions. So it’s not like you have to be able to explain things, you know, to the people.

Ian R: Great. So we do have a list of questions, though, that I’m sure people would love to ask. So you’ve given us the basics of the program. You told us about how much we could plan on making in the program, that’s important to know. Some questions that people typically ask though, is does your insurance cover the inspector? if I go and I do an inspection, and then somebody comes back later and says, Hey, my manufactured home didn’t have these straps? What goes on there?

Harold Van Dyk: Yeah, we have E&O insurance and for every company that signs up with us, we send them a copy of our policy with their company as a named insured up there. That’s for the engineering, it’s their personal onsite liability they have to take care of and I can tell you all the insurance companies for home inspectors, all are covering that with no problem.

Ian R: So that sounds very reasonable to me, you cover E&O insurance but our general liability if you don’t know the difference, E&O is errors and omissions. General Liability is hey, you broke their window with your hammer flying out of your pocket or, you know, accidentally fell and broke their door, you know, stuff like that. That’s reasonable to me.

Harold Van Dyk: Yeah. And, you know, people wonder about the liability of this business, but I can tell you that with the 1000s upon 1000s that we do every year, our E&O insurance costs less than what a single home inspector’s insurance costs out there, there just isn’t that much liability.

Ian R: Oh, I can imagine, if you have a house, that’s $700,000, I’ve had houses where, you know, the roof cost them, you know, 40 grand, 50 grand, or more? I mean, on a manufactured home, things aren’t just the liability isn’t the same? for a lot of various reasons, not just the expense of things.

Harold Van Dyk: Correct.

Ian R: So where do the leads come from? So in the home inspection industry, we go out there and we talk to agents, we advertise online, we do SEO? And where do the leads come from in this industry?

Harold Van Dyk: Yeah, well, you know, with the other engineering firms, of course, the people go to them, and then they get the home inspector, in our program, you’re making the most of the money, and you have to do the marketing. So lenders are primarily where you would start, then realtors, especially those that are listing manufactured homes, going to Realty offices and doing a short slideshow training programs, about manufactured homes about tie-down systems and how additions can affect them in the rules, gets the word out. I’ve done that lending companies too, and they brought their officers in, and an annual meeting. You do a 30-minute spiel on that. So people can understand the ins and outs a little bit better of the manufactured home rules. That’s the type of marketing you have to do. Most lenders today are doing manufactured homes. Many big lenders, and even local lenders didn’t do them. You know, they might have one or two people in the office, and many of them are starting divisions, just for manufactured homes, because it’s becoming such a big part of the market.

Ian R: Yeah, and I like how you mentioned two groups of people, there’s going to be lenders, and there’s going to be agents, agents are the obvious one, just a personal recommendation, go and look for manufactured homes for sale, find the agents that sell those because, you know, to be honest with you, there’s a lot of agents that’s kind of their thing. I sell land with manufactured homes, that’s, that’s my thing. There’s an agent in my area, that’s all she does. Yeah, so they’re good people to talk to.

Harold Van Dyk: One of the big things we tell people is when you get a client calling you for a home inspection on a manufactured home, even if they are simply inquiring about pricing, ask about the engineering certificate, have them ask about the lender, or ask their lender who they’re using, get that lead, find out who is lending on those things in your area, and then make a phone call and introduce yourself. I’ve taken them to coffee, and they talk across not just the loan officers in their own company. But you know, lenders talk across different companies with each other and through their blogs and so forth. And so you’ll often hear in my name got passed around many years ago that way a lot, where they’re saying, hey, we need somebody who can do these foundation certifications, you know, our engineer left town and you know, they put just a general statement out there just like Realtors communicate with each other, even though they compete with each other. So there’s a lot of ways to get your name out there and get other people to help you get your name out.

Ian R: Yeah, and I guess that’s the group that we’re mostly not familiar with our lenders as home inspectors because lenders aren’t referring home inspections for the most part anyway. So but the lenders are the ones who are going to be, you know, after the home inspection or the deals going through, and then all sudden, they’re like, oh, by the way, you need a manufactured foundation certification. And everybody’s like, what, what’s that? Why do I need that? and that they say, don’t worry, I got a guy. I got Harold, I got Ian, or whatever your name is as listening right now. But so let me ask you this. So say I’m some guy and I’ve never really worked with manufactured homes. That’s not my thing. Is it complicated? Is there training? How do I get to know the whole deal of what needs to be done and seen?

Harold Van Dyk: Well, we have a training manual that once you’ve signed up, we send you about 28 pages, we’re working on making that more comprehensive and improving that lot from the years we have on slideshows on the web portal. Then we also have some videos there. Again, we’re working to improve all those and I’m also going out to large organizations and doing live training when they have at least five preferably 10 Guys can gather together so I’ve done some flying around the country and did a live training, but we have all that training stuff. And then once people go through that and most home inspectors in two, three hours in an evening of going through it understand what we’re looking for, and then most of them will give me a call and we’ll spend 510 minutes walking through the web portal on creating inspection, uploading it, and because they can play with one and put their own kids’ pictures in it whatever they want, so they can understand how the system works and how that web portal works. It doesn’t take much.

Ian R: Well, and then and I guess that’s the point like you just said, it doesn’t take much. I mean, to start a business where you get basically an inspection, a home inspection fee, for less than an hour’s worth of work, and three hours of training. And to be honest with you a 28-page manual, that’s nothing. I mean, that’s just good reading after dinner one time, you know. So it’s not overly complicated. But if that’s because of your experience as a home inspector, is I understand the basic parameters of construction in general. So it’s easy for you as the home inspector to come in and say, Okay, I’m just adding on to that already existing knowledge.

Harold Van Dyk: Correct. Yep.

Ian R: So are there any requirements for the program,

Harold Van Dyk: We do require that you’re a full-time home inspector, that just gives us our pre-qualifications, you have to have a website because you put a website snippet on the website that allows people to place orders directly with you through our system that way that goes to you. It just speeds the process up. It helps with SEO, and so forth. But yeah, basically, being a full-time home inspector, having your liability insurance, and having the website are the three main things that you need to have. And of course, you got to be registered and signed up with us.

Ian R: Yeah. And so that leads me to my next question, how can a home inspector sign up? So somebody listening right now, where can they sign up? And how?

Harold Van Dyk: Well, what we need to do is send them an email with a link to an application form. It’s a form that you fill out in less than five minutes, right online, basic information only. You know, about your company, and your business name, address, all those kinds of things that are typical, we do charge $150 upfront for a company to join. That’s a time never a reoccurring fee. That gives you two inspectors, any additional inspectors that you may need are 25 bucks apiece, allow us to get them up in the system and going. And if you’re an InterNACHI member, just 100. But other than that, there’s no cost. No renewal costs, nothing is just when you submit a report, we had three inspectors last week, sign up, who within four days, each got at least one and one company got four of these already. Generally, I would say it takes six months to a year for people to get to a point where they’re doing 50 to 100 of them a year, you know, one to two a week. And that’s a pretty good average. But if you’re making an extra three 325 bucks free and clear, you know, on two of them a week. That’s some pretty good money.

Ian R: Yeah, that’s not only adding to your bottom line. That’s, I mean, depending on your area, it could be a whole separate business.

Harold Van Dyk: That is correct. Some have started new businesses and on side of their home inspection business just to pursue these. That is correct.

Ian R: I think it would be important for us to think too. A lot of times we think, you know, manufactured homes, there’s not a lot of them in my area, I think we’d be surprised how many of them exist within our service area, or where we’d be willing to drive to, because I remember when I first started thinking about it, I’m like, No, there’s not a lot around here. And then I started looking online and like, wow, there’s a lot for sale. Oh, that one would need a manufacturer foundation certification, this one will too and so on. Do a little bit of looking around. We might be surprised how much work is out there in that regard.

Harold Van Dyk: Correct. I talked to an inspector in Seattle. Yesterday, I think it was and you know, retiring. But why don’t just do just a little bit of work on these? He was thinking about how far he had to go. He really realized when you looked at the agents he worked with, and he had gotten requests for these before. He only had to drive 30 miles north to get into pockets where they were. The business there and like I said, we’ve had that one home inspector last week, turned out that the mortgage companies around there always had to get an engineer from a place that was three hours away. And it was taking a month to get these certifications. They never communicated with each other and nobody asked the home inspector if they could do it. All of a sudden the home inspector says yeah, we can do them, and the mortgage company says, Wow, that changes things for us dramatically. Yeah, they’re the head for the first week.

Ian R

Yeah. You know, it’s, this is a business that could, as we mentioned earlier, help us along in lean times. It was interesting, the statistics that you talked about in Grand Rapids where you are, how many people are about six, 700,000 and how many homes are for sale?

Harold Van Dyk: Yeah, we’ve got in the city of Grand Rapids 350,400,000. In all of Kent County, you know, there’s probably 800,000 people, we normally have around 3000 homes listed in a good season. So about five months’ worth of inventory, we’re at 240 right now. So we don’t even have a week’s worth of inventory and 3040 offers on a home with people, you know, offering, you know, 15, 20, 30, even 40,000 over ask on a quarter-million-dollar home and losing out on it. People not getting the home inspections, people not getting well and septic inspections in order to get the deals. But these things, they’re requirements of the loan. So you don’t have that option.

Ian R: Yeah, and that’s the big talk. And in the home inspection industry right now, because you are in an area where your counties, almost 800,000 people, 240 homes, that really doesn’t I mean, it really doesn’t leave anything for the home inspectors that exist in the area. And we all we’re all well, not maybe all of us, but a lot of us are feeling it. Like it’s not like anybody’s not referring us. It’s just if there are no homes to inspect, and sellers aren’t selling right now, because they’re like if I sell my house I where am I going to go to, on the opposite side of that manufactured homes are having a little bit of a boom right now. Yeah. And this is a good time to jump in.

Harold Van Dyk: Yeah, there’s a good reason why Warren Buffett bought into Berkshire Hathaway’s manufactured home companies, and also owns a company that insures him and owns a company that finances. There’s a good reason behind that he knows where the future of housing is going,

Ian R: Hey, if Warren Buffett’s in, I’m in. Let’s do this. Yeah, so is there any other points that you’d like to share with inspectors out there?

Harold Van Dyk: Boy, you know, that’s a tough one. I mean, we get, you know, or I get calls or when I’m talking to home inspectors, and they’ll say, Well, I’ve never gotten calls for these, you know, some have and they’ve always turned them away, or referred them elsewhere. But it’s like anything else until you started hanging out a shingle to do home inspections, people didn’t call you for a home inspection. So, you know, don’t assume that work isn’t in your area. In most areas, unless you’re staying right in the big, big city and just sticking in the city limits. You’d be surprised how many manufactured homes are out there. And how much of this work is there. But you got to talk to the lenders, you got to get out there. It’s simple to market, it is a matter of just calling up a lender and talking to them, especially one that you know, taking them out for coffee, and saying, Hey, this is what I can do and can provide, can you know, help me get the word out to people? Can I do a training class on manufactured homes in front of the loan officers in your company for 30 minutes to talk about all the ins and outs of the rules with additions and foundations and what’s what would pass what wouldn’t pass those types of things?

Ian R: So I’d like to just point out once again, that this is an easy program to join. Training is not overly complicated, high profit margin and a low amount of time, it really is one of the best ancillary services if we can call it an ancillary service that we can add to our home inspection business. And Harold, you are a wealth of knowledge in the home inspection field and in manufactured homes. We really do appreciate you being on the show because I think every home inspector out there should be doing this program.

Harold Van Dyk: I agree. The more home inspectors do this, the more lenders will understand they can order it from the home inspectors. And that’s going to help everybody and change the area or to whom lenders go to get these inspections. You know, and as most inspectors in our system will tell you also, I’m available and accessible. eight to eight, Monday through Friday, eight to two on Saturdays Eastern Standard Time. When people are on inspections, I had one this morning, wasn’t sure what he was seeing, he sends me a text. I immediately call him back he texts me some pictures and we talk about it. So we’re there to support and help you all the way through. It’s not a steep learning curve in any way. But we’re still available to guide you and help you in absolutely any way we can to make it a good experience and a profitable one for you.

Ian R: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Harold, for sharing all your information and wisdom on this. Hopefully, if you’re listening, give Harold a call. Send them an email. You can visit their website is mfdhomecerts.com and we’ll post that in the transcript here on the podcast but Harold thank you again it was great talking with you

Harold Van Dyk: Hey, it was a pleasure to be here and wishing you the best.

Ian R: You too! Talk soon.

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of inspector toolbelt talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at info@inspectortoolbelt.com.

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