Ian Robertson
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk, and today we have a new segment called Inspection News. Hey, you know what, David? We were just talking before the show that we should have more sound effects. And you’re like, eh, I don’t know. But I think we should have some classic news music to play right now. And then fade away, and then something like, “Hi, I am your anchor, Ian, this is my co-anchor, David Nyman.”
David Nyman
I can get a rattle and shake it too and stuff like that. Old school sound effects.
Ian Robertson
Old school sound effects, I don’t know what they are.
David Nyman
Crinkling up paper, making it sound like thunder, I don’t know.
Ian Robertson
If this were a video, if we had video on for this particular podcast, it’d zoom in really close to our faces. But I’d like to reintroduce you to everybody, David Nyman, he is our, I don’t know, coordinator of all things Inspector Toolbelt. You’ve probably seen him on our webinars, you’ve probably worked with him with customer support. And he is still also the most viewed photo on our Google business page. So welcome back David.
David Nyman
Thank you, Ian. Are you sure the stats are right, though. I mean, have you checked the photo recently?
Ian Robertson
No, no, I did. Yep. That photo of you in a rowboat for some reason is, you know, why look at graphics of our awesome software. Why look at you know, pictures of inspectors using our software when you can look at David Nyman in a rowboat.
David Nyman
You get a sense of peace and tranquility. That’s all.
Ian Robertson
And so was that rowboat in Sweden?
David Nyman
Yeah, visiting family.
Ian Robertson
So just a reminder, David is Swedish. So if I call him the Swede during the podcast, that’s pretty normal. But I kind of wanted to do this podcast because there’s always news going on in the industry. So whether it be the home inspection industry, which is primarily what we’re gonna focus on, or things happening in the real estate industry that affect us, big news, little news, light news, heavy news. Sometimes it’s kind of hard to assimilate it all. I know I tend to go to like five different forums to kind of look for whatever’s happening. So as I find stuff, I thought, hey, let’s share it with everybody. So this is our first Inspection News segment.
David Nyman
Yeah, it’s exciting. It’s funny, though, like, I guess I view myself a little bit as an outsider looking in, because I’ve never actually done a home inspection in my life. But I’ve been working inside of the industry for, I don’t know, what do you say, six, seven years, with Ian, so I can really see how these changes in the industry are affecting everyone. And I hear it too, when I talk to clients getting trainings and and support.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, there’s a lot going on. And it’s interesting, some guys will focus in on one aspect of the news. And then they’ll say, oh, yeah, did you hear about this too? And they’re like, Oh, no. Like I said, it’s just kind of hard to keep track because there’s always so much going on. But I wanted to start off with a happy point. Nick and Lena Gromicko had a baby. It’s their third one. I think he said her name was Abigail West Gromicko. So congratulations, Nick and Lena. We’re happy for you.
David Nyman
Very happy. Even though I haven’t met Nick myself, I’ve listened to his podcasts.
Ian Robertson
While he’s been on the show three times this year, their third child together, next fifth child altogether, and just a really, really great little family they have going on there. So congratulations, Nick and Lena. Enjoy it. And hopefully, Abigail West gets to go home soon or is already home and meeting her new brother and sister. Otherwise in inspection news, continuing with some of the lighter points, actually, I just saw that there was a new inspection vendor, there’s always new inspection vendors. But you know, if they’re going to be independent outside of a big corporation, I like to give them a mention out there. We had Homeinspectology on, Barry Cohen earlier in the year, and I want to focus in on independently owned inspection vendors. So Mark Rojek, actually one of our website clients, he started inspectiontemplates.com.
David Nyman
Very nice. So what do they do?
Ian Robertson
So he sells templates for different software and templates for inspecting, for office presentations and contracts, agreements, things like that. So I thought it was a nice website he has going on there and looks professional, inspectiontemplates.com. I hope it works out well for Mark. But, um, which leads us to some news for us, we actually have office presentations that we are developing free for our users. So, you know, if you’re a user of Inspector Toolbelt, and you’d like a free office presentation, we actually have a couple, we’re almost done. We’ll adapt them to your services, your colors and your logo. And that way you have, right now, at least two different presentations that you can go to real estate offices with. We also have a couple more coming out with some new features that we have. And so that way you can have a whole library of office presentations without having to do it yourself.
David Nyman
And for a small fee, Ian will give the presentation in person.
Ian Robertson
I won’t necessarily do a good job. I tell you what, the office presentations, I talk big about those like, oh, yeah, do this and do that. Every time walking in, I just didn’t feel comfortable. I’d always feel good walking away, but always going in, I’d be like, oh, man, I gotta go to the bathroom. And I’m not feeling good about. But, you know, we got the idea from Jon Dadah, one of our users from Dadah Home Inspections, he came out with this awesome presentation that he uses with realtors. And it just, it was great. And so I said, hey, can we take a look at this and come up with something, we didn’t copy his content, we just kind of took his format ideas, and kind of based it off of that. He said, yeah, sure, go for it. His wife actually put it together. She does some really nice work out there. They’re a good team.
David Nyman
Yeah, yeah, small business. So your wife has to do a lot of work.
Ian Robertson
So in other news, for our Texas guys out there, I noticed a few weeks ago, there was some TREC changes that happened. Interestingly, some of those TREC changes were directly affecting us in the home inspection industry. So only recently did they actually adopt the changes. And those changes are going to go into effect February 1st. So if you’re not in Texas, you don’t have to necessarily listen to this next part, it’s not going to be very long. But if you are in Texas, then this is for you. Interesting little factoid, one out of ten home inspectors in the United States are in Texas. So I think it’s a little over 3,000 inspectors in Texas right now, or the last time I checked anyways. And there’s just barely over 30,000 home inspectors nationwide. So, Florida and Texas together kind of make up some ridiculous number like a little over 20% of home inspectors in the United States. So one out of ten of our listeners are probably going to be interested in this. So a couple of the changes, not huge, but if you use the REI-7 TREC form, it says the commission proposed amendments to Section 535.223 to clarify that when multiple boxes are checked for a particular item on the property inspection form, the inspector must also explain the reason for checking multiple boxes. The proposed amendments also removes single system inspections from the list of exemptions, meaning the requirements in Section 535.223 would apply to those inspections.
David Nyman
My brain just checked out.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, I know, I feel bad for you guys over there in Texas sometimes, because TREC rules and regulations sometimes kind of make my head spin. The form is not that complicated. Our app actually produces the form, you can do the home inspection and produce the form. But sometimes I’m looking at the regs and I’m like, what in the world? Okay. Well, you know, in New York, New York State, we almost had a similar situation to Texas. The real estate commission almost wrote and oversaw the whole inspection community like TREC. And then some old ASHI guys got together and they’re like, whoa, no, we do not want that. And so they created the home inspector board, which actually was decommissioned anyways, and now it just falls under the Department of State. But either way, those are some changes for you guys down there. To think about, there’s also some changes to their laws about contracts. But I don’t think any of that happened to apply to home inspectors.
David Nyman
I do have a question actually about the TREC form. Why is there hydro-massage equipment on it?
Ian Robertson
I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ve ever really actually called it that ever as well. Like, is that what people call it? Say it again, David.
David Nyman
Hydro-massage equipment. Yeah. That’s, that’s one of the things that they have to have on their inspection report, I guess. I assume there’s a lot of those in Texas.
Ian Robertson
If you’re a Texas person and you can explain that to us, why there is a whole section that can’t be removed from the form, that has to be there on hydro-massages. We would like to know.
David Nyman
Or maybe not.
Ian Robertson
Maybe not, I don’t know what goes on down there in Texas. So there was, there was a whole bunch of stuff going on. One of the big stories is Porch. So Porch had some unhappy inspectors, I want to say. So back on November 14th, they released a statement talking about their new app. Matter of fact, they tweeted it and then did a press release. It says, “We’re thrilled to give home inspectors the opportunity to present their clients with a free, yet high value tool, that will make it easy easier to manage and maintain one of the biggest investments most people make in their lifetime, their home.” So for those of you that don’t know, Porch owns Home Inspector Pro, it owns Palm Tech, it owns America’s Call Center, it owns half of the inspection industry. But basically, if you use ISN, which they own, then your client, before they download the report, it will say, hey, do you want to use this app? One home inspector on Facebook reported that they couldn’t view their report, unless they downloaded the app. I don’t know how true, I’m not going to pretend like I know how any of it works. That may or may not be true. Maybe he just didn’t quite get it. But it seems a lot like when home inspectors were upset at HomeGauge. With HomeGauge, before you could download your report, you had to click on this box or boxes, say no, I don’t want any homeowners insurance. No, I don’t want this or that. And I kind of related it to when we actually on our podcast with Nick Gromicko, kinda like somebody orders food at McDonald’s. And as they drive up to the window, they have to drive by, you know, three different people offering them different types of antacid before they get there. Yeah, does somebody want antacid after they go to McDonald’s, probably. But I mean, I’d rather just go and get my meal and decide for myself afterwards. I don’t know, that just seems to be where a lot of the industry is going. But I do see that home inspectors are starting to get a little bit fed up with it. I know, I know I am. It’s actually been admittedly good for our business, because we are one of only a couple independently owned home inspection companies, home inspection software companies, on the market.
David Nyman
Yeah, you always just want to yell “freedom”!
Ian Robertson
“Freedom!”, like the Scots against the Brits. We don’t want your tyranny. You know, there was another vendor that I was listening to. And he was talking about how you go to the shows, and you go to the conferences, and there’s a very heavy corporate presence there now. It was only a few short years ago that we were, you know, we were free, flying around space in our spaceships. Like, I’ve used that illustration before, we were Han Solo’s just living it up. And now all of a sudden..
David Nyman
The Emperor shows up.
Ian Robertson
Yep, the Emperor shows up and kind of takes over the galaxy. But you know, that’s kind of the news that’s going on there. Take that however you want. That was their post, kind of going around the way of, you know, what American Family did, which is the corporation that owns HomeGauge. So they just happen to own a larger piece of things of the inspection industry. So some other industry news that I wanted to check in on. And if you actually know any of the information of what’s going on, we would love to hear. So back earlier this year and last year, ReportHost started a lawsuit against Spectora, which we all kind of sat back and we’re like, whoa, and you could see the posts on the Nashi forum, and all that. ReportHost basically said, hey, when you guys leave our company, you can’t take comments from your templates with you. If I’m getting this right. And so they started a lawsuit against Spectora in particular, not quite sure why against Spectora. But if you go to, you can, you can look it up, I’m looking at the dockets.justia.com, you can actually read all the filings and things like that. It’s all public information, but there’s all sorts of stuff going on. But the last update that I can find was earlier this year, that apparently they’re still pushing forward with it. And then nothing else. So I think we need to keep an eye on that as an industry. Because there’s a couple of things that pop up into my mind anyways, when I look at a lawsuit like that. If I have comments that I wrote, does this set legal precedent that the software company that I’m putting it in, owns my comments instead? Or if I use an inspection company, and they have some standard comments, do they own them? Do they own them, and I can’t use them anywhere else? Just so you know, and you can put this on record. Inspector Toolbelt, our comments come with a comment library of like 400 or something like that. Go for it. Use them. I don’t care. I wrote 99%.
David Nyman
We won’t come after you.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, use our app for a day, be like, nah, and then go use those comments somewhere else. Because I mean, how many different ways can you write GFCI was not functioning at time of inspection.
David Nyman
Yeah, funny thing actually. I do quite a lot of blog writing. And that was one of the articles where I ran into an issue, because we try to make sure you know, we run a program to check that we have unique content in our blogs. It’s really hard to write how to test a GFCI outlet for functionality without getting that flagged as duplicate content. Because everybody writes the same thing, you know, plugged something in there, you know, hit the switch, the reset pops out. I had to work on that for quite a while before I got a unique version.
Ian Robertson
Well, and that’s actually a really fantastic example, because that’s probably the biggest lift when it comes to our website clients when we’re blogging is to make sure that all of the content is original. So like David said, we use software. And if it’s not original, whoever originated that content, legally owns the copyright to it, that’s how US and Canadian copyright laws work. I write something, and that person owns it. But the difference is, we’re not talking about public information, we’re not talking about, I wrote a book and you copied my book, or I wrote a blog and you copied my blog. These are comments that you provide to individuals. These are private documents. So I’m really interested to see how this is going to turn out because..so let’s say somebody takes my comment, say, you know, “discoloration noted in the attic, could be possible organic growth, have evaluated by a qualified specialist”, whatever, however it’s written, if somebody takes that I don’t care, but let’s say I did. Could I sue them for every report that they’ve ever used that in? How do you get access to each one of those reports? There’s a, that’s a big lawsuit. That’s gonna set a lot of legal precedent. I’m actually surprised that InterNACHI hasn’t weighed in on it yet.
David Nyman
Sounds like we’re gonna have to have that lawyer back on the show.
Oh yeah, Joe Ferry, let’s have Joe Ferry back on. His um, his whole thing about the copyright laws or reports was very interesting in that particular podcast, I really want to go back and listen to him talk about it, he used the illustration of a book. You own the book, but you sold the book to me, I can give the book to all my friends. But I can’t go in and reproduce the book. I thought that was a good illustration of you know, who owns the report. That ties very much into this lawsuit with ReporHost versus Spectora. So, hey, not really quite sure how it’s going to end or if it has ended? And maybe we just don’t know, maybe it was settled out of court? If anyone knows, let us know. Because we’d like to keep up on that. Those are important things to our industry.
David Nyman
It is interesting with the law system, because in Sweden, I always heard about lawsuits in the United States. Got to see it myself.
Ian Robertson
Yeah. And there’s parts of the country that tend to be a little bit more litigious than others, and industries that tend to be more litigious than others. I don’t think we’re in a horribly litigious industry being a vendor in a home inspection industry. And even home inspections in general, I don’t think are very litigious. According to Joe Ferry, at least, it’s not a litigious industry. But we worry about it a lot.
David Nyman
We should put a marker on this episode, this is the highest number of litigious users in one episode by Inspector Toolbelt.
Ian Robertson
Alright, so what else we got going on for news? A couple more things is, according to most surveys, about half of Americans anyways, I didn’t look for Canadians, are expecting the housing market will crash soon. But the experts are saying the complete opposite. Because there’s still such low inventory and such a glut of buyers, that it’s not going to crash. So I tend to ignore the sentiment, personally, I don’t think there’s going to be a crash. But if there is, that’s actually good for us, because that makes for more houses on the market, and you still have buyers and that’s when we really shine as inspectors. So it’s still kind of going along with our Q4 Market Outlook podcast. I’m still seeing the same trends, I’m kind of still sticking with my arbitrary prediction of things.
David Nyman
Your non-expert opinion.
Ian Robertson
My non-expert opinion, but hey, we’ve been right so far. But what is happening though, our prices are still starting to drop, which is also still good for us. The problem is, prices are dropping slightly, but not enough to deter people to make them drop quickly. So in other words, you might have had a $300,000 house that maybe is now 290, you still get three offers on it, you know, it’s like, alright, well, you’re not paying 30 grand over asking, but you’re also not really paying a reasonable price still. So it’s still keeping prices from dropping drastically, which I think will continue to happen. Because people are gonna get tired of renting, because I was just reading an article yesterday. I think it was on realtor.com or MarketWatch. I’d have to go back and look, but talking about the rising rent increase because everything’s getting more expensive. Landlords are raising the rent. So you might have paid two grand a month last year, and now you’re paying $2,300 a month. You add that on to a whole bunch of other stuff that’s gone up with inflation. Hey, you’re going to be thinking about paying, overpaying for a house eventually.
David Nyman
That’s true.
Ian Robertson
You’re paying for a mortgage.
David Nyman
Yeah, no, I’ve heard a lot of friends. Some friends are moving into the area too, this area in United States, it’s near New York City, rent is pretty crazy. And it just keeps going up.
Ian Robertson
How close are you to New York City, David?
David Nyman
Depends on the traffic, you can probably get there in a little bit over an hour on a good day, can take a lot longer on a bad day.
Ian Robertson
No offense to anybody that lives in New York City. But I’m glad to be three to four hours north of it.
David Nyman
Yeah. I’m glad to be an hour north of it.
Ian Robertson
Well, you’re north of it, just not as far.
David Nyman
Yeah.
Ian Robertson
So that’s something to really keep an eye on. A lot of home inspectors are still talking about, you know, how hard times are, and I’d had my soapbox speech podcast that we released this past week. It really just comes down to digging your heels in and hanging on. You know, wait this market out, spring will be better, 2024 will be a lot better, in my opinion. You can hang on, less competition and a better market coming.
David Nyman
Also, now on our ITB website, you can buy posters, motivational posters, by Ian, “just hang on”.
Ian Robertson
“Just hang on.” I should, I should do de-motivational posters, effort.
David Nyman
Those are better.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, it’ll just say “effort” on top. And then underneath will be like, “you can still try and be completely terrible at it.” One last little news item. This has been ongoing throughout the year. But we’re close to New Jersey. So I was actually reading up on how New Jersey is trying to take a stance on walk and talks. So walk and talks, if you don’t know, those are where instead of performing a full home inspection, you go in, shorter period of time, no report. And you basically just give a verbal summary of things or some guys will do like a little one pager, they find something big. I’ve never been a fan of them. A lot of guys do them, tho. But TREC took a stance on that, if you’re in Texas, and they’re like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not gonna happen. Matter of fact, their new changes, if you were listening to when I read that, affect walk and talks and single item inspections. New York State took a weird stance, their stance was no stance. But a couple of attorneys and associations interpreted the law a couple of different ways. In New York State, you know, oh, hey, you can do it if you do it this way. But you really shouldn’t do it. And then there was this other association that’s specific to New York. And they said we we did this and we checked this and we checked this and according to New York State, their official position on it is you can’t do walk and talks. But then they didn’t really provide a letter or anything that New York State said you couldn’t do them. So it’s still kind of sketchy in New York. But New Jersey and a couple of other states are talking about just getting rid of that possibility altogether. Most of those, most state departments to regulate home inspectors look out for consumer interests, like Department of State is a consumer-driven department in New York State, TREC with their consumer protection notice, etc. So they’re going to look after the consumer first and a walk and talk in their opinion, most of them anyways, is a disservice to the consumer. Well, walk and talks have been around forever, you know, but now, because they became such a big deal during the hot market in 2020, states are kind of taking a closer look at them and making a stance. So New Jersey is just talking about it right at the moment. I’m really interested to see what they come out with. Then there’s California, I don’t know what they’re doing over there. They don’t even have licensing for home inspectors, so they’re not worried about it. But that’s it for Inspection News. We’ll try to keep you updated, get you some hard information and facts. And next time we have this segment, hopefully we’ll have a follow up on some of the articles or some of the subjects that we brought up during this podcast. But David, do you have anything to add?
David Nyman
No, I think I’ll just add a new station outro coming out here and give you the sound effects that you really love.
Ian Robertson
Three, two, one…Thank you, and..thank you, and good night from Inspection News. This was the dorkiest podcast.
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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