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Inspector Toolbelt Talk
A weekly home inspection podcast hosted by the founders of Inspector Toolbelt - the premier home inspection software. Get tips, insights, strategies, and more from our hosts and guests to help give your home inspection business a boost. Ian and Beon are property inspection and tech industry veterans with over 20 years of experience each. Sometimes they even stay on point :)
Inspector Toolbelt Talk
Q3 2025 Home Inspection Market Outlook
The housing market has finally reached a pivotal turning point. After years of frenzied buying, skipped inspections, and astronomical prices, we're witnessing a much-needed stabilization that brings good news for both homebuyers and inspection professionals.
Our latest market analysis reveals that 44% of current listings have sat for over 60 days—representing a staggering $700 billion in inventory. This extended time on market means sellers are becoming realistic about pricing, with the average sale price now falling below asking. The days of waived inspections and desperate bidding wars appear to be fading into memory.
Florida continues to function as our market crystal ball. Areas like Orlando, Tampa, and Cape Coral that saw appreciation rates 11% above the national average are now cooling significantly. What happens in the Sunshine State typically rolls across the country within six months, signaling better days ahead for inspection businesses nationwide as buyers regain negotiating power.
Meanwhile, the home inspection industry faces a technological revolution as AI reshapes our profession. While some fear these changes, we see opportunity for those willing to adapt. The most successful inspectors will embrace AI tools to enhance efficiency while maintaining the irreplaceable human expertise that clients trust. Those clinging to outdated methods—like handwritten reports—may find themselves increasingly marginalized as the industry evolves.
Construction trends show interesting patterns with high-density luxury apartments dominating many areas rather than single-family homes. And contrary to predictions, the "gray wave" of Baby Boomers selling their homes hasn't materialized, with most choosing to age in place. Interestingly, Gen Z shows remarkable enthusiasm for homeownership despite market challenges, potentially driving future transaction volumes.
The worst appears behind us. The mass exodus of inspectors has largely stopped, and even newer professionals are finding their footing. For established inspection businesses willing to embrace change while maintaining quality, the future looks increasingly bright. Are you positioning yourself to thrive in this evolving landscape?
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*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.
Ian Robertson
Hey, Beon, you know this time of year, we get a lot of ants, especially in upstate New York here. I had five ants move into my house yesterday.
Beon DeNood
Five ants?
Ian Robertson
Yep. And today, five more. So now I have tenants.
Beon DeNood
Yeah. I was trying to think, like, does that include your Aunt Carol and your aunt like, and then I was like, no, okay. I didn't know where this was going.
Ian Robertson
I didn't have any good home inspector jokes. So I'm like, how about a good landlord joke.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, 10 ants, you're doing okay.
Ian Robertson
So before the show, I was just saying, and for our listeners, they can't see, but more than anybody I think I know you vacillate between beard and no beard. Like, I feel like you need to commit to beard life or abandon beard life. You know, can't climb the mountain, get halfway to the top and be like, I'm done guys, and then, like, three quarters of the way you're back with the group. Like, what's going on?
Beon DeNood
Yeah, I don't know there. There is no group, man, I'm in a league of my own I guess.
Ian Robertson
I feel like it's like a Jeep life, you know, like, if you're a Jeep owner, you own a jeep. That's you now.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, you gotta collect your ducks, and that's just the rest of your life. You committed.
Ian Robertson
I never understood that. Like, isn't that supposed to be like the manly thing? Like, you have a Jeep, you take your doors off, you're driving through the mud, and then you trade tiny little rubber duckies with other grown men. Like, what is that? For people that don't know, I was with a with a friend of mine. He's a good friend of mine. We went out and got a beer. You know, we're riding around in his jeep. He's got all these like, winches and things for hiking and whatever, and then we pull next to another Jeep in the parking lot, and the tradition is you leave a little tiny ducky on their windshield, and they leave one for you. It's called ducking each other. I'm like, what the heck.
Beon DeNood
Yeah. There was another family, I know they have a Honda minivan, and they just thought they were cute, so they bought a bunch of ducks and just put them on their windshield, you know, on their dashboard, and all their Jeep friends were getting upset, like, you can't do that. You're just not allowed to do that. It was pretty funny. But I don't have a jeep. So..don't you have a jeep? You got a jeep, right?
Ian Robertson
I do. I don't do that though.
Beon DeNood
You've never been ducked?
Ian Robertson
No, and I'm thankful for that. I've also never worn crocs as an adult man, so I'm thankful for that too.
Beon DeNood
So that goes together, like, jeeps and crocs?
Ian Robertson
No, the duck thing just maybe goes with the crocs. I don't know, but we should come up with something as home inspectors, like, I moisture metered you. That sounds weird. That didn't work. Like you leave a moisture meter for the other..I microwave testered you, like, I don't know. You got to leave something on other home inspectors windshields, you know. Well, after that awkward introduction, you're back on the show. So it's usually going to be a special episode, and it's our Q3 market outlook for 2025. And you know, I gotta say, we accidentally did our Q2 market outlook a little too early.
Beon DeNood
It's been kind of a big gap between the two, huh?
Ian Robertson
Yeah, a little bit of a gap. But it's actually good, because a lot of stuff has happened since then, and our 2025 market outlook overall that we did in January has kind of played out like 85 to 90% what we thought it was going to. Market has picked up a little bit, no big swings, but this next half of the year, I think is going to be the more interesting half. Would you agree with that?
Beon DeNood
Yeah, it seems that way. Looking at, you know, just news in general before I started research for this episode, I thought, oh, man, things are not looking good. But overall, it seems like things, I don't know, what would I say? They're stable and slowly growing. There's no like, wild swings at the moment. And I think overall that's good news.
Ian Robertson
Yeah. So we're going to go over some statistics, but I think you pretty much summarized it there. Things have stabilized. The average asking price of a home was a little over $400,000 which it has been for a while now, but the average person has paid under $400,000 for those houses. So there's seller concessions again. So we went from last year still the fringes of people skipping inspections, and in some isolated markets, it's still like that, but that's from CBS News. They see that as a good thing. Prices haven't dropped, but people are literally paying less, ultimately, for the home.
Beon DeNood
Right. Yeah, I think, I think nationally, they've measured it in like a, it's like a 1% increase, which you know indicates a major, and that's nationally. So obviously each region you're going to see some going up, some going down, but either way, it's slowed. We're not having that crazy growth in price that we've seen.
Ian Robertson
Yeah. And last time we talked about Florida a lot. And the reason we talked about Florida a lot is they've become the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the market. And interestingly, the Florida market for real estate is suffering. For home inspectors, it's becoming a good market again, that's what we look for as an indicator for a good market. So basically, houses are sitting on the market longer, quite a bit longer, and I have some statistics to share here, but it's a good sign. The longer houses sit, the less money they go for. It allows the housing stock to increase, which we want, and then people start buying houses again. The last thing we want is for a big buying frenzy to happen again. So people are like, oh, if they only lowered the interest rates, not yet. If they lowered it now, we'd still be stuck in the same position a year from now. We need the housing stock to build up, more houses than buyers, then interest rates go down, and then we'll enjoy a good four or five year period of just feasting for home inspections.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, yeah. You said you had some stats there. The one stat that popped out for me is that, I guess it's like 44% of all listings now have sat on the market for longer than 60 days.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, isn't that incredible?
Beon DeNood
Yeah, that's something. I mean, the value that represents, I guess it's about $700 billion worth of inventory that's kind of just stuck there, which we haven't had for a very long time.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, and so the longer it sits there, the better it is for us. So I don't know what the statistics were before. I don't have those in front of me, but houses were anecdotally sitting on the market for a week or two, and sometimes they were only there that long, just so that they get all the offers in. It was a mad house. But the problem is, still, houses are overpriced, so over $400,000 for an average American home that just a decade ago would have been 250,000 maybe, that hurts the average American family, because inflation and all that other stuff haven't caught up to the housing market yet.
Beon DeNood
Yep, yep. And the inventory problem, we were progressing at a pretty good clip, but it looks like we've slowed down a little bit again. As far as new construction inventory being added, the growth rate, I guess, year on year, has now gone down again. So it's going to take a little longer to be able to keep closing that gap with new construction inventory anyways.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, and so going back to the Florida market, the canary in the coal mine. And we'll see this over the years. You know, some guy might be sitting in Kansas right now or Iowa, and, you know, some inspector up in Maine or New York and say, what does this have to do with me? We'll always find that typically, there's going to be a state in the US that starts, and sometimes it'll be a province in Canada, but very, very rarely, almost always, a state in the US that starts the process of swinging the market back around to a buyers and then back around to a seller's. Oftentimes it'll be a state like Texas, California, Florida is a big one typically, once in a great while, one of the eastern states, kind of like New York, but not as often. Florida is often used as an indicator of housing market. So for instance, Orlando, Tampa, Cape Coral, Lakeland, all those areas are big ones to watch. They appreciated on average over the years, 53%, about 11% above the national average of 48%, so over the years, they grew the most. So everybody knew to start watching Florida a while back, they're like, usually, who appreciates the most drops the most, and they're going to be the first indicator. So now Florida a matter of fact, if you look at MSN news, and I don't look at MSN news a lot for these kind of things, but they actually hit a lot of these numbers and assumptions on the nose from what I what I felt anyways, is they actually say Florida is in trouble. Most Florida markets are in trouble, and there's going to be exceptions, but like Central Florida and everything, that's on really rocky soil. No pun intended. Right now, there's a lot going on there in the market that's going to start to roll back into all of our markets soon. So that's the good news. Bad news is that takes time. So unless we want to market crash like 2006 and 2007, prices coming down, take time. So you're going to have, we've had six months already of people listing their properties for over 420,000 and then ending up selling it at, you know, I forget the exact number was just under, like 395,000 or 398,000 something like that. So now what happens is houses will start to not appraise. So somebody goes to buy a house and they buy it for 405,000 instead of the 420, they still think they're getting a deal. The appraiser comes in and says, no, everything else out here is sold for 398,000 so now the next time that agent lists a house in that area of the similar size, they're going to go, okay, 398,000 and that's the slow roll into getting the housing market back to somewhere reasonable. And that takes time. And the longer it sits, and the bigger the market inventory gets, the better off we are.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, and probably what adds to it as well. I mean, I'm just thinking the biggest lot of houses that we're looking to sort of break free into inventory are owned by boomers who are looking to sell their homes now and move into a retirement property. I think, in a former episode, we discussed how quite a few are realizing that it's not going to pay them. So they're kind of staying, retiring in place and just doing, you know, modifying their existing home. But for them, I mean that generation, they're not going to be, they're not under any financial pressure to reach a deal, you know, to drop the price so that they can move. So I think that underscores what you were just saying, that it's not inventory that's easily going to be shaken loose. It'll take some time to get there.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, I think, personally, I have given up on what they call the gray wave, which is people of the boomer generation, which is, what is it? Uh, late 60s and 70s now, of them selling mass amounts of houses. Because, like you said, they have no motivation to move. There's not going to be a big gray wave. They're going to leave their house to their kids or the family, and they're one of the last generations that had a quote, unquote great pension, things like that. Yeah, I just don't think that's a possibility anymore. If it is, it's going to come late and it's going to come weak.
Beon DeNood
Yeah.
Ian Robertson
You know, you're going to maybe have 1/5 of the boomers in eight, nine years, maybe start dumping their homes on the market, but it's going to be so trivial comparatively to other market shifts.
Beon DeNood
Yeah. One interesting thing I'm noticing in our area is most of the larger or most of the construction taking place, if you were to do it by unit count, is high density construction. So we're seeing a lot of apartments. I mean, they're luxury apartments. You know, their rental fees are in the upper you know, the lowest you would get is like 1500 for a single bedroom, going up to over 2000 you know, for two or three bedroom apartments.
Ian Robertson
It's actually not bad.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, that's not terrible. But for home inspectors, that doesn't help, because you're moving renters in one, you know, if somebody's moving to Florida, to this area, you're probably trading renters in one place for renters in another place, you know, which doesn't help the transaction volume that's going to affect home inspectors, but it is an interesting trend, like, I'm quite amazed. Sometimes you'll just see massive swath of property being cleared, and it's high density that's going in. So I don't have anything statistically to back that up, just anecdotally, from what I've, hey, I said anecdotally for the first time ever.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, that's my favorite word, that and ubiquitous. That's a good word, ubiquitous. It's a fancy way of saying everywhere.
Beon DeNood
Everywhere. It's a trend I've noticed, but, you know, it's just interesting, depending on the local market that you're in. It's just interesting to watch, to see what kind of construction movement you're seeing, so that you can know what type of inventory is going to be added in your area, and if that's going to actually trickle down to benefit to you as a home inspector or not, you know.
Ian Robertson
But well, and it's a mostly multifaceted aspect when you talk about, you know, apartments and leased properties being in the market. Does that really cut into buyers? Not really. Most people who are going to rent a two or three bedroom apartment at $2,000 to $3,000 a month are generally speaking, going to be transitional families, either from or to a home. So somebody who just retired and wants to live in Florida for a while they, you know, they rent an apartment, or a family that, you know, has a kid or two and is looking for a home, while they look for a home, they live in an apartment. So typically, it's not going to affect the market like that. And I'm not worried about apartments, quote, unquote, taking over the market, because municipalities, well, municipalities have big talk, like we need to make affordable housing for our residents. They typically do not like apartments going into most municipalities. That's why you'll find developers have to fight tooth and nail in most municipalities to get apartments in there. It's high density, like you said. So for one property where you might have had one subdivision of 40 houses, now you're going to have an apartment building with hundreds of families in it, so you have more people. So you need more police services, more fire services, more ambulance services. The tax rate per square foot isn't great. You're going to need road infrastructure, power infrastructure. They really prefer to have communities. So I'm not overly worried about that. I look at, and going back to Florida, I look at like the villages in Florida used to be a retirement only community, and now they've actually branched off, and they're building huge swaths of the villages, including areas now for families. So those are going to be smaller properties. You know, postage stamp lots, nice house. And I don't know why, but in Florida, you guys build your houses really close together. In my area, they don't like that.
Beon DeNood
You know, that is, yeah, it's funny. Most of the big developer properties, like, I mean, we got Dr. Seuss type.
Ian Robertson
Dr. Horton.
Beon DeNood
Dr. Horton Hears a Who. So we have a lot of those developments around. And those are, yeah, I mean, they're just a few feet apart, very, very close. But yeah, that seems to just be they how they develop them and the larger developments. I think why I brought up the apartments is, I know, especially for the Gen Zers, who are looking to get into home ownership, some of them a couple of years ago had sort of given up or put those plans on hold and stuck with renting for now. And obviously the hope was trying to shake some of those loose so that they would be able to move into home ownership. But, you know, it's likely to be transitioning from renting to renting, you know, as opposed to renting to home ownership. But in time, I think it's gonna get more and more favorable for them to be able to embrace home ownership. They actually, an interesting article I was reading the other day, Gen Z, more than any other generation, are more tuned and educated and focused on wanting to be homeowners even earlier on, which I thought was interesting, even coming up with interesting ownership, like concepts of being able to own properties together. You know, co-buying properties together, stuff like that. So my assumption was, oh, well, the newer generation is not really interested in home ownership, but that was really wrong. So it's going to be interesting to see how that affects the market in the upcoming years, Gen Z is going to be moving in, and we probably will see some elevated transaction levels because of that.
Ian Robertson
Yeah. And even when we look at it now, we're talking kind of big picture Gen Z and all that and but if we narrow it down to the next three months for Q3 of 2025, there's still good things happening for our home inspection market. So I have the benefit of seeing numbers and stats and knowing home inspection companies of all different sizes, all over the US and Canada, and many of them get, you know, they'll be like, oh yeah, here's my stats. I'm like oh wow. But not getting personal about any of it. But things have stabilized. There's not mass exodus out of the home inspection industry anymore, which usually means that even the lower portion of our industry, new guys getting started, guys who do it part-time, whatever, not that's the lowest. But you know what? I mean, they're not like the big companies.
Beon DeNood
High producers.
Ian Robertson
High producers. Yeah, those are the guys that are still hanging on, whereas before, they were very quickly taken out of the industry, even just last year, or even in Q1 of this year. Bigger companies have taken more market share, so there's unfortunately been some market consolidation, which we predicted would happen as people exit bigger companies or smaller companies will take up that market share and wait for it to start producing again. And it has. So the good thing is, the worst of it is over, and I'm really glad when we said that at the beginning of the year. We said that with a little bit of bated breath, kind of like, will it really get better? And it did. Is it through the roof? No. Do we want it through the roof? No, because we want it to stabilize and then get better overall. But I actually wanted to talk to you a little bit too, because something that we don't talk enough about in our quarterly outlooks is AI. So we all talk about AI, but not the concept itself or the ethics of it or anything, but how it affects our market outlook in Q3 and in general. Do you have any thoughts on it, Beon?
Beon DeNood
Yeah, well, first of all, I do think it's really encouraging that you're, you know, you see some light at the end of the tunnel for new entrants into the home inspection market that that's, that's great, you know, because that's kind of been a bit of a shutout for a while there. So that is great. Um, as far as AI, maybe understanding what makes the existing home inspection market nervous about the topic of AI or excited about the topic of AI. So I think we get excited about the topic of AI because we're like, wow, with AI, if my tools are fully AI enabled, I'd be able to increase my volume. I'd be able to do inspections faster, better, and that's obviously what we're looking to accomplish always, right? That's why we're always tuning our templates and our approach and all that kind of thing. So there are good things to come from AI. But I think some of the fears come in where they see some app being demoed, and somebody's literally walking around a house, and AI is just kind of diagnosing everything and pointing out everything and logging all these defects, and boom, no home inspector needed. And so maybe that would be along the lines of where folks would maybe like to dig in, like, how close are we to the digital AI inspector, and does that mean that home inspector's role is going to be diminished in the market, like, does it not, why doesn't it? You know, I don't know. I'm trying to imagine what's going on, and that's what I'm imagining. Do you think I'm right on or little off?
Ian Robertson
No, I think you're very much right. And I think what we're worried about is the singularity for our industry. The singularity being eventually it's going to hit ahead, and there's a couple different directions that it can go. What I'm happy about is AI tools to help us. So, you know what, if I'm sending an email and I'm like, I think my email that I just wrote is even confusing me. Am I going to pop it into chatGPT and say, can you just make this clearer? Okay, cool, that sounds better. Yeah, it's going to always be an awesome tool. That's a very basic, you know, example, it does amazing things. But I think what we're worried about is it taking our industry from us. And not it itself. See, we as humans like to go to extremes. We like to say, AI could never take my job. AI can't crawl into the crawl space. AI can't walk into the living room and interact with the clients. No, but it can lower the barrier to entry into our industry significantly, and that's where the fears at. We allay our fears by coming up with extreme examples. You know, self-driving cars could never do this. It's like, no, but it can do 90% of that, and that's what you should be afraid of, not the 10% that we can do. So as an example that we've given in another podcast, the model that I worry about is some company like Inspectify, that kind of business model, and there are a few that have popped up recently. It's going, ooh, well, this should be easy now. They go in, they send in an unqualified person, but he doesn't need to be qualified. He's going to get prompts. He's going to walk around with a tablet, and the tablet is going to tell him eventually, hey, check under that table, push on the wall. How does that feel? Does that feel spongy? Okay, then this is likely the issue. Now do this. And it just follows prompts. Is it going to get into the crawl space? No, but now that guy's going to have a little crawl bot, and you know, he's going to use a remote control thing, and it's going to go through the crawl space and, you know, it'll have a little pro bar, and it'll poke things, and it's eventually going to get to that point. I don't think we're close to that. That's what I would call the singularity. I don't think we're close to that, but we're getting closer. And I think even some of the AI changes affect even Q3 and Q4 of just this year. So we were the, as far as I know, we were the first home inspection software company, Inspector Toolbelt, to incorporate AI into our app, and that was year and a half ago, Beon, two years ago.
Beon DeNood
Almost two years.
Ian Robertson
And it was fantastic and awesome, and it's helped. And we actually just updated our model so that way it works even better. But there's other software that's incorporating it now, and we're part of the industry. I'm a home inspector. You know, people that work for me are inspectors. We're an inspection industry, but there's also outside companies that are in our industry that want to create that model. You know, I'm not making any accusations, but you know, that's when you come from the outside and looking in, you see an opportunity and not an industry that you care about, because ultimately, AI is going to water down the quality of a home inspection if it's taken away from home inspectors themselves. You know?
Beon DeNood
Yeah, that's exactly the point. So as an industry, we're concerned about business being taken away from home inspectors. So let's analyze how that's going to be done. So for business to be taken away from a home inspector, it means that what we're effectively saying is that a home inspection gets done to the satisfaction of the client, without the home inspector being included in the process. So what we're looking at then is a third party, either the prospective homeowner themselves, are getting this app, whatever it's going to be, and they are walking around the house and doing their assessment, and you know, AI is doing its thing and making its recommendations. So they complete this home inspection, this AI inspection using this tool, and either they get to a point where they're like, okay, yeah, I'm confident this is it. I am good with this house, or not good with this house. Or maybe the agent provides that that service, or points them in that direction. I don't know ethically what the lines are there.
Ian Robertson
Well, let me, not to interrupt you real quick, but when I say an unqualified person, I'm talking about somebody who is licensed, because licensing is not going away. Someone who's licensed but not necessarily qualified. In New York State, it's 100 question test and 140 hour course, doesn't make you qualified. Some states you don't even need licensing. So they can get just anybody, they're like, okay, we'll get you qualified, you know, they send their 20 year old apprentice to the program, and he gets his license, and then he just uses AI, and off he goes. I'm saying unqualified in that way, there's still going to be licensing and some other models, depending on how you read the laws of some states and provinces, could hypothetically have a home inspector review the findings. So some states don't allow that. Some states require the inspector to be in person, but some don't explicitly say. So now you could hypothetically have a home inspector sitting at his desk with 15 minions going around doing AI inspections, and he just checks the reports as they go.
Beon DeNood
Okay, yeah, so they're home inspectors. They got their license, but there's still a massive knowledge gap. But that knowledge gap is not so much of a problem anymore because they've got this AI tool that's closing that gap for them, and, you know, making them look good. Yeah, that's an interesting scenario. You know, it reminds me of years ago, I was working for utility company, and we also had a situation where we had engineers walking out in the field to do field evaluation. So you actually had these high paying, high salaried engineers all out in the field assessing every single point and making annotations. And of course, it was accurate. It was great, but, but how do you scale that across a massive network? You can't, you know, it's too expensive. So they literally before the era of AI, they created software that would prompt, you know, based on if you capture this, if you say, this is what it looks like. Then we got more questions and more questions. Eventually they would, you know, be hiring guys fresh from Dunkin Donuts, put them through a week of training on the software, and they could go out and capture the information, and the engineers moved into the office, and so we only had, like a few engineers, and all they did is just what you described. You know, so it has happened in other industries. Will we see a shift like that in the home inspection market? It's probably inevitable, right? Unless we have legislation that that blocks that kind of thing, or just bad results, bad experiences. But even that, in my argument, will probably disappear as the AI improves over time. So I don't know, what do you think?
Ian Robertson
Yeah, I don't think that. I mean, that's just one option. Some states already have things that prevent that business model from even happening. So a qualified home inspector has to be on site. And then there's also market antipathy. And there's another word, like ubiquitous and anecdotal, antipathy. So basically, it's almost like a repulsion for AI. So when somebody sends me AI content, I immediately, by nature, my brain rejects it because I'm like, you put no effort into that. It's AI. And they find that happening nearly immediately after AI came out. There was an immediate antipathy when it came to AI content. So I think the market itself is ultimately going to reject it. And already, even in the first half of this year, I've had inspectors even tell me, hey, you know, I had an AI comment that I wrote, and the client didn't like it because it sounded like AI wrote it. And if people are already like that, when trust level of AI is probably going to be at its highest, what's it going to be like in six months, a year, 10 years, when people are just like, okay, what am I paying you for? I could have walked around with a tablet and done those things. And there's another thing to worry about, is if we ever get into another market where people are skipping inspections, hypothetically, in 5, 10, years, they could have an app that they could do their own inspection and do those same prompts. Now would it be legal? I don't know, there's got to be some legislation, because nothing's stopping you from looking at your own house and finding problems as it is. You just can't call it a home inspection, necessarily.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, that's interesting. So thinking of the trust levels of AI and how, you know, our sort of tolerance of clearly AI generated content, we switch off right when we see it. But what we also have to admit is, and we're seeing, is that that gap is being closed surprisingly fast with newer models, and the quality of the content that it's, you know, and in a relatively short period of time, I mean, it's only been, like two leading on to three years that AI has been mainstream. So we're probably going to continue to see that gap closing and closing, where eventually to be able to distinguish between AI generated content and human generated content is going to be, that gap is going to be very minuscule. And I think eventually, talking in the broader technology landscape, we're going to reach a point where we as humans will almost feel a higher confidence in AI generated content over human generated content. It's an interesting theory that's taking place, because right now we're seeing the mistakes, we're seeing the flaws, and we're like, oh, this is AI, this is junk, you know. But as those models continue to improve, we're going to cross a threshold where we as humans, we're like, oh, look, this has got grammar mistakes, this was written by a human, I don't trust this. And it's crazy to think about now, but it's kind of an ethical quandary and debate that's happening in the larger market as far as what the future looks like. But anyways, why I'm bringing this up here is that right now, I agree with you. Right now, when we see AI stuff being generated, it's clearly just generic and it's throwing in stuff that doesn't apply, and we're like, I can't trust this, right? Especially when I'm buying a house and it's just throwing out generic stuff and it doesn't know. But as that AI continues to get more intelligent, that gap will continue to close. But the interesting thing also to note is that in a lot of other industries, the entry level people in the industry are being shaken, not shaken out, but they're kind of being blocked entry, like, for example, software developers in my industry. So a lot of junior software developers, they maybe have got their degree, they've got an internship, maybe a couple of internships, they're struggling to find a job, work that we would have given them is now taken care of by AI, and the more senior developers just are handing stuff off to AI to do the base level stuff, and they've got a barrier to entry. To your argument, it brings in less qualified people who are also going to block those kind of folks who are more qualified but expect to be paid more, but can't offer more value than somebody with less knowledge but an AI tool, you know?
Ian Robertson
You're an AI tool.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, it's this weird thing. It's this weird place. We kind of don't know. Is it gonna impact? It is, you know, how are we gonna, like, insulate our business and ourselves from its impact? It's kind of hard to know. We just, you know, have to see how this thing shakes out. But is there going to be impacts? Absolutely. And if you're saying like you said at the beginning, oh, well, you can't, you know, AI is not going to shake the client's hand or crawl in the crawl space. Yes, that's true, but don't just dismiss it completely. It is going to impact the industry. We're probably a little ways from seeing the full insight into that impact and see what happens.
Ian Robertson
Yeah, so I think your opinion is right over mine. I think you hit the nail on the head, but I do think whatever does happen, I think best case scenario is we as an industry adopt it more. And I think that's the only way to own it, is to get through it, is to own it.
Beon DeNood
Absolutely.
Ian Robertson
If we own it, if we own AI, we utilize it, use it in our reporting and our software and our emails and whatever we're doing, the more we own it, the less likely it's going to take over our industry. I don't think it's going to take over completely. I think it's going to meet somewhere in the middle and leaning more towards us still having our industry. I think the higher end companies and the mid-range companies that offer good service are going to stay around. I think it is going to burn off the bottom of the industry. I think about it kind of like water treatment. You know, you're always going to have Culligan in the area, and you're always going to have, you know, these bigger individual companies, but it's going to burn off the smaller, you know, smaller companies that maybe weren't offering the best of services, maybe didn't adopt AI, maybe didn't, you know, have a fancy looking report, because they thought that they're..I still know home inspectors that write handwritten reports. They're like, people have always accepted them. I'm like never before has that been going out of style even faster. Even just a PDF report sometimes, and I'm going to get skewed on this. But even a PDF report is going out of style so fast for web reports, it's not even funny. I mean, we look at the numbers, how many people look at a web report versus a PDF report.
Beon DeNood
Right.
Ian Robertson
It's nuts. So the market is changing. It requires us to change more than probably we're used to or are comfortable with, and I think this next six months to a year is going to be important for us adopting it, because the next five to 10 years, I think we're going to start to see where the singularity is heading to.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, absolutely. And every industry has been impacted by technological advances, even our industry, even home inspection industry. This is not the first time technology has made an impact. I mean, you just mentioned that the transition from handwritten reports to digital reports. I mean, simple example. I'm even just thinking of roofers, right? There was a time where a nail gun was not a thing, right? Everybody just hand nailed a roof, every shingle was hand nailed, and there was a price for the job because of the time that it would take. There was a quality that a roofer prided himself in, because every nail that he drove in, he drove in by hand, and that shingle was good, but when nail guns came out, I mean, I wasn't there at the time. I wasn't a roofer, but I can imagine the guys were like, you know, what are these cowboys think they're doing with these nail guns? You know, it's not as good a quality job, but in time, how do you make money now as a roofer? It's all about speed. It's all about volume, unless you are providing a specialty roofing service and you're putting down slate, or, you know, terracotta tile, or something like that, if you're just laying shingles, it's about speed. You got to get it done, because that's what controls the price. So it's interesting. AI probably will lead the same direction, but I agree with you 100%, try to find ways of using the technology, embrace it, because then, as you see the nuances happening, as the industry starts changing, you're going to be ahead of it. You're going to be right at the cusp of it, and that adjustment will be small, as opposed to now starting from the ground up, like, what is an AI, you know? How do I plug this thing in? You're going to be ahead of the curve.
Ian Robertson
Yeah. And I guess that kind of worries me, too. I don't want an industry to be about speed.
Beon DeNood
Right.
Ian Robertson
I don't think any home inspector out there, we talk about being, quote, unquote, faster, when really we mean, the vernacular we use is basically meaning efficiency. We don't want just speed, but unfortunately, that may be where at least part of the market goes to. Ultimately, I still think we have time, but not as much as I think other people, a lot of inspectors out there are hoping. But to kind of summarize what we talked about, we kind of went on two different directions here. First aspect, I think the next three months are still going to be good, stable. Not, you know, not blow your brains out amazing, but it's going to be stable. It's going to be better. The mass exodus out of our industry, for the most part, is over, and I'm seeing new inspectors come in and able to get their footing in most markets. Again, this is very regional, but the regionality of it is getting less and less. Instead of being like, hey in this state or that state or this part of that state, things are getting okay now, though, now the map is getting a little bit more one color, so to speak ofhow things are going. So if you're into the market outlook, watch Florida. Florida is going to be an indicator of what's happening today, in Florida, is probably going to be most states outside of Florida is going to be our inevitable future in the next six months, I would say, and then watch six months ahead of Florida. And watch Florida, imagine you there in six months. That's about what I think it's going to be. But for AI, we brought that up because we've talked about it a lot on this podcast. We really have to embrace it more as an industry. I know a lot of guys are out there saying, who's not using it? A lot. There's a lot. I still talk with home inspectors that are like, yeah, I had to write a little song for my daughter's you know, birthday the other day. And it's like, well, okay, let's use it to analyze a complex, you know, hydrostatic pressure issue in a basement, maybe, you know. Really use it for something that's part of our industry. But would you say that's a good summary or no, Beon?
Beon DeNood
Yeah, no, I think it is. I think it absolutely is. I agree on the take with the market. Ultimately, I think it's a positive report. With AI, I think it's interesting just hearing your thoughts and my thoughts, and I think it represents really, just the reality is that we're kind of in an unknown, time period. Is it going to impact? Yes. How much? How soon? We're not sure. We'll have to wait and see.
Ian Robertson
And in what way? We still don't know. Yeah, these are just guesses.
Beon DeNood
Yeah. But your advice is sound. We can't just bury our heads in the sand. We gotta educate ourselves. And even you know, if you can afford it, is growing your workforce, adding new inspectors who do know how to use it, you know, so that you can learn from them and be able to do that. But yeah, we need to try to embrace it, because we're going to be seeing it coming into all of the software in the next year, the next 12 months, it's going to be interesting. It's going to be everywhere, so we'll see what impacts it has.
Ian Robertson
It'll be ubiquitous.
Beon DeNood
Ubiquitous.
Ian Robertson
Well, Beon, thank you very much for being on the show. I love our Q3 market, our quarterly market outlooks. They're probably our most popular series. And if anybody has any questions, let us know. But thank you all, and see you next time on Inspector Toolbelt Talk.
Beon DeNood
Cool. Thanks, Ian, always a pleasure.
Ian Robertson
Bye.
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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*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.
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