2026 | Q1 Home Inspection Market Outlook

We map the year ahead for home inspectors, cutting through AI hype, clarifying what “mandatory inspection” really means, and focusing on the only dial that matters: inventory. We share why rates alone won’t fix housing, how regional pricing skews outcomes, and why SEO just became a secret weapon again.

• AI tools rising fast, but privacy, accuracy and human support matter more
• mandatory inspection contingency explained and why it rarely guarantees volume
• inventory and price as the real market levers, not just interest rates
• corporate ownership of single-family homes and how policy could free supply
• regional price gaps shaping inspector opportunity and strategy
• cautiously positive 2026 outlook with a four to six week lag to inspections
• practical strategy: don’t overhire, do deepen agent ties and expand services
• SEO still drives discovery while rivals quit, AEO as a smart add-on
• verify AI outputs and keep your expertise at the center

Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button so you can catch our future episodes as well. If you have any feedback, please send us an email at info at inspectortoolbelt.com. Also, don’t forget to check out our app for home inspectors, scheduling and report writing all in one easy-to-use app. Check it out now at 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.

Transcript

Ian R 
Well, well, well, here we are. The new season of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. It's been so many seasons I forgot which season it is six, five..

David Nyman 
Ten.

Ian R 
Seven.

David Nyman 
It's been a long time.

Ian R 
And from your sultry tones, everyone can hear that you're not Beon this time.

David Nyman 
No.

Ian R 
We got David on for our first episode. Beon is visiting his family in South Africa. For those that don't know, he's from South Africa originally, and he's taking a trip with his family, so he's not around for our Q1 market outlook. But that's okay. We'll beat David up. He has some insights for us. And actually, I'm glad you're on for this episode, because David, you have your finger on the pulse of certain things in the home inspection market that I'd like to hear from you about.

David Nyman 
Yeah, I mean, I've been looking around myself a bit. It's an interesting market right now, especially in the area where I live. It's kind of out of sync with the rest of the country, I believe, a little bit on the higher end.

Ian R 
Yeah, besides the wider real estate market, even where the industry is headed as a whole. So why don't we dig right into it? Because that's really what everybody listens for. That and when we have you on, there's usually some sort of inappropriate humor or weirdness.

David Nyman 
Wouldn't dream of it.

Ian R 
We'll push through it. No, never. So first, we'll get into the home inspection industry as a whole, and then second, we'll get into the market as a whole. Really what we want to know about, like, how's our business going to do in 2026. But what kind of stuff do you see going on in the home inspection industry as a whole so far this year, David, and what are you expecting out of it?

David Nyman 
I mean, one thing that we see all around, not just in the home inspection industry, but basically everywhere, everywhere you look, is AI. It's a hot topic. And, you know, in some areas, I feel like you have to put AI in there because it's the hip thing. And you're like, why do I need AI to determine when to water my plants? But yeah, in the home inspection industry, there's a lot of companies out there that want to be, you know, on the front of the wave first to introduce something with AI. And we see a lot of different ways to implement it in home inspections.

Ian R 
Yeah, I'm calling it the AI wars right now, and there's two facets to it, like every home inspection software, like ITB, we have AI built into our software. You can help write comments, shorten comments, you know, add standards, whatever. It's state specific so it'll make it specific to your state, and, you know, we do it ethically, so that it's not training a larger model that other home inspectors can use. That's important everybody. You get a great AI model, but nobody gets access to your comments. Unfortunately, that's not how all software works. Matter of fact, from what I've seen, the vast majority, if not all, work the opposite direction. So we can get into that in a different podcast. But AI wars are totally on. And so the first aspect is going to be just having AI in your software. The second of it is software itself. It's never been easier or faster to make software. We had one of the people that works here at ITB make an internal app that saved us, what was it? 90 hours a month. It was insane of a certain part of our business, and he just made it, took him a few weeks. Works great. Tweaks it here and there as time goes on. And it kind of blows my mind. So we're seeing that in the inspection work.

David Nyman 
You don't have to know a lot to be able to write a program anymore. Kind of bad news for Beon, I guess.

Ian R 
Yeah, Beon is such a high level developer, like, for those who haven't listened to the episodes where we've mentioned this, he's developed software for large tool companies that help you analyze entire buildings. The software that you see, like National Grid use, when the guys are typing out on their iPads looking at polls, Beon designed that, he was the architect behind that. And so for him to watch the entire industry go to some guy in his 40s saying, you know what, I'd like something to do this. And he just makes it, you know, it's kind of hysterical. But whenever you get that, it's kind of like licensing for home inspections. People always think licensing is a good thing. I've always said the opposite, because it takes away the legitimacy of a person. So my uncle was never licensed as a home inspector. He never liked to say that he did home inspections. But when I got my license as a home inspector in my early 20s, I can literally say I have more qualifications than than him, because I have this piece of paper. Was I more qualified? No, but did I have more qualifications? Yes. So that's what software kind of is in the transition right now, people are like, I have software. Is it great software? Or did you build it with an AI model and you just told it to do things? It's gotten weird. In one three week period, and I sent you each one as I saw it, or most of them, I said, here's another brand new one released today. Four of them in a three week period.

David Nyman 
Yeah.

Ian R 
And they're all touting AI and all this stuff. But there's way more to it, but it'll be interesting to see where it all goes. Cheap, fast software. You're going to get what you pay for.

David Nyman 
Yeah, exactly.

Ian R 
Not to down them. I think some of them will make it. Some of them will make it. But, you know, it's not a matter of having software anymore. ITB took us a long time to develop, but we learned very quickly the development part was the easy part. The hard part was support, training. I mean, our clients for ITB, they can attest to this, the emotional aspect. When a guy's frustrated and upset, he doesn't want to talk to an AI chatbot. He wants to talk to David. David's like, okay, here's a solution, but let's feel better about this, ultimately.

David Nyman 
I'm very calming.

Ian R 
You are. You are very calming.

David Nyman 
You look calm right now, and you were all stressed out before. Was I? Okay.

Ian R 
My blood pressure has been great, but that's what we're watching right now. We're watching the AI wars happen, and everybody is out there advertising, you're not going to believe what we have. It's going to blow your mind. Industry changing. Every single one I've looked at, I go, I mean, that's kind of what's already out there, you know.

David Nyman 
Yeah, upfront cost is a lot lower for them, though.

Ian R 
Yeah, it's true, scalability, we'll see how that goes. But there's other stuff going on in the home inspector market. There's still states talking about, you know, pushing the legislation through for mandatory home inspection contract contingencies. Remember, everybody, I see people say this all the time in the Facebook groups and on Reddit and everywhere, mandatory inspection bill. It's not mandatory inspections. It's mandatory inspection contingency. In other words, you can't waive the contingency to inspect or make it part of the offer anymore, so it's not forcing anybody to actually do it. So you can have it in the contract, and I can still skip it. It just gives me the right to do it. I still have mixed feelings on that. What do you feel about it, David?

David Nyman 
I don't know. I mean, on the face of it, it does sound like, you know, there will be more inspections if it is that way. But I'm assuming you have a different view.

Ian R 
Well, any market that's made a mandatory inspection bill, and it's usually local AHJs, like municipalities and stuff like that. There's two in my area that have done it for, well, several of my area, some for structural things, some for commercial buildings, mostly for septic. Whenever they've done it, it always starts out as private inspectors doing their thing, and then it almost invariably turns into municipality driven. So they're like, you can still have your septic inspection or your commercial inspection, but our town inspector is going to come in and look at it, and invariably, there goes 95% of the inspection work. So the idea, the concept, is good, but our market as home inspectors right now is not hurting because of people skipping the inspections. That happened for like, a two and a half, three year period. Okay. That stunk. Nobody liked it. It doesn't happen that often in home inspection history, there's only been a couple of small, short year periods in the past 35 years where it's actually happened, and it never actually destroyed the market as much as we make it out to be. Some markets are hit a little bit harder than others, but it's been a very small fraction of the actual history of home inspections if you go from 1990 onward.

David Nyman 
And from what I've seen too, you know, whenever things like that happen, you usually get an upswing afterward, because so many people go on online and say how they regret their choice to buy the house without an inspection because of all the things that they found afterward.

Ian R 
And that's exactly it. If anybody visits any of the forums that agents are on, watch them talk. Stop for a minute. Don't jump in and start joining the conversation talking about the value of an inspection. Just listen to the conversations. They all say the same thing, nobody's skipping inspections anymore because, you know, X amount of members of their group got sued, some lost their license, all that stuff. It doesn't happen as much, but we like to point it out when it does, and make it bigger than it happens. Like, I have guys who are like, oh, people are still skipping inspections in my market, and I'll stop them for a second, like, how many. Oh, all the time. I'm like, how many do you know about, and invariably, it'll be like, once or twice, and it'll usually be because they got a pre-listing inspection or something like that. I'm like, okay. Out of your whole market, you know of a couple of times. Or if you say that you know of dozens of times, still just a small fraction of an actual real estate market. It doesn't happen very often anymore, and it's always happened to an extent. Investors will often skip it because they'll have their property management company come through, you know, distressed properties. There's always going to be a measure of it, but it's gone way, way down. And I'm going to get some flak. If you have flak for me, you know, post it on our Reddit, you know, channel, or YouTube or Facebook or whatever. I don't mind the flak. Oh, interestingly.

David Nyman 
You live for the flak.

Ian R 
I do live for the flak. I don't enjoy it, but I live for it. There's a guy that trolls us online talking about that we always erase comments of people who say bad things, we actually don't. There's only been one time that it's actually happened that we erased a comment and it was from our YouTube channel and it was for his own benefit. So if you post a comment, we leave it. The only reason that we erased that guy's comment was he made some wild claims about one of our guests, and didn't attack us, but attacked them upside down and backwards. So if you leave comments, we don't erase them. If you are going to attack people and make wild accusations, this guy, I'm no attorney, not saying it, but if they wanted to do a libel suit, oh, man. So for your own protection, try not to randomly attack people. I don't know.

David Nyman 
Yeah, especially not your guest today.

Ian R 
Yeah, don't attack David. Oh, and here's the other thing, you know, let's lay out our beef, David, you know, let's do it.

David Nyman 
Let's do it.

Ian R 
My other beef is, if I see a recreation of another one of our episodes on other people's podcasts...

David Nyman 
It's the greatest form of flattery.

Ian R 
It is. But man alive. One, they had the same analogy, almost the same title, and the same guest. It was the same subject, everything, and I'm just like, you just listened to my podcast and said, boy, that sounds good, and then just recreated it. But there's one particular podcast, not going to name them, that is very sincere flattery. But if you guys could come up with your own original ideas, that would be fantastic.

David Nyman 
Yeah, maybe you should start every episode saying that as a disclaimer. Watch them take that disclaimer and use it. If you're listening to this and you're thinking of copying it, please don't.

Ian R 
Yeah, you know, it's funny, the podcast, it's always been, it's always been a great way to reach the inspection community. But the funniest stuff has happened from it, like we just get up here and talk and goof around, and we get subjects. We have some amazing guests, but I'm always writing down ideas, fleshing them out, running them by people, finding the right guests to fit a subject, or do a solo podcast when it's something that's informational. It takes a lot of work, but the funniest stuff happens, and the copying of the podcast, and the guy trolling us angry that we erased his one comment trying to save him from a lawsuit. You know, those are some of the funnier things that happens.

David Nyman 
Yeah. I mean, I always do, when I do trainings, I usually tell people about the podcast if they aren't listening, especially like new inspectors, I feel like they can benefit a lot. And I tell them, like, I don't know how Ian comes up with new subjects to keep it going for so long, but that's probably a good reason why they're copying you too, because there are a lot of different subjects that keeps coming up. You know, just out of the blue. I'm like, I guess that's something new.

Ian R 
Well, the market keeps creating new subjects, and you know, I'm flattered that we are, did you actually know that we're required listening for several inspection companies, like they have their employees and the business owners, and everybody will listen to our episodes, which I'm flattered by. Some of our guests have said that about their own companies, but we've digressed quite a bit, and there's the inspection market, AI wars. That's all we hear about, but that's going to be the big thing to watch. Let's talk about the market itself. Where are we going to be business wise, with home inspections over 2026? So first I want to say I am extremely proud that we have been 95% accurate. Back in 2024 we were predicting what it was going to be in 2026 and we're right on par with 95% of it. There's some things that I didn't expect to be wrong about and there were, I thought of one earlier. They were minor things, like I thought we would, I thought we would have not been this far into the turnaround by now. I thought 2027 was going to be the year where we're going to hit probably some of the stuff that I expected in 2026 later this year, but I mean, there's a whole bunch of, I mean, heck. I mean, there's a lot going on right now that kind of changes markets and stuff like that. But let's start off with you, David. I want to hear your opinion. Where do you think we're headed?

David Nyman 
So it definitely looks like improving market overall. Mortgage rates are coming down, and they're expected to come down more, so that can definitely have a huge impact for home buyers. Seems like the market is swinging more towards the buyer side than the seller side right now.

Ian R 
Yeah, I do see that trend. Here's my thing, whenever you look at the real estate market, you're quoting NAR, I think National Association of Realtors. So according to NAR, they're expecting mortgage rates to start hitting the six or less range, and so they say that that's going to increase buying. Here's my problem with that. Mortgage rates are not the issue right now. In fact, NAR just came out with a report. So they had these reports. I think they should read each other's reports. I think they're just trying to bolster people. Because one report is talking about, oh yeah, once we're going to increase it 14% they said in 2026, existing home sales will increase by about 14% they said, because interest rates are going down, interest rates create buyer desire, like, okay, I want to buy now. There's no lack of buyers. Buyers are not the issue right now. It's cost of a home and scarcity. So while inventory is rising, it rose a marginal percent, not as much as they were hoping, but down in Florida and other markets, it's actually rising quite a bit, but you don't have enough properties, and properties are priced too high. So it's not a matter of interest rates. Somebody who can't afford a $500,000 house can't afford a $500,000 house, if the interest rate is 5.5% or 6.5%, that doesn't matter to them. They need that house to be $350,000 where it was pre-pandemic. So I do have a problem with their, I really think they're just pushing numbers that make things look good, because if the market looks like it's hot, it's a self fulfilling prophecy. It's like a bank run. A bank will fail because people think it'll fail because they make a run on the bank. A bank will succeed because they do a reverse run on a bank, and because they think it's going to do well. Same thing with the real estate market. They want people to think it's going to do really well, so that they rush the market and create the self-fulfilling prophecy. So I don't think that that's going to matter. What I do think will matter is, I do think we'll hit that 14% increase, but it's going to be from other factors. So two factors, one bigger, one smaller. One bigger being we're pricing ourselves out of the market all over the place. So houses are sitting and then coming off the market again. I forget where I saw it. I want to say MarketWatch, but I don't think it was MarketWatch, but they were talking about the rotation of houses. Houses that sat on the market for eight to 12 months and then come off the market. So they didn't sell at the higher price. So once that starts to happen, you get more inventory, but we're going to need a stupid amount of inventory, and the Feds aren't going to let the inventory go so high that it creates a buying spree. So once house prices come down, then people are going to start buying again, but they're going to raise interest rates again to kind of control the market.

David Nyman 
Yeah, and I am a little bit of a Zillow watcher around my area, and I have definitely seen that happening. You know, there's some houses you're like, oh, that's still for sale, and then it disappears, comes back on with a lower price. So that is a positive change. But one thing that I like to that NAR mentioned is that it's very regional, the pricing of houses, and I think that that's probably gotten more emphasized or exaggerated than it was in the past, where different markets, you know, it can be a difference of several $100,000 for a similar size home, just depending on where it's located,

Ian R 
You know, it's funny, I was just looking at houses in Orlando, Tampa, just in Florida in general.

David Nyman 
Don't do it.

Ian R 
No, I know, I'm not, you know, when I go to visit my in laws in Florida, and whenever you're away, you're like, I wonder how much a house would cost down here, you know, but it blows me away. If you took any of those houses, even though Florida doesn't have basements, and put it up here in New York, it would instantly be $200,000 more, even without the basement. You move my house down there, and it would be cut in half of the price. It's just nutty how different the two markets are and that's even though inventory is rising in Florida, the prices haven't gone down a whole lot yet. Even with that factor. It's still just a huge difference. You go to the Midwest, you can own a mansion for the price that you own a small, single family home in upstate New York, and not even in the nice area.

David Nyman 
Yeah, there's a house not too far from where we live. It's like, I want to say, like, 700 square feet, or something like that, on the market for over $300,000.

Ian R 
And they'll get it, in your market, they'll get it, because I know your market well. But here's another thing that I am encouraged by seeing. So whether it goes through or not, or whether or how they institute it, I have some questions on it, but the Feds want to stop large corporations from buying up single family homes anymore. So one of the reasons that the market is overpriced is because during the pandemic, one of the safest places to keep your money were in single family homes. If you bought a single family home, end of 2019, beginning of 2020, at $200,000, you would have it right now at almost $400,000 in most areas.

David Nyman 
Great investment.

Ian R 
Yeah, it was a great investment for them, especially because there was a slight recession, technically, in most aspects, where the market went down. So they took their money, put it in there, and then when they started investing back in stocks again, when it went back up, they're like, oh, there's a lot we can do with this. They're like, we have a giant portfolio. So I thought they would have made regulations earlier on. They didn't, but they're still, they're talking about it now. And the quote that I liked the best was single family homes are for families, just that. How they're going to roll that out. I don't know. I mean, are you going to take those homes away from corporations? At what size can you not buy a single family home? Like, if I own a corporation that has Vrbos or Airbnbs, can I not buy those single family homes? If you know, I need housing for my company, or you know, like, how do you determine what size company can't own those properties, and can that larger company just create smaller corporations to own those houses instead? You know, it's like, how do you really enforce that? But I think it's just discouraging corporations from it, making it less tax advantage, because they get to depreciate those properties. And for corporations with huge tax markets depreciating those properties, that's very helpful for them, lot of tax advantages.

David Nyman 
No, I did see, I think I saw that on YouTube recently too. There was someone talking about how corporations have been investing in homes for a while now. It's a strange thing when, you know, like, what do they do with the homes once they buy them? Do they rent them out or just have them sitting there empty, like, what's the path forward for them?

Ian R 
I don't know. And I wondered the same thing. And there's so much of Wall Street, and you know, large index investment firms that made it part of their portfolio, and just a diverse number of large corporations that did it. It's not like you can say, oh, they're renting them out. Some of them are just sitting there, you know, some of them are sitting there, some of them are Airbnbs, and some of them are nothing, you know. So it's a waste of inventory when you need a lot of inventory. So I'm reading this book by Thomas Sowell. I do recommend it to everybody. It's like seven, 800 pages long, though, if you listen to it, which I just started listening to books, so I don't listen to them very often. It's 28 hours. Don't like the narrator, so I might just read it, but he talks about scarcity running an economy. He goes, if there's no scarcity, there's no need for economics. So if everybody had an abundance of everything that they desired, there would be no need for an economy. An economy exists to manage scarcity. Gold is scarce, so gold becomes valuable. You need iron to build ships. So an economy determined by price who gets to use the iron. Because obviously the higher price is usually going to be the most valuable use for it. So that's why price drives an economy. But really, scarcity drives price, so an economy runs on scarcity. They created scarcity in housing. I don't know the number of homes, but it's enough that the US government said, all right, this is a problem. They have to do something about it, because now you're not allocating scarce resources, ie, homes, properly, and it hurts the economy ultimately. And it's a basic human need. It's like, abusing the scarcity of wheat. It's like, wheat is used in a large percentage of everything we eat. If you do that, or rice, it's like, okay, now you're strangulating the economy. Housing is the same thing. It's a basic human need, because now there's less rental properties. And the rental properties that are there, the prices go up for that. It's part of a free economy. Again, Thomas Sowell, S-O-W-E-L-L, great book. I'm reading the fifth edition, which is a little bit better, and it's basic economics in basic human terms. Anybody can get through it. Just take it in tiny chunks.

David Nyman 
I mean, you see the same thing happening right now with memory in the computer world.

Ian R 
Yeah, that's a big, that's hysterical.

David Nyman 
Yeah, because of the AI data centers just buying up all the storage and RAM memory that is available. And I actually, as I understand it, they're using a different type of memory too. So it's like, actually higher grade, so they're using more of the resources to make it. And if you look at a graph over how memory prices for computers have gone, like, just over the last year, it's like, basically been a flat curve, like some dips, and then there's a rocket inflation on prices.

Ian R 
Yeah. And the same thing happened with chips. Remember, the chip shortage, there's still kind of sort of a chip shortage, but when you have scarcity of something, it becomes very expensive, and that expense determines the most valuable use for that particular resource. So I think that's a great analogy, if anybody wants to look into that. It's kind of interesting, the memory scarcity problem right now.

David Nyman 
And the most valuable use is to make AI slop.

Ian R 
Yep, so that I can make pictures of myself on a horse, then on a seahorse, and then upside down in the ocean, and then as a merman. You know, that's how I spend my evenings.

David Nyman 
You just burnt $200 just saying it out loud.

Ian R 
Yeah, I just burned $200 of memory. I don't actually do that, but now I think I should, yeah, sure, I didn't.

David Nyman 
Just Google "Ian sea horse pictures," you'll find it.

Ian R 
So there's some good things on the horizon. It all comes down to inventory. If we have enough inventory, the prices of housing will go down farther. So I was watching a real estate columnist just last week on some show, and she was reviewing stuff, and she was excited that the real estate market only increased by 4%, like the prices, not the inventory, but the prices. And I'm like, that's not the direction we want it to go. We don't want it to crash. We don't want it to slow. We want it to go down. And then she showed the numbers of inventory. I'm like, and that's why. So if those laws get passed, it will free up some, it will free up some resources, some homes. Really, everything that we want to watch is inventory. If you see the inventory in your market stay the same, tighten your belt. It's going to be just like 2025. If you see it go down, you're like, okay, last January, it was this, and it's 4% less, 10% less. Okay, adjust my marketing to be a little bit more aggressive. Go 20% more aggressive on my marketing. Grab more market share, tighten your belt. But I think most of the market, just a threat of that from the federal government is going to make companies start dropping houses into the market again. And here are two reasons why. One, they don't know how they're going to enforce it, like I mentioned. So they're going to be like, oh, man, are we going to take a loss. We're going to take a bath on this. And if they make all of us dump it at the same time, there's going to be hundreds of 1000s of houses that we have to put out the same time, so they're going to start putting houses on the market this spring, in my opinion, because any good business is going to be like, I'd rather sell, you know my 10,000 single family homes at $400,000 a piece right now, worried about the law, than in the fall, going into winter, selling it at a loss because of the fall season and because everybody else is doing the same thing at the same time. Again, basic economics, I think any businessman would do that. So I think just that is going to force that into the market. Second thing, I think there's going to be more inventory because, well, people are just buying less. Prices are still high. So what that will do is between 2027 and 2030 is we're going to have a lot of inventory at first, and then slowly watch the prices fall until we have another boom at about 2030. And then 2030 is going to be like it was in 2021. Remember 2021, everybody was just showing up, getting work, and it was easy. You're just like, I did 800 inspections this year. I hired my second inspector, and I've only been in business 10 months, and then all that changed. So hold tight, but this year is going to be better. 2024, we were telling people, hold tight. 2025 we're like, okay, it's stabilizing. It's going to be okay. 2026, I think you're going to actually see something measurable. Not in every market. There's going to be markets where it's going to be a little down still, but I think we're going to see something that's measurably good and making us feel good about the market, even just search terms. You know, people look for houses in Raleigh, houses in Albany, New York, whatever, we're seeing an increase of ancillary keywords related to the home inspection industry in the real estate market increase, which means, you know what people are getting active again. But remember, it's January. So April we will have our Q2 market outlook, and we'll have a little bit more of a fine tune on it. But I can tell you, even just from inspectors I work with directly, they're like, Ian, I'm already seeing it. It's not nearly as bad as it was 2023, better than 2024. 2026, I don't think it's going to be quote unquote "my year." I don't think anybody's going to be able to say that, but it's definitely going to be okay. I'm not, you know, sweating bullets at the end of each month, wondering what's going to happen. I don't know. What do you think based on the data there, David?

David Nyman 
No, it definitely sounds like everything I looked at online, too. It's a positive, cautiously positive tone across the board it seems.

Ian R 
Yeah, and whenever you see it positive like that, us as home inspectors, we see it usually about four to six weeks after. So once you see real estate market go, we're booming. Don't get excited or don't get freaked out. Just say, okay, let's give it four to six weeks, because they have to get through all the contract period and all that other stuff. We're gonna do pretty good this year. I think. We do have some challenges on the horizon, though, a couple things that are still going to hold us back, inventory and pricing. Those are the two big things. We need properties to move. But once inventory goes up, pricing will go down, and then we're going to start seeing things again, like pre-listing inspections. We're going to see buyers stepping away from deals, which is starting to happen right now, by the way, I wish I had that number in front of me, but they say more people are walking away from deals for inspection related contingencies than before, and it was a notable number. So that equals a second inspection, typically. So let's say it's 14% of transactions. You know, 1% just leave the market. 3% do something else. That still means 10% of the market comes back around, and you get that inspection again because they looked and found a different house. It's starting. We should feel good about that. Well, it's already started, I should say. It's starting to get to the point where, you know, like, somebody starts working out, and they're like, I can see results. And everybody's like, yeah, I don't know. I don't see it yet. And then six months later, you're like, oh, oh, now I see it. Okay, we're at that point where we're going to be like, all right, Ian's been talking about this since the middle of 2025, that things are going to be good. I think we're going to start seeing it this year for the most part. So let's talk strategy then. What do you think home inspectors should do going into this year? I'll tell you what my businesses, we're working on, and the inspectors I work with. In case anybody's listening, maybe this is your first season. I'm a home inspector. I own inspection companies, so I kind of put all this into practicality. David's not, but what do you think, David?

David Nyman 
I mean, for one thing, not going overboard. Don't start investing in new tools and hiring new people, because you're thinking that boom is coming because that's going too far on that side. But definitely, you know, upping your marketing, trying to make sure that you have a bigger market share, making some friends with the realtors that you believe are going to have a bigger inventory to share, some planning ahead, I guess you could say.

Ian R 
And that's good businesswise. Don't jump all in just yet, but increasing your marketing is important. So every five years, here's my marketing plan, and I'll tell you about it, because it is one of the best times to be well found online, to have good SEO and AEO. AEO is for AI. SEO is for things like Google and stuff like that. For some reason, over the past two years, everybody has believed the hype that Google is dead and that everybody does all their searching with AI, and that's how it is. As of right now, Google represents still more than 80% of searches online. AI, ChatGPT. Well, let's take ChatGPT. It's less than Microsoft, or about the same as Microsoft. How many people use Microsoft to search? There's like some 80 year old dude.

David Nyman 
I do it every now and then, just for fun.

Ian R 
Do you really?

David Nyman 
And it gives me terrible results every time.

Ian R 
So there's some 80 year old dude out in Wisconsin somewhere up in the hills searching..

David Nyman 
I knew you were gonna say Wisconsin, I don't know why.

Ian R 
I just picked Wisconsin, or upstate New York. So what I've seen is some of my clients have been like, Ian, work has been picking up from online. Great job. And I'm like, well, we just did an overhaul, but that was, you know, 6, 8, 9, 10 months ago to get AI. And I'm like, there's no AI metrics that are that high yet. And I go in and I look and all their competitors just like, dropped their SEO. Now, all of a sudden, they're ranking better. They're showing up more, people are finding them more, and it's because they were one of the guys in their market that didn't turn it off. I had clients that canceled this year. They're like, SEO is dead. I'm like, oh my gosh. I hear that every five years, like clockwork. Go for it, if you want to turn off all your SEO. My clients are loving it because it's easier to rank in areas now, people are showing up higher, and a lot of your competitors, if you're listening to this, a lot of your competitors are turning their SEO down or off and go for it, because it's making it easier for those of us that do it. So SEO has actually become more important, because if you're like, oh, AI is taking over, optimizing for AI and optimizing for Google and Bing and stuff like that is going to have the same premise. You're going to optimize for both with some give and take. So I don't know why you would just turn it off completely. So if I were you, if you don't have an SEO specialist, you can talk to us here at Full View Home Inspector Marketing or Inspector Toolbelt, either one of those companies. But do some stuff yourself. You know, start blogging. Write content that's real human. Stop listening to ChatGPT. If I had a dime for every ChatGPT written email I got, I've had people email me multiple times, I need this added to my website. And I'm like, well, that's advanced schema markup, and it's wrong. And they're like, well add it. And I'm like, okay, so you're targeting this area. You're on position one, page one. Well, I want to be on position one, page one of AI too. And I'm like, well, every AI search come up everywhere for AI, and they're like, oh, I'm like, yeah, how about we just step back for a minute? AI is going to give you slop. It's going to give you what you want to hear. Use it as a tool, but don't use it as your SEO analyst. But I'm telling you right now, everybody's dropping it like hot cakes, awesome. This is the time to do SEO and AEO, because the metrics have never been better since 2003, you know, early 2000s it was a golden age of SEO. This is another golden age of it. Focus on that, whether you use a company or not, it's extremely effective right now. Yeah, I guess that's my rant. I've been ranting to you about that for months now, right, David?

David Nyman 
Yeah, yeah, I'm fed up. Okay, I'll sign up for an SEO plan. Stop bugging me.

Ian R 
I'm not fed up. I'm excited, because those that have done it, there was one really hard market, and we've been fighting for 18 months to make headway, and then all of a sudden we shot up. And I'm like, how do we just shoot up automatically like that? And I just looked at all the competitors. Eight or nine of them just shut down all their SEO, got a new website with no SEO, and started doing AI slop that didn't really do anything for them. And I'm like, oh, okay, the best way to beat your competitor is for them to quit the race.

David Nyman 
Yeah, for sure.

Ian R 
I would definitely focus on SEO at least for the next three to six months and see what happens to the market. But it has not gone down. It's actually done a lot better. We're going to do a whole podcast on that, maybe call it, SEO Is Dead, and then just say, haha, no, it's not. That's just what everybody thinks.

David Nyman 
You'll get a lot of flak for that one.

Ian R 
A couple of our competitors on the software market have lowered or not done any SEO, whereas we've increased our SEO, and we almost in a two month period, we almost, I showed you the metrics, we almost doubled our traffic and conversions. And I'm like, geez. I'm like, I know we were doing a lot better because we were putting a lot of effort into it, but not that much. And I looked, and it was just some competitors just gave up on it. Not as many people are searching through ChatGPT and Gemini and stuff like that as you might think.

David Nyman 
Yeah, for sure.

Ian R 
Especially as AI gets worse. Have you found yourself verifying everything?

David Nyman 
Yeah, it's definitely, I feel like at the beginning, it was very impressive. You're like, oh, it's so accurate and so good. And then all of a sudden, a lot of bad data. And it just as I understand it, it keeps posting, like, all these AI engines are posting their own data online and then using that to verify their own mistakes.

Ian R 
Yeah, so it's one massive AI hallucination, because it's like, it's reaffirming that it's right when it's wrong. There's been, I mean just today and yesterday. I'm like, you gave me this data, but I looked it up from a reliable source, and it says your data is wrong. Oh, you're right for checking that out. You're right. And I was wrong. Here's why I was wrong. And I'm like, I relied on that data, or it did math wrong. No joke, I showed my wife. I'm like, it did math wrong, and if I didn't check the math, and it's like, oh, oh, you wanted straightforward math. I'm like, yeah, you're adding 10 numbers. I said add these 10 numbers together for me, because I wanted it done really quick. And I'm like, you added them together, wrong. It's like, well, you know, stuff happens, oops. I sent a document through it the other day. We're digressing again. Oh, no, this was today, actually, It was just a basic CSV file, and I wanted it to give me the numbers. Like, give me all the numbers, add them together for the last three months, and it was a whole bunch of numbers and variables, and it spit out a number, and I did all my math based on that number. And I said, okay, I sent it through Gemini or something to check, and it gave a different number. And I'm like, why are you guys giving me two different numbers, and they both had all these different excuses, and I ended up just going in and just figuring it out, you know. So anyways, I digress. But listen everybody, I'm really glad to be back here with season five or six. I think it's six, David. We should have checked. Season 12? Either way. Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk. We're looking forward to the next season. If you have any ideas, comments, anything about our weird rants today that you didn't like or did like, let us know. Thank you for helping me, David.

David Nyman 
Thank you, Ian. Always a pleasure.

Ian R 
Have a good one. Bye.

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