Should You Add Solar Inspections?

If solar on a listing makes everyone nervous, this conversation will become your new playbook. We sit down with Spark Solar’s Corey Vanderpool to unpack a low‑risk, high‑value way for home inspectors to add solar inspections without pretending to be electricians or installers. The model is simple: you collect site data, capture a clamp‑meter output reading, and let a specialized team write the report. That keeps liability low, delivers fast turnaround, and gives buyers and agents the one thing they can’t get from a utility bill—proof of real‑world production.

We dig into the details that matter on site: identifying components, photographing conditions, documenting serials, and measuring productive health. Corey explains why many systems quietly underperform and how third‑party reporting can compel leased or PPA providers to uphold production guarantees. A memorable case study with a pigeon‑covered array shows how a 15‑minute reading exposed a 50 percent output loss and forced action from the lease holder. For owned systems, the same process quantifies risk, flags defects, and sets clear expectations for repairs, warranties, and negotiation.

Beyond the roof, we talk business. Most inspectors charge 249–299 dollars as an add‑on, spend about 15 minutes on site, and receive reports within hours. The real growth lever is agent education: pre‑listing strategies, transparent disclosures, and energy impact reports that showcase savings rather than confusion. Spark backs this with agent CE courses and ready‑to‑use materials, turning a notorious deal‑killer into a reason agents call you first. Even on homes without panels, energy reports help buyers understand usage, right‑size future solar, and avoid predatory sales.

If you want a differentiator that builds trust and revenue while protecting clients from expensive surprises, solar inspections check every box. Subscribe for more practical strategies, share this with your team, and leave a review to tell us how you’d pitch solar inspections in your market.

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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.

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Corey From Spark Solar
• 2:35 Why Agents Fear Solar
• 5:20 Training And Certification Model
• 9:45 Liability, Data Collection, And Reports
• 14:45 Measuring Output With A Clamp Meter
• 17:30 Pricing, Turnaround, And Margins
• 21:20 Owned vs Leased Systems Explained
• 25:10 The Tesla Lease Case Study
• 30:05 Marketing The Service To Agents
• 34:20 Pre‑Listing Strategy And Reports
• 38:10 Agent CE And Education Resources
• 40:29 Closing And Listener CTA

Transcript

Ian R  
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk everybody. Today on we have Cory Vanderpool, how are you, Cory?

Cory Vanderpool  
Good? I'm doing great. How are you doing?

Ian R  
Not bad. So Cory is from Sprk solar. So we're going to be talking today about adding solar inspections as a possible ancillary to our inspection businesses. But Cory, I actually got your name from Coy Bradstreet, out in Southern California. Coy, if you're listening to this, I know you're rolling down the road, buddy, heading to an inspection right now listening to me going, hey, that's my name. That's your name, Coy. Thanks for the recommendation and great to have you on, Cory.

Cory Vanderpool  
Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. 

Ian Robertson  
So Cory, give us the lowdown. I have some questions for you. Tell you them in a minute, but tell us about you and Sprk solar, and maybe start out with your website address.

Cory Vanderpool  
Yeah. So our website is Sprkhome, S-P-R-K, we don't know how to spell, I guess, but Sprkhome.com, that's our website. And then there's a page for inspectors. You know, it's like /inspectors, but right when they land on that, they can click on it. Anyways, that's our site. You can find more information about us and Sprk and solar inspections in general. For me, I've been in this space here for a few years now, in the inspection training and real estate space with solar and inspections. Before that, though I came, I come from the real estate and solar background, so contracting. So I've been contracting for about 20 years, but I've been in solar for about 13 years, installation sales, you know, operation side of it, and I'm also a licensed agent, but really just got my license so I could better understand the problems that this is causing. But I got into this side of it instead of just installing or repairing or servicing solar, because a lot of the homeowners out there that we were dealing with had their agents telling them to cancel and not go solar. And so you know that for me, was annoying and intriguing, and so I wanted to know why. And you know, it turns out that it's because no one really stepped into the space to provide resources here. And so we find our sales now several years later, working primarily with inspectors, but we're excited to provide some solutions to the real estate and inspection industry that didn't really exist before. And so that's just a little bit about what we do now, but primarily now we're running the software company, Sprk, where we help inspectors to inspect solar, add it as an add-on service, energy reports. You know, both on the buy side and on the listing side, there's a few different options there, but yeah, most of what we do now is training and helping inspectors and agents deal with solar and transactions.

Ian R  
Awesome. Well, it sounds like you're the guy to have on because we're always looking for a good ancillary service. Anybody who listens to our podcast knows that I always talk about, ancillaries is where we make our money and bring a lot of our value to our clients. You know, if we can do a home inspection, great, but if we can do wood destroying insect on top of that, now we bring value to our client, and that's where we make our money because ancillaries are usually the, I don't want to call it a loss leader, the home inspection, but it's like now our overhead's burned off. Everything we put on is value and profit for us. But that being said, I have avoided solar panels like the plague because we were talking before the show. To me, they're just a great way to get a leak in your roof and to hide bird nests, and they get really wonky, so I usually disclaim them on our reports, and we just move on in life. So I'll have some questions for you. But if a home inspector wants to add on solar panels into their repertoire, into their business, number one, how do you get into it? Do you need some training and things like that? And number two, what do you charge? And number three, well, I'll tell you what. Let's talk about number one and number two, how do you get into it, and what do you charge?

Cory Vanderpool  
So primarily, that's what Sprk does, is we now train home inspectors to do this, and we help with that. We also understood, though, like we wanted to put out some basic principles, though. So one of the things on our site you can do is go in, and we have created an ebook where you can learn about discovering the problems, writing comments around that, adding to your general inspection. So the key thing, and honestly, I think you're right to have disclaimed it previously, because as an inspector, the last thing you want to do is expose yourself to liability for inspecting something that you don't really like understand, and you know, it just becomes problematic and totally justified. Well, it's funny, a lot of inspectors come to me like, well, I don't inspect solar, so sorry. And I'm like, well, that's the whole point of what we do, is we help you do that. And so we have a certification process where we help an inspector do that. But what it comes down to at the end of the day is buyers typically want to understand this part of the home like any other expensive part of the home, because when it's going right, it's great. When it's going wrong, it's terrible. And so it's one of those things that really can drive a lot of value, but inspecting it can be tricky if you don't know what you're looking at. So that's where you know, we've worked really hard to create a training and really like ongoing training and support for this through the inspection process. And so that's what the main thing that Sprk does now is we train inspectors and give them the ability to look at it while they're on site. Usually it's about a 15 minute additional time frame with it. Our training is a three hour certification training. So you go through and watch a series of videos. Sometimes we'll do them live, but now mostly it's on demand through our platform. Just go on and watch it and where we teach you not just about the equipment, because the equipment's obviously very important for the inspection process, but also the way it impacts the other parties in the transaction, because inevitably, you kind of get roped into some of those things sometimes, or at least being able to talk about them intelligently is important. So you know, how it impacts a buyer's agent, or, you know, maybe even the appraiser. Again, we don't really go deep onto that stuff, because that's more obviously for the appraiser. But I'm just saying some of those things, it's nice to know a little bit of at least surface level, like how it touches the other parts of the transaction.

Ian R  
That's awesome. And you answered a lot of my questions in that, like, how long is a certification process. A three hour certification course, is not a lot. Is that enough to be okay with it? Or are they pretty..?

Cory Vanderpool  
So yeah, I would say no, honestly, to be okay with it. If you're inspecting it on your own, I mean, I spent 12 years like learning how to install and going through that. The way that Sprk works, that when we certify someone for this, it's through utilizing us, where we write the reports, where the inspector is there to collect the information, and then they provide that information back to us, and we write that report for them, like with mold. So that's really where we are certifying them is because we don't send a report out that's not to our standard. And so we won't like generate a report if an inspector didn't do a good enough job. And so in that, we're training the inspector to really collect and identify the information, but also be able to intelligently speak about it. Because last thing you want to do is do an inspection, provide someone a report, they ask questions, you're like, I don't know. Good question. Who knows. And so that's where a lot of our training comes into is understanding, obviously the parts of the equipment, right? And the interaction with the utility, net metering. Like sometimes people think it goes right back to the utility. Is it going through the home's electrical panel? How does that work? And again, if someone wants to just go get the little ebook that I wrote, they could just throw these onto their general inspections. And I think that buyers really need to know this stuff, because again, when it's going right, it's great. When it's not, it's not. So I put that out there as a free resource for the community to go and learn about that, because I just really want more awareness around this, because the more we've identified these as an installer, I would have thought honestly that there may be one to 5% of systems would have problems at the transaction point, and we're finding about 30% of inspections, like 30, need to have some sort of thing done, or there's some kind of problem that's identified that really a buyer should know about, and so with statistics that high, it's like man, and a lot of the problems are resolved, actually easier than you might think, but now you've got something that can be really a positive thing in the transaction, when it's done right. But otherwise it's causing problems, and that causes problems for agents and buyers and all sorts of problems. So a lot of stuff can be resolved if you've got someone who's actually just looking at it.

Ian R  
And that's important. So for anybody listening, MFD certifications, we do the basically the same thing, the engineer reports for manufactured homes, we just go and collect data, some engineer writes the report. So it sounds like that's basically what this is. Now that answers some very important questions for me. Can I tell you a horror story, though? 

Cory Vanderpool  
Yeah.

Ian R  
Okay. Story time. Everybody pull up a seat. This was one of my favorite inspections of all time, older home, two story, big and glorious but it had like two by eight rafters up in the attic, just had rafter ties with no collar ties. So the solar installation company sent a guy over, a technician, and he goes, what you need to do is shore this all up. So he's like, what you should really have is a Microllam. And I think what he meant was to have a self-supporting Microllam beam for the bridge beam. And instead, what they did was they put Microllams and sistered them to all the rafters. And since the Microllams didn't fit up in the attic, they cut them into four foot pieces and then sistered them on the rafters, but none of them touched the ridge beam or the sill plate. So all it did was add more weight to the rafters that were existing.

Cory Vanderpool  
Just pulling the whole thing down. 

Ian R  
Yep, pulling the whole thing down. And then the people that had lived there, they had a contractor move a bearing wall to give them a big open kitchen. So now the main bearing wall under that section was missing. By the time I got there, their house was leaning nearly a foot. And I'm just like...I know, the look on your face right now is the look that the sellers gave me.

Cory Vanderpool  
Honestly, it's embarrassing. It's like, oh my gosh. Does anyone else have a tight butt right now? It's like, oh gosh.

Ian R  
When I think of solar I think of that stuff. I've seen them just installed, face screwed right through the tops of shingles. I've seen everything in quote, unquote, professional installation. So it does make me nervous, but it makes me feel better if I'm out there data collecting, instead of saying, okay, I have three hours of training. How do I explain this to people. I'm out there data collecting, I can explain basic questions. But they're like, how do you resolve this issue? I'm like, well, let me take a picture, enter some data, and the professionals are going to analyze that and come up with your actual report so you get better information on it. That makes me feel good.

Cory Vanderpool  
Yeah, because if you don't have, again, someone that can confirm that. Because we have a team of people that do this data analyzation. And oftentimes something gets escalated up to me that the team hasn't seen before, doesn't know, and as you know, someone who, we've seen a lot, you know, it's not very often, though, that we're like, oh, that is really, like, never seen that before, but it is not, unfortunately, that uncommon for there to be like, oh gosh, this is something that they really do need to know about, or there's a problem. And one of the things actually that's most important that we do is not just inspection functionality, but we give the inspectors the ability to measure the energy output. So one of the things in order to work with Sprk is you have to get a clamp-on multimeter as a part of your toolbelt, and not an expensive tool, but an important one. So that with that, we have them take an energy reading, and off of that energy reading, we can then measure the productive health of the solar system, so that way, when we're doing our analysis, we're not just measuring like obviously structural and safety and longevity, but most importantly, productive output. How healthy is this thing doing its job, which is produce electricity.

Ian R  
Nice. So if I'm an inspector, and I'm just like, okay, well, that sounds good, three hours. Let's throw my hat in the ring. Is there upfront costs? Or how does that work?

Cory Vanderpool  
Yeah, good question. So with Sprk, not to make this like a commercial about Sprk, but we've basically set up a system where you can jump in. And we used to charge for training, and we charge for reports and stuff like that. But we've created a whole, essentially, ecosystem for providing a solution around this. And so now we just have a monthly fee at 20 bucks an inspector, and then that covers the training costs. Again, we create a whole bunch of ongoing marketing material, and inspectors can also generate energy reports through us. And so that's all covered in that $20 a month. And so that basically is all the inspector pays. And then we always give everybody the first 30 days free. So technically, the training is free. If you get into it and you're like, this is not worth it. And you know, you can hop out. You could have got the training for free. So we do try to create an environment, though, that is conducive to be able to facilitate not only an initial training, but also, we want you to go train on our dime. And so we want you to go generate some reports out front. And one of the best ways to do this is you generate reports for agents that you're working with, you know, either on jobs for them or for their homes or whatever. And that's usually really effective, because data analyzed for someone else is not as powerful as for yourself. Like I don't really care what your EKG looks like, but I really do care about my own so, you know, it's like, if you have data for someone that is a decision maker, like, later down the road, that's really helpful. But as someone gets started with Sprk, that's what our process is now.

Ian R  
Okay, so 20 bucks a month. Is that how you guys make your money, if you don't mind me asking, or do you guys charge per report? Is it kind of like MFD foundation search?

Cory Vanderpool  
Like, yeah. So there's that flat monthly, which again, for the first 30 days there isn't, but then it's $30 a report for the solar reports as they come through. So when someone requests a solar report, it's then $30 additionally to that. So we used to do, for example, like we had a flat rate of, like 50 bucks per solar report, and we kind of broke that out into a monthly versus a solar so that way, if they're doing more solar, they're getting them cheaper than they would otherwise. So most people are charging as an ancillary upsell somewhere between 250 to 300, 350 as an add-on service, depending on the market, right? Because each market is going to be a little bit different and in proportion to the other ancillary services that the inspectors are offering. But that's pretty typical. Most people are again between 249 and 299, we see that pretty commonly used as the add-on service. So for us, at 30 bucks for price point for the inspector, you know, usually it delivers a pretty good value with only about 15 minutes of their time. And then we turn our report to them, usually a few hours. We guarantee a 24 hour turn like, again, like a lot of other services out there, but we get that back pretty quick, usually.

Ian R  
Okay, so I'm just kind of doing some quick math for a home inspector. If I wanted to do this, you're saying 250 to 300, you know, $30 a report, $20 fee, which I'll just count as lunch money. So 270 at the high end. And then I imagine there's some data collection, and it's not going to be as fast as you would do for your home inspection report for a system, but you're going to make more per system so that adds up. It would be about a 250 to $300 add-on service. So I probably wouldn't go any lower than that, unless there was, like, high competition, but in my area, especially, I don't know of anybody that really does a solar panel inspection, so I guess that would be a good leg up. So here's my stupidity. So I walk up, I inspect one house in the morning, and they own the solar system, the seller does, and then I pull up to my afternoon inspection and they lease it. How does that work?

Cory Vanderpool  
Yeah, that's actually a really good question. So you mind if I share a story? 

Ian R  
Yeah.

Cory Vanderpool  
Okay, cool. So I'll explain it, and then I'm gonna share a quick story to articulate the point. So whether the system is owned or not, when the buyer's going into it, there are different reasons why they might want to get it inspected. And also just in general, homeowners. So there's some core problems though, that the solar industry is experiencing that really make this very relevant. Within about five years, 85% of solar installers will have gone out of business, and we've seen that track thus far. So a lot of installers aren't around anymore, and so having someone that can inspect and ensure that, you know, if there is issues that can be satisfied, you know, is really important for that homeowner, because solar lasts a lot longer than what most people anticipate a solar system, you know, there's some components and stuff that we can get into, but in terms of longevity, but the system itself is, let's say it lasts 50 years. You'd want to know that you're taking over a system that's either working or not, and how well it's working. And so when you're inspecting a system, and the person owns it, the person responsible for the repairs, if it's still under warranty, with the installer that installed it, again, whether it's leaks or other workmanship issues that might come up, you'd want to know that so that way they can come out and take care of that on their dime. But if they're not, then also it'd be nice to know too, because as a buyer, if you own a system, you want to know, is this going to be a $10,000 expense? $1,000 $500, like, free, like, what is the expense for me to ensure that this thing is working? And so that's, again, goes back into any kind of inspection and the whole point of the inspection period is to create, you know, a negotiable item that that item can be resolved through the inspection and data that comes off of that. So that kind of sounds cerebral, but at the end of the day, better information goes into then better negotiation. So from a buyer's perspective, they'd want to know that. Now the other side of this is when..so hopefully that makes sense from like, an own system perspective, right? You want to know whether your stuff works or not. Because the other problem with solar is there's no moving parts. It doesn't make any sound. It doesn't make any smell, like there's no movement, like you can't see it, smell it, taste it. You do not know it's working.

Ian R  
Oh, you can taste it.

Cory Vanderpool  
It just doesn't tell you much, and it might tell you something else. Oh, there are birds on my roof. Oh, my gosh.

Ian R  
Listen, Corey, I've gone through a lot of inspections by just tasting things. So come on.

Cory Vanderpool  
But, yeah, but the point is it's one of those things that it's kind of abstract to tell. The way most people judge functionality is off of their electricity bill with the utility company. They're like, okay, I can want to measure my bill and like the functionality my solar baseline. And so there you have two unrelated variables that it could be that there's different things impacting that. So their solar may not be doing what it's supposed to, but it might be, and they might just have their kids move in or something. Who knows, but that's the point is, like, for a lot of people, there's not a good variable, or there's not an easy indicator that you can just look and be like, oh, yep, this is good. When I turn on the hot water, it's hot. I can tell immediately. So that's where, again, like being able to take an energy reading, it's really important. That's where it comes in. Now on the third party owned system, so these are like leases, PPAs, even like utility owned, and this stuff that we get into in the training, but what we found, and this is where the story comes in. So there was a system that an inspector inspected here in Phoenix, and it was owned by Tesla, which was Solar City. Anyways, they own the system. There was a lease system through them. And when they got up and they did the inspection, they found that there was a bunch of pigeons up on the roof, and they pooped all over the panels and and, you know, it's annoying and ugly, and you hear the birds and kind of like you talked about, right? Nesting is a problem. So what it came down to was when they took their energy reading on it, though. So this has been going on for years, right? And hadn't been resolved, but the system was only producing at like 50% so it was like, when we measured the productive output, and we're able to demonstrate that to the homeowner, it was like this system is only producing 46% of what it ought to be producing. So then the buyer, they were able to then reach out to Tesla, get Tesla to come out and basically fix the system. But most lease companies where maybe they start off as a solar company, and they have good intention. They get bought out by private equity or whatever, and essentially they become a bank and they just want to get their money. And so they don't really care whether the system was working on but the lease says that it's supposed to perform. But oftentimes, in you know, real world, you have to make people perform, and so that's where an inspection comes in. It's so handy is if you have third party data that says this is not doing what it's supposed to now, you've got evidence, instead of just being a complaining homeowner or buyer or whatever, say this needs to work, because what had happened in that case is that system was offsetting like a $300 electricity bill, but it was now only doing like 100 and whatever, $40 worth of electricity offset because of this problem. And there was like $120 payment or something like that on the lease. But you know, it really would stink if you're paying the same, but it could have been having that much more benefit, and that's where now being able to identify those kind of problems and become so relevant in whether it's owned or leased, like we're just finding that where the lease companies are supposed to perform and ensure that, because there's a production guarantee on those leases or PPAs almost always, and if it's not doing its job, oftentimes, they need someone to say, hey, it's not doing its job. And we definitively know that, because now we have, you know, a report generated by an unbiased third party, just like you know what the inspector does, to be able to demonstrate that so they know, you know, anyway, so we've helped a lot of people get their lease company to get on it and come out and fix their system and ensure that, you know, it's it's actually doing what it's supposed to.

Ian R  
And I think that's basically where the value comes from, and that's what I would probably sell it as. You know, you don't have to sell certain things, like, in my area, we have the big three, home inspection, wood destroying insect and radon. I don't need to sell those. I don't need to tell people the value. It's usually written right into their contract with something like, you know, thermal imaging or a pool inspection or solar panel inspections. Those are add ons that are not typically written into most contracts, so you have to sell the value. So the way you just put that, I would probably copy and paste that text from our website of your transcript and put that in the chatGPT and say, make this into a great office presentation to real estate agents for me. So whether or not anybody uses your service, Cory, I don't know, but that would be a great office presentation, in my opinion, everybody's always looking for an office presentation.

Cory Vanderpool  
I think that'd be a good one. And if I could just interject a little plug there. When we charge the $20 a month, we spend a lot of energy building all of those kind of resources for inspectors. That's really one of the big things they get is we've really worked on providing educational material and marketing content, essentially for this ancillary service, because we're the only ones that I'm really aware that are doing this and helping inspectors doing that. We're pioneering this part of it. And it's not like we're like, okay, everyone already knows how to sell a sewer scope. That market already knows what that is. And so we've created a bunch of these kind of presentations. We even have agency e-courses available in many states through one of our partners, it's a school for home inspectors to teach agents through that. But it's a agent CE class for solar, and that's actually, anyway, that's like one of the key things that we help inspectors do, is not just inspect the system, but be able to educate agents around it. Because as troubling and as hard as this is for inspectors, solar is way worse for agents, way worse, because there's all these contracts tied to it, and their job is to ensure a smooth transaction. That's what got me into this, was because agents didn't like solar, and when I got into it, I was like, oh, no wonder they don't like it, no one has provided any kind of resources around that. And so what I found, you don't really have to sell this if you teach your agents around that solar's a problem, yes, we know that, but the solutions that go along with the solar are available now through me, like, if you can do that and use a presentation, you're not having to convince every client to take this add-on service. Their agents are telling them you need this because this is going to solve a lot of problems and remove a lot of liability that rests on their shoulders because of that.

Ian R  
Well, and this might make you cringe a little bit. When Coy had given me this podcast idea, he was mentioning it, and the first thing I thought of was, there's agents in my area, many, that when they go to list a house and it has solar, they have their clients pay to take it off. They're like, it's too much trouble. You'll get too many people that won't buy your house because they've heard horror stories. So you cut out 10% of the market this way and 5% that way, and just spend however many, I don't know how many 1000s of dollars it is to disconnect all these solar panels and patch things back up again, but I imagine it's not cheap. This would be an alternative.

Cory Vanderpool  
It does make me cringe. Honestly, it's like, I'll tell you why, but, yeah, it does happen. And you see it too with, like, investors as well. They'll be like, oh, this is investment property. Now, I don't want to deal with solar. I don't know what it is. Solars, honestly, can be problematic, but solar is not the problem usually. It's usually ignorance around what to do with it that's the problem. And that's really, like, dangerous if you're doing, if you're representing someone, like in Arizona, if you're an agent and you are not prepared to represent them, and you don't disclose that, you're now liable when anything goes wrong, and with solar, you're navigating a real estate transaction. And so again, one of the best ways to market this ancillary service is, you can blast it on social, it's great. Love that. But the best way is to go like help agents understand solar causes problems, and the problems that it causes, we now help with that. Now you're not selling anything. You're just taking orders on that, because now the agents understand the problems that we've had before are salt, and taking a solar system off a roof, I get it. I understand why, but it is cringe worthy, because you've got something that doesn't move, doesn't really wear out, the panel itself doesn't really wear out. It's closer to a plate class window in technology than anything else, but its job is to remove an ongoing expense for you. So that's like, I've got a money printing machine in my garage, but, I want to put a bike there, and I don't like the way that it looks, but it does print dollar bills, but I just don't know if I want it there anymore. You know, let's just get rid of it. Even though it hands me $1 bill every day, I just don't know if it's worth it for that, right? So that's literally what a solar system does. It prints money for them every day, and it does so usually without a whole lot of invasiveness. But oftentimes it's seen as a problem for the agent, not for the homeowner, and then that agent gives advice that could certainly be contrary to the benefit of that homeowner on a long term basis. So that's really where there's again, this gets very problematic for them, and that's one of the things that we are trying to do, is educate the industry. And again, for us, we were trying to go directly to agents and inspectors, and we've changed our model in the last six months, where we provide everything to our agents through our inspectors, and so like everything must go through them, because we found that inspectors do a better job of collecting information and creating documentation in a way that's more reliable.

Ian R  
But yeah, and I guess that's from, just so you understand my perspective, I'm trying to think of, okay, how am I going to market this and any ancillary service, I don't care how valuable it is, if it is unmarketable, it is useless. Actually, it's unfortunate, some of the most important services that we provide as ancillary services are very hard to market. You have to think of marketing angles, and it usually takes market education, like you have to explain a lot. So I'm thinking, what is the easiest way to market this? And for me, it would be pre-listing inspections. It would be, hey, listen, before you have your client spend, I'm gonna guess Cory, three grand to take all these solar panels off, you know, spend $275 and let us inspect it, fix it, and then see how that house sells with a report that says, oh, yeah, it works, or no, here was three things that are broken, and then here's the receipts for the repairs. And you should have X amount of years left the life on it, or whatever. To me, that's an easy sell. And now that same agent who sells that house it, next time they have a house with solar panels on it, they're not going to steer their client clear. They're like, no, no, hang on. I got a guy. It'll be good. You know, it's going to be dollars and cents.

Cory Vanderpool  
Agents are very habitual. Yeah, they do the same thing over and over again. So, like, if they use it once, they're going to use it again, they're going to sell that listing on that. Yeah. So there's a few things to touch on, and I don't want to get, this is a subject that we literally have six hour CE classes on this. 

Ian R  
We don't have six hours, Cory. 

Cory Vanderpool  
That's right, exactly. To try to give you some of the substance without trying to go too deep here, with the agents, I think the best way to market it is educating them and helping them understand that this is problematic, but the problems are solved largely through education. And like, if an agent understands their role with solar, it helps as well. And that's what we try to educate on that like, for example, listing agent with solar, if they showcase it, if they disclose it, and they're guiding their clients through it, will go quite well, as long as they're actually like, guiding their clients through the right process. But those are the three primary responsibilities, and showcasing, again, what is the benefit of this? Disclosing, what are the contractual obligations that need to be essentially navigated and negotiated and then guiding, making sure that, like, from the listing perspective, like pre-listing, the things are being done that need to. So we have a checklist that we give to inspectors to hand over to agents that is exactly what to do, when and where and how, pre-listing during escrow, post escrow, so they know exactly how to navigate those things that they can hand over to their clients and then help them go through that. So we've worked on creating, not just, again, when I say, like, a holistic solution around the whole problem here, not just, like, here's your equipment to look at. Because when inspectors think about this, they're like, well, I need to know, like, what exactly I'm looking at. And then, to me, that's like, the easiest part to educate on, like, we can teach about the equipment. That's easy. What's way harder is the transfer of that. And so we give you the resources to then educate. And so that's where we find the best marketing, is agent education. Because if you've got a key differentiator against someone else in your marketplace, like you'd already said, you can go to an agent or a brokerage and say, hey, listen, we can help you with one of the biggest problems out there, which is solar. And we can do that by helping provide, and we actually have a couple different reports we generate. The one inspection report is absolutely about condition. We actually have a pre-listing report as well that's all about the impact of the solar. How much of the home's being offset by that? How much is it saving? What are the terms of the lease? And so it packages it together in a document that can be handed over to a buyer or seen. And it's actually interactive, so the buyer can kind of plug in their numbers and see what the house looks like for them to live in it. But it's a neat tool to be able to demonstrate, like, why someone would want to buy this solar home. So those are where we really help. Like, again, that all is provided through the inspector, but we want to provide a solution that actually creates a solution, not just like, oh yeah, there's problems here. Good luck. Because no one typically wants an inspector that's just an alarmist and that's just going to kill deals for him. You know, it's like being able to present a solution as well as identifying the problem. I think it's far more useful than just saying there's problems, good luck.

Ian R  
Yeah, and for this side of things, that's what people would look for, because in my mind, it works kind of like the MFD foundation certs, and that somebody else is providing the solution, like in certain states, it's not allowed for home inspectors on home inspection items, but solar panels fall outside of pretty much every SOP that I've ever seen for home inspectors. So if anybody's listening, go back and listen to the podcast that Carrie Cheek did with us back in December. It was about continuing education. If you want to double whammy this, take that three hour course that Cory talked about, but then become an expert as much as you possibly can in solar panels. Take an eight hour course, then a 12 hour course, read about it every night, build up a nice continuing education course, and then you can do a course called how to deal with solar panels in real estate, and then teach that to real estate agents, and then make sure that you advertise it as, we are not a solar panel installer, because I've taken one of those courses, and it's annoying. It's just a sales pitch the whole time.

Cory Vanderpool  
Yeah, well, that's what I mean. We have that course for inspectors. What you just described. Yeah, we've already created that. That's what I was just describing. So we've already built that for you. So when someone joins Sprk, part of that 20 bucks that you're paying a month, we give you that course to go teach. And you can either do it as a one hour, you can do it as a 20 minute course, whatever, or you can actually do a full three hour, and we already have it approved in a lot of states. So you can actually teach that. And it doesn't just like, hey, here's the problems with solar equipment-wise. It's how to deal with it in the transaction. So you can succeed here, not just flounder, like you've been doing that makes you want to just pull it off and pull your hair out.

Ian R  
So I should have been paying a little bit closer attention. Sorry, my ADD. So do what Cory said, and I just said it worse. So that's awesome.

Cory Vanderpool  
No, it's hard, though, seriously, it's hard for agents, and I don't blame them for being mad about it and wanting to pull it off, but when they understand it, the person that delivers that solution is going to be the person they're going to keep coming back to for that solution. And that's where we're finding that the earlier movers in this, because we've been doing this, we have a few 1000 inspectors, but there's 30,000 inspectors in the United States, and there's a lot that aren't offering this. And you know, hopefully we're reaching more of those today, so more can, but you know, definitely there's an opportunity here to stand out in your market and be a solution, to not just, again, it's nice to have an add-on service, like, we want to help you make more money, but it's really nice for your marketplace if they have more inspectors that are actually helping the agents with like, again, one of the biggest headaches that agents experience out there.

Ian R  
Yeah, no, it's true. And for us as home inspectors, it's not really a headache. It's more of an annoyance, like, it's just okay, well, I can't climb on this section of the roof now because of these stupid panels. But I mean, even for buyers, it's not just, we've talked a lot about the value to agents, but there's a lot of value to buyers because, you know, listen, if I was buying a house with solar panels and I didn't have any knowledge of it, I'd be like, what do I do? And there's not really anybody that you can go to just for this purpose in general, it's not like you go to your local, you know, installer and say, hey, can you look at this? He's going to be like, well, where's the kerniffle pin and where's your, you know, he's gonna start saying things, you're gonna be like, I don't know what...this bridges a gap between that world. It's a home inspection for solar panels, is what it is. So I think it's a good add-on service that we should really consider, to be honest. But Cory, we're getting close to the end of our time here. This has been a really great discussion. I've kind of thought about it around in circles. It's very marketable. It has a simple marketing statement to it. It adds value. I have a positive feeling about it. I haven't gotten into it yet. None of my companies have started working with you guys yet, but I have a positive feeling about it. And you've answered a lot of my questions. Do you have any kind of closing thought you'd like to leave us with?

Cory Vanderpool  
You know, and I think I'm glad you said...we have talked a lot about the agent side, there's just a lot of pain there, and again, the person that can provide a painkiller is going to be someone that they look to and look for in the future. But on the buy side, like homeowners, that's why we started Sprk. We founded it with really one question, like, why would someone want to buy a solar home versus a non-solar home? And so we tried to articulate that and build resources around that, because solar does last a long time and it delivers a lot of value over time. Like, it's not something that's gonna do its whole job immediately. It's something that perpetuates over time, but over time, it delivers a lot of value to them, but not if it doesn't work, not if they don't understand it. There's things that can make the transaction and the transfer over to them great, and there's things that not, but most of the industry out there is not equipped to be able to handle the explanation, the value, essentially development of what this asset on the house can do for them. And so that's really what we wanted to do, was create a system that would not only, again, give us the ability to uncover the problems, but help that buyer, like understand this really important thing. And so with any inspection, I think with any business owner in general, not just inspections, but anybody who's trying to find a way to deliver more value, and that's really, a really good way to do that is because buyers really need this information. No one wants to inherit seller's problems. And so if you can deliver that, there's definitely a way for you to serve your marketplace, your community, your buyers, your agents better with solar, and not every home has solar. And that's last thing I'd say, is we also help inspectors generate energy reports, and we find too, you know, these like predatory solar sales guys are knocking, banging down new homeowners doors. And so we help inspectors also generate energy reports on every single home, not just their solar homes, and that identifies how much solar that house would need if it doesn't have solar, what are the bills going to be? You know, best ways to reduce those besides solar. So there's other perks to that. So that's kind of like the pre-solar side of this, and that's, again, just something else that we offer, and that's included as part of that subscription fee, but they can do that on every inspection, but it's a neat way to be able to help them on that side. And so for us, again, our goal is to create an experience where this asset that is valuable can actually perpetuate, and we definitely need good inspectors who are utilizing it. And so that's why we've realigned our business model to align with inspectors, because we want to make sure that, since we found such a good partner in this, that we're giving you all the resources necessary to grow your business and then ultimately help us achieve our goal, which is to better serve homeowners, post install for solar. And so you guys are the best partner for us. So we would obviously love to partner with anybody that wants to come and join Sprk. You can try it out for free. But at the end of the day, this is definitely something that the marketplace really is showing that it wants and needs, and we're grateful for anybody that comes along and at least gives us a try. So thank you for having me on the show. I'm really grateful.

Ian R  
Yeah, no. Thank you for being on. Cory. You've given us a lot to think about. Again if you want to check them out,  Sprkhome.com. And Cory, thank you so much for being on, and everybody listen in for the next episode of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. 

Cory Vanderpool  
Thank you.

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