Monday, November 2, 2009
The industryI suppose I should quickly write about the actual inspection industry instead of rambling on about my website woes. The
industry has had some significant changes in the last few months. These changes were a surprise to me but no less exciting.
As I have stated in several locations on this site I am a state certified Building Contractor as well as an inspector.
In the past one had relatively little to do with the other but it was a nice feather in the cap so to speak. Times
have changed. A "home inspector" is not regulated by the state of florida and the only license you have is
a occupational license. I've hoped in vain for years that the state would regulate the industry but they have not done
so and aren't likely to do it anytime in the near future it would seem. In years passed a "home inspector"
could perform a four point inspection for insurance companies with no problem. Now you have to be a contractor to perform
them. Another change that has recently taken place is the wind inspection industry. In the last few years
the wind mitigation inspections were performed by WCE (wind certification entity) contractors through the My Safe Florida
Home program. They were state contractors and the companies would sub out the inspections to individuals based on area.
It was a good program for the most part especially for the home owner because the inspection was "free" to
them. "Free" is in quotes because we ALL paid heavily for it out of our taxes. The state was charged
$150 by the WCE's who did almost nothing but refer the work to one of their contractors. The contractor was paid about
$75 and the WCE kept $75. So as you can imagine the cost of the program got pretty high with 100,000's inspections done
along with the matching funds for some improvements made available through the program. This program was shut down early
in this passed summer and basically all the wind mitigation inspectors lost their "jobs". Now the only people
that can perform these inspections are contractors, architects, and engineers. You can't be just a home inspector or
a My Safe Florida Home program contractor. This coupled with the insurance industry only accepting four point inspections
from certified contractors has made life very hard for an individual home inspector that is not a contractor. This person
can still do home inspections but they can't do the four point inspections or the wind mitigation inspections. This
makes it very hard for them and I've talked to several that are just going to fold the company as they aren't qualified to
do the other two very popular inspections. In any case, I've been picking up some of these and I've even re-inspected
properties whose inspections were rejected because of a non qualifying license. I think it's good for the industry
as a whole and it will weed out some of the inspectors that really shouldn't be in the business anyway. It gives the
inspection industry some sort of regulation even though it's indirect. It also gives the industry some higher standing in
that those of us left will have a state license that is very hard to get and very expensive. It makes the "club"
a bit more exclusive I suppose. Before if you wanted to be a home inspector there was no one checking to see if you
had a clue about what you were doing. It was a bit scary in the least and I've seen many inspections performed that
were baffling to say the least. ********update: finally inspectors in Florida will be regulated this year, looking
forward to it. I guess they finally had enough complaints! ******************
12:06 pm est
Out of my elementI know I haven't posted to this blog in an eternity and by my web traffic it appears that very few have read it anyway. So
now I'm trying to figure out this web-design stuff and try to market my website more efficiently on the search engines. Well
it turns out I didn't have any meta tags set up for keywords in title or description. I'm on one heckuva steep learning
curve with this web design so I need to be a bit more active in learning it so I can apply it. Maybe people will actually
find the site on purpose if I can get it listed correctly.
11:39 am est
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