As some of you know who follow the message board, NACHI was contacted about 9 months ago by the country’s largest foreclosure company based very near NACHI headquarters in Colorado. They want us to pre-inspect every foreclosure in the U.S. This could mean a couple hundred of thousand additional inspections for NACHI members. Their idea was to have NACHI members inspect them, then have the investors who normally bid on these homes be able to view the reports online. This would provide valuable information to the potential bidder without him/her having to travel to the property to inspect it themselves. Often investors aren’t qualified to do the inspections themselves anyway. Access to the reports would be available for a $15 or $20 fee/view (a bargain for an online or in person bidder). This in turn would generate more bids and more informed bids. So it would act as a marketing tool to sell the properties as well. Bidders would have to sign an online agreement acknowledging a bunch of stuff and pay the access fee first of course.
To accomplish this NACHI needed an online agreement system that accepted online signatures and allowed for easy modification with just the click of a mouse. This would require the purchase of additional server hardware, legal work, IT work, beta testing etc. Anyway… WE GOT IT DONE!: http://www.nachi.org/onlineagreement.htm and it was so good, we decided to launch it as its own stand-alone free member benefit.
We also would need a report uploading/viewing system that worked no matter who the inspector was, what the inspection was, what the report looked like and what software it was generated on. Wow. This would require the purchase of much additional server hardware, legal work, months of IT work, beta testing, etc. It would be NACHI’s biggest project ever. Anyway… WE GOT IT DONE!: http://www.nachi.org/fetchreportfriendlyseal.htm and it was so good, we decided to launch it as its own stand-alone free member benefit. FetchReport was born.
We also would need agreements from the major software reporting companies that the would make their stuff FetchReport-friendly. WE GOT IT DONE!
This would also require a FetchReport-friendly seal to be created. WE GOT IT DONE!: http://www.nachi.org/images06/FetchReport-Friendly-Seal.jpg
At this point we got to thinking. Why not shoot for the moon? Let’s do this for every seller in the world and flip the inspection industry upside down (work for sellers not buyers). So we went for it.
To accomplish this we would need a great domain name that said it all in one phrase. WE GOT IT DONE!: MoveInCertified.com. I can’t think of a better URL.
We also would need a website for it that was interlinked to our report upload/viewing system (FetchReport). WE GOT IT DONE!: www.MoveInCertified.com
We also would need a logo for it. One that visually makes sense like our URL does. WE GOT IT DONE!: http://www.nachi.org/images06/moveincertifiedlogo.gif
At this point we were contacted by a Florida insurance company who wanted the whole FetchReport system for themselves. Trouble was that the other bigger insurance company hadn’t approved of our 4-point style form. So we worked with them all to get it approved by everyone. Although this is a side issue, we needed it in FL so that bidders could eventually get insurance and re-insurance on properties they were upgrading. WE GOT IT DONE!: http://www.nachi.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20369
We also needed a sign design for Move In Certified. WE GOT IT DONE!: http://www.nachi.org/images06/moveincertifiedyardsign.jpg
Trouble was, the sign only looked good online. In the yard (we made a few to test) the colors were too dull. We needed new, bright colors. WE GOT IT DONE!: http://www.nachi.org/images06/moveincertifiedyardsign2.jpg
Now back to the original foreclosure company that inspired all this. They informed us that although they were making progress with a billing system that would allow bidders (the public at large) to access our member’s reports pay-per-view (now remember, they have their own legal and IT issues and they move much slower than us, we have no control over that)… they would not pay the fee to the inspector up front. What we needed was financing so that our members could get paid upon completion, not $15 or $20 at a time. With help from our friends at Pro-Lab, WE GOT IT DONE!
Now just like the foreclosure pre-inspection idea got us to thinking’ and coming up with all these other member benefits and projects that we‘ve launched, many of which are in full use… the pay-per-view reports got me a thinking’ too :cool-cat: . We’ll talk about that at some later date. I just wanted to reveal what is on my mind.
Now what do out of town investors who know nothing of construction or inspections need after they hire a contractor to update the foreclosures they buy? They need their own inspector to watch over the project. This inspired www.OverSeeIt.com There was much work that went into this spin-off project (IT, Legal, site, etc.), but yes, WE GOT IT DONE!
We still have the problem of REALTOR acceptance to the whole seller inspection idea. And although we already had sample form letters http://www.nachi.org/sellerinspections.htm what we needed was a national movement toward doing seller inspections. So we started getting articles printed here and there. Broker Agent News did an exclusive story with NACHI and sent it to every agent. LA Times, the nation’s 4th largest paper just ran a story about seller inspections, mentioning NACHI only, etc. But members still needed a simple way to announce this new service to their local agents. What we needed was a database of every agent’s mailing address so that members could snail mail the sample letters (within above link) on their own letterhead directly to their local agents. WE GOT IT DONE!: www.nachi.org/agentdata.htm and it was so good, we decided to launch it as its own stand-alone free member benefit.
But what we really need is to provide members with a a link to a TV show explaining it all and explaining why it would help agents sell their listings. Hm… I wonder who has an online TV show and production company ??? 
**Are we all done? **Nope. We never are. Every project leads to other projects which lead to more member benefits created at different paces (depending upon how much control we have over them), each inspiring more projects which in turn…
For a partial list of inspection business success tips involving many of our fully completed projects visit www.nachi.org/success.htm
