Georgia Legislation

[hspinnler]

Two words that currently don't go together. Anybody care to guess if Georgia will be one of the last holdouts for home inspection profession legislation?

[Greg Bell]

This is their proposed legislation.

http://www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/1...t/hb152.htm#p2

Do you have any idea where this stands?

[Jay Schwartz]

Greg:

That proposal was from 2000.

[Greg Bell]

Thanks Jay

In that cause I would assume that it is dead.

[hspinnler]

Guys, I meant that poll to be tongue-in-cheek. Missouri is the Show-me-state and Georgia is the Follow-me-state. I did recently learn that Residential and General Contractors will be required to be licensed by July 2007.
http://www.sos.state.ga.us/plb/contractors/default.htm

Not sure if the inspection industry will follow suit here. Overall, has licensing been good for your state? Does it increase credibility of the home inspection profession? Will it help to weed out some of the part-time not so dedicated inspectors?

Regards,

[Dan Bowers, CMI]

Hank -

In almost every state we've tracked for licensure, the number of new HI's within the 1st two-three years after licensure has doubled or tripled. States without 1 inspector training school in the state before the legislation ended up with 6-8 schools in state within the 1st 6 months.

You may loose a few weak sisters here and there but overall the same dumb, sleazy inspectors before are dumb, sleazy "licensed inspectors" afterwards.

[hspinnler]

Hi Dan,

What's the reason for the increase after state licensure? Figure more red tape and a hoop or two to step through would deter some of the sloppy sisters.

[Dan Bowers, CMI]

Never gave it any thought & don't care why. Thats what happens. Probably all the schools.

[Nick Gromicko]

Licensing really hurts the veteran inspector who has equity built up in his market share for 3 major reasons...

1. A newly licensed newbie is "as licensed" as everyone else. In other words, a guy who got his license yesterday is "as licensed" (no more or less) than a veteran inspector.

2. Dan is right in that licensing attracts many to the industry and typically doubles to triples the number of inspectors. Minimum standard licensing of course keeps nobody out. Even if licensing keeps out a handful of inspectors, would you like to get rid of a handful of your competitors in exchange for bringing in hundreds of new ones? Of course not.

3. REALTORs get funny when licensing goes through (especially these days with all the negligent referal lawsuits) and so stop referring their favorite 3 inspectors and instead point to the licensed list of inspectors as "all qualified."

In summary, if you have developed any sort of market you should be hell bent against licensing.

In the past, there have been some stupid ASHI full members who pushed for licensing thinking the reverse, only to have their entire businesses that they built up over years, get overrun overnight.

The only exception I've seen are the ASHI full members in Tampa... they figured out what I just explained and fight furiously against licensing.

[Nick Gromicko]

Licensing also hurts ASHI (the association) as ASHI is a credential-only trade association. In other words, ASHI offers no member benefits other than a credential (a bogus one, but a credential nontheless). When the state comes in with licensing... the license becomes the credential. In other words, the state does a better job and displaces all the credential-only associations.

NACHI (the association) is of course benefited by licensing and not just because it kills our competing associations but because once everyone is licensed... the best at marketing wins. Furthermore, NACHI offers tons of other benefits http://www.nachi.org/benefits.htm . We don't ever have to worry about the state getting into or competing with NACHI on 99% of the benefits we offer. The state only competes with credential-only associations and with regard to that... the state kick credential-only association's butts.