New Kentucky bill

[Jeffrey R. Knight]

Anyone here aware of the new Kentucky bill that is being thrown around ? Home Inspector licensing being under the Real Estate division ?

http://www.kreia.org/Portals/1413/Do...8BR-174%29.pdf

A big issue coming down the pike in a lot of states is that they are all trying to consolidate and shrink the costs of all these boards and what is happening is that a lot of times they are being consolidated with the real estate agents. Watch for this to happen if you are especially in a Republican run state. This is starting to happen and inspectors need to keep their eyes open.

Sometimes smaller consolidated boards (government) is not a good thing. It just means a miss-mash of board members that know nothing about each others industry and bad things happen. Just my 2 cents.

[Dan Bowers, CMI]

This sort of thing is coming up in many areas. Inspectors that think the real estate lobby's using their political pull or legislative $$$ contributions to slide home inspectors UNDER their control should start writing groups like maybe the Justice Dept or FBI vs writing on these boards.

OR write and document complaints to media like 48 Hours, etc

[Gary Farnsworth]

Media does not work.

In December of 2008, I was the #1 news story in Topeka on the 6:00 news. I was interviewed about how home inspectors were going to be limited in doing inspections under the new Kansas laws.

I have contacted people such as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Bloomberg news, several other news and TV stations. I even used my radio show at the time to try to educate the public about the fiasco that was about to happen in Kansas.

Nothing worked. Now, SOP's and state laws nationwide allow for limited, basic, cheap inspections and reporting. Here in Kansas, you are not required to check any appliances; only check one outlet, one switch, one window per room; you do not have to remove or touch any panel. Results are $249 inspections with termite on any size home. All media outlets will NOT write or broadcast anything against agents, due to threats of loss of RE advertising dollars.

Read countless threads on licensing on this message board. Inspectors complain about cheap inspector pricing, poorly written reports, and litigation issues. We have brought this on ourselves. Why? We never stood up to the lawmakers. There are only a handful of inspectors who voiced their opinions, and what the results of new laws would be, but over 80% of home inspectors said nothing, all to appease their fellow "RE agents".

Our industry is limited in life. Our rules and regulations will limit what we can do, to the point that home inspections will be absolutely worthless to the home buyers. Sad. I can here all of the NAR and used home commissioned salespeople cheering.

[Dan Bowers, CMI]

Gary -

If you read the standards in Kansas / They are NOT that different than those of iNACHI, ASHI or NAHI. An inspector is NOT really very limited to what he can or can NOT do on the inspection. The standards are simply the minimum an inspector is SUPPOSED to do - The same holds true with the iNACHI, ASHI or NAHI standards. When you told people that an inspector would have been LIMITED, the other side could easily show that was incorrect.

Therefore, I'm betting you lost the ear of the listeners. BUT there were literally half a hundred valid reasons you could slam them with - Like:

a) Was it really needed / Show us the Beef. Where are those hundreds of complaints the realtors said that were rolling in each week. After 1 year, we've only had 2 complaints filed with the Kansas Board.
b) The realtors told legislators and the media, home inspectors were the ONLY people in a real estate transaction NOT licensed / BullCrap.
c) The realtors told legislators and the media, home inspectors were the ONLY people in a real estate transaction without mandatory E & O / BullCrap.
d) The President of the group out of Wichita told legislators they WERE a legitimate State Association AND represented ALL home inspectors in the state / Looking over their rolls / EVERY officer was ASHI; all but about 7 of their members were ASHI; they represented ASHI.
e) The President of the Wichita Group told legislators they'd INVITED over 200 Inspectors to several meetings AND the home inspectors were in favor of the licensing bill / He forgot to mention that each of the 3 meetings generated between 22 - 28 of the SAME inspectors, with all but 3 or 4 being ASHI members. So about 23 - 28 ASHI inspectors that came to his meetings set the stage for the rest of us. THAT WAS OUR OWN FAULT.

You came to legislative hearings; I went; David Moriconi, Stacey Van Houtan, Buck Hartley, and Mike Greenwalt went BUT the rest of OUR lazy whiny inspectors DID NOT get off their butts and go. SO it was real EASY for the realtors lobbyist to keep telling everyone that EVEN the inspectors (except for 4-5) are in favor of the licensing bill.

We had LOTS of real stuff to talk about BUT ...................

[Gary Farnsworth]

Thanks, Dan. I hope inspectors in Kentucky realize what they are up against.

It is also amazing to me, that most counties in every state do not have basic building codes, and most all do not police them or enforce them. It is difficult for any state licensed home inspector to state whether or not a defect is a defect, when there are no minimum building code standards.

State lawmakers better start practicing what they are preaching. They should impose state building codes, licensing and insuring of all home builders, contractors, roofers, plumbers, drywall installers, concrete persons, etc. etc, anyone who is involved in the real estate transaction. That would be better buyer protection.