Our Guarantee
Licensed Inspectors | Inspection Time | Realtor Refferals | Report Format
Licensed Inspectors
In a press release dated January 30, 2009, the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General announced that, as of March 31, 2009, all those providing home inspection services must be licenesed. To verify your inspector is licensed, please ask to see their inspection certificate or search the BPCPA "Active Business Licenses Search" page.
The benefit of the licensing is that all those who provide home inspection services within the next 2 years will need to belong to an accredited inspection organization that ensures a standard of education, a standard of practice, a code of ethics, a requirement for continuing education, and a mechanism for handling customer or peer complaints. The licensing requirement stops those with no experience in the field from getting business cards and a flashlight and setting up a business. The requirements also stop those (carpenters, engineers, contractors, licensed plumbers, electricians, etc.) who may have training and experience in one or two building components, but lack the training required to inspect the dwelling as a whole, from providing inspection services.
Licensing inspectors is a great first step for the industry and provides an added layer of confidence in the system for the public. It is, however, still important for you to choose your home inspector wisely.
Only BCIPI inspectors certified by the ASTTBC are required to be fully trained before they offer services to you the consumer. BCIPI is unique in this practice. A new BCIPI inspector must pass a series of mentored field training exercises and supervised inspection assessments before they are authorized to provide services to the public. The new licensing does not yet require this from all organizations and allows those that have ONLY written a theory examination to be licensed and work unsupervised while gaining enough work experience to become “qualified” by their organization.
At SENWI, we feel that like most professional occupations and trades, some form of apprenticeship is required to hone a student’s skills and prepare them for practice in this field. Book smarts can only take a new inspector so far. A form of apprenticeship is needed to take them the rest of the way and should be a mandatory requirement for new inspectors coming into this industry.
You can rest assured knowing that all SENWI inspectors are fully qualified to provide their services to you.
Inspection Time
Our research, based on realtor and client feedback, indicates that the average total inspection and report generation time for an apartment is 1 hour and the average time for a house or townhouse is 3 hours.
At SENWI, we feel that it is very difficult to perform an accurate and complete inspection within this time frame and demand our inspectors take the time required to do the job right.
Realtor Refferals
At SENWI, we insist that any inspector that provides services for us be independent from Realtors and maintain a membership in the Independent Home Inspectors of North America and must take the “No Conflict of Interest Pledge”.
It is critical that the inspector provides an unbiased evaluation free from any influence. Even a good/professional relationship between a Realtor and Home Inspector can influence the service that a client receives as the relationship between the Realtor and Inspector can become stronger than the relationship between the Inspector and Client. We believe this type of relationship is not in the best interests of the consumer.
Our inspectors do not solicit Realtors for referrals, do not direct any form of advertising to Realtors, and do not provide or receive any form of compensation to or from Realtors,
When you hire a SENWI inspector you are guaranteed an inspector free from all Realtor or other Third Party influences, an inspector who is working solely for you and in your best interests.
Report Format
The most common style of report in the industry is called a checklist report. It usually contains a series of checkboxes per building component with captions like “Appears Serviceable”, “Functional”, or “Poor/Average/Good”. These are not descriptive terms and often mean different things to different people. Most of these reports have minimal space to expand in a narrative fashion on the problem identified and the client can often be left unsure of the meaning of a specific reported item. This style of report is popular because it is a one size fits all solution to house inspecting. They often come in carbon copies and can allow the inspector to rush through an inspection, ticking off items without really providing substantive information on the current condition of the dwelling.
At SENWI, we do not use a pre-printed checklist-style report. Instead, we create a custom narrative report supported with photos to explain the found defects. Our reports will only have information on the inspected dwelling and you will not have to wade through piles of boilerplate text to get to the relevant data. And because we custom write every report we are able to take as much room as is required to adequately explain the found defect.
We are proud that we exceed the industry average. We will not compromise our standards or the ability to provide you with a detailed and accurate report that you deserve and have paid for—a report that you need to make an informed purchase decision.
