The contract includes general limitations; for example, “We don’t test alarm systems.” The Limitations in the body of a report addresses specific issues for that inspection. We might say, “We could not inspect the rear of the house because of the vicious dog in the backyard.”

• Get some legal advice. Don’t just copy another company’s wording.
• Get it signed before the inspection.
• Your contract should be consistent with the Standards and may reference the Standards, or even have the Standards attached.
• The contract typically contains a number of general exclusions and limitations that apply to all inspections.

The Standards give us a start. I’m going to build on their guidelines and tell you what we put in reports. I’ll list them first, then provide a comment on each.

• Contract/inspection agreement
• Executive summary
• Descriptions
• Limitations
• Recommendations
  • Component
  • Condition
  • Implication
  • Location
  • Task
  • Time
  • Reference material

They want it to be clear, and they want it to be simple. What does the perfect report look like from the client’s perspective? “This is a good house; buy it.” Or “This is a bad house; don’t buy it.” At least, that’s all they’re interested in at the time of the inspection. Once they move in, it’s a different story.

What is the perfect report from our perspective? What I would like to say to clients is, “Just remember everything I told you as we went through the house. For all the things I said might be problems, get a specialist in to check it.”

We are not prepared to tell them what they want and they aren’t going to be happy with what we want, so we have to compromise. Let’s try this: “We’ll tell you, based on what we can see in a couple of hours, what’s broken or is about to break.” We might be able to work with this. Let’s look at what we should include in the report.

The inspection agreement is a good place to start adjusting unrealistic expectations.  We need to make sure the client understands the scope of the inspection and the fact that it is a sampling exercise.  While we are going to look for major issues in the house, there are tons of minor defects you would find if you spent days in the house.  We tell our clients that we will come across lesser problems while we are looking for big ones.  As a courtesy, we will include those in the report, but they should not mistake our home inspection report for a comprehensive list of minor home defects.  We tell clients that we will miss some issues that we could have seen, because of this sampling exercise.  We also tell clients that problems can crop up quickly, and it is often hard to know whether a problem that is clearly evident today existed three months ago.

We try to reinforce this at the beginning of the inspection, throughout the inspection and in the written report.  Sometimes we are successful, but not always.  In fairness to our clients, if we don’t try to set the appropriate level of expectations, they will default to an unreasonable and unlimited set of expectations, because people believe what they want to be true.

Not an insurance policy: We often tell people that a home inspection is not an insurance policy.  Anyone would be foolish to offer an insurance policy on anything that could go wrong with a home with no exclusions, no deductible, and a one-time premium of a few hundred dollars.  That is not what a home inspection is all about.

• I want to communicate clearly with clients, so that they understand and feel the same way about the house that I do.
• I want to be consistent throughout each report and from one report to the next.
  • For every defect I want to provide the same type and depth of information.
  • I want to make the same recommendations and observations for the same condition every time.
• I want to reduce errors.
  • I want spell check to help me.
  • I want a tool to make sure I’ve included everything I need.
• I want to keep report writing time to a minimum.
  • I want templates that let me make lots of entries with a single click.
  • I want extras like photos, illustrations and reference material to appear without a lot of work.

Here’s what I think we are trying to accomplish when we write a report.

a. To help clients make their buying decision.
b. After they get settled in, we want to help them manage the home.
c. We want to minimize our liability and, if all goes well, do some marketing for ourselves.
d. We need to meet the Standards.

Why I don’t like writing reports: Inspecting homes is fun and most clients are pleasant to deal with. Writing reports on the other hand is never fun. Why is that? There are a few reasons, at least for me.

• We are trained as home inspectors, we are not trained as technical writers. We don’t have the skills we need out of the gate – at least I didn’t.
• Through the course of our life, we talk more than we write, so it makes sense that talking is more natural. We are better at it.
• Talking is multidimensional, while writing is one-dimensional. When writing, I don’t get a chance to use body language, tone of voice and there is certainly no feedback from my listener.
• There are no do-overs in report writing: When I am talking to someone I can repeat things a different way if it’s clear the listener is struggling to understand. When I am writing, I only get one chance to get it right. It’s hard to know exactly what to include, because the audience is invisible and passive.
• English is a very difficult language. It’s hard to speak well, and almost impossible to write perfectly.

If it’s worth writing reports…… it’s worth writing them well. We may as well do a good job because it will make clients happy and that should help our business grow. Equally important, if we do it badly, we might get complaints and our business may go away.

Here’s our slightly tongue-in-cheek definition of the home inspection profession. “A business with a logically high liability, slim profit margins and limited economies of scale. An incredibly diverse, multi-disciplined consulting service, delivered under difficult in-field circumstances, before a hostile audience in an impossibly short time frame, requiring the production of an extraordinarily detailed technical report, almost instantly, without benefit of research facilities or resources.”