Jennifer Babson
Consumer Watch
Boston Globe
4/4/99Karen Dorfman was lolling in the shower of her new Belmont bungalow when the water turned to a trickle.
Her husband, Peter, had turned on the outside hose. And that, apparently, was more than the crumbling pipes under their 77 year-old home could handle. You couldn't draw water from two sources at the same time," she said. "So if you were washing dishes in the sink or washing your hair and somebody flushed a toilet, you had to wait for the toilet to fill back up."
The Dorfmans, it seems, were the last to know about this and many other problems in their new home - despite that they had paid a home inspector $200 to spot just such deficiencies before they signed a purchase-and-sale agreement in 1993.
"We got a shining review," Dorfman says ruefully.
By the time the roof of their $250,000 Belleview Street home began to shed shingles, the Dorfmans had serious doubts about the assessment -- and the "expert" who provided it.
"We went to try and find some board to support us in talking to him and dealing with him and that's when we found out there was nothing," she said.
Hairdressers are licensed, so are real estate agents, electricians, and plumbers. But home inspectors -- who have become a routine part of the most significant purchase consumers make -- are not.
"We have a completely unregulated, unchecked group of advisors out there," says state Senator Cheryl A. Jacques (D-Needham), who is pressing for new laws that would regulate home inspectors. "It's frightening."
The Joint Committee on Government Regulation last week held a hearing on legislation introduced by Jacques that would require the state to license home inspectors and establish minimum industry standards.
Under Jacques's bill, home inspectors and inspection companies would be required to carry insurance and would also be prohibited from contractually limiting their liability for negligent examinations. The measure would also create a board of registration that would be charged with fielding and investigating consumer complaints.
The bill has been endorsed by the state's Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation. Attorney General Tom Reilly, and the Greater Boston Real Estate Board and the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.
Jack Digby, vice president of the New England chapter of the American Society of Home Inspectors, a voluntary trade group, said that while he believes the bill needs to be fine-tuned, it is a good idea.
"We are concerned that there are a lot of incompetent and possibly transient people coming in, they may not be truly professionals," Digby said.
About 115 of the estimated 400 individuals who tout themselves as home inspectors in Massachusetts belong to ASHI, which requires its members to pass an exam and conduct at least 250 inspections before they qualify to join.
But for consumers who have already been burned, that's little consolation. Even pressing a court case can be an uphill battle.
Many attorneys decline to take lawsuits against home inspectors because of the difficulty in collecting damages.
"No lawyers will take these cases on contingency because they say it is extremely hard to win because of the lack of laws," says April Hoover, whose 1993 purchase of a Dutch colonial in Milton turned sour when she discovered that termites were chewing up the basement and the roof had to be replaced.
Hoover thought she was being clever when she located the inspector through a friend. "We didn't know how to go about hiring a home inspector, but we did know this: Never take a referral through a Realtor because of the conflict-of-interest," she said.
Numerous headaches later, Hoover says if she ever has to do it all over again, she will bypass the inspector in favor of certified experts like electricians and plumbers. "That $180 cost me $8,500," she says. "It wasn't worth it."
Here are a couple of hints on inspections and inspectors:
* Don't accept recommendations from real estate agents. They are interested in making a sale. Solicit neighbors and friends for names, demand and check references. Find an inspector affiliated with ASHI or another trade group, most inspectors will tout these credentials in their ads. Make them show proof of membership.
*Always accompany the inspector as he or she looks over the property. If you have any doubts about whether it was thorough, talk to or retain someone else.
Jennifer Babson