New Inspector in Michigan

[Gary Bottomley]

Hi everyone:
Just ran across this forum while doing a Google search for an inspection related item so thought I'd give it a try.
I have been following the Message Boards of Home Inspector Pro as well as InterNACHI where I have been using their educational material which I my opinion is great, worth every penny! :)
I got into the Home Inspection business as something I thought would be a good part time business to earn a few bucks every now a again since the economy here in Michigan has put me into forced retirement after 35 years of design and commercial construction experience. This seems like a good gig except for the slow process. In the three months I have been doing this, I have done 5 paid inspections which is somewhat less than what I had hoped for.
I have visited about every realtors office within 50 miles of my home, delivering brochures and business cards and am working on a custom web site and hope that will help with marketing (as soon as InterNACHI gets their act together to finalize their site)!!
So, if anyone has any thoughts on better ways to break into the market, please let me know.
Looking forward to get involved with this group.
Gary Bottomley
Northwest Michigan Home Inspection Services
Cadillac, Mi

[Bruce Ramsey]

Don't rely on Nachi to build your website or do anything other than accept your checks. It is your business not Nicks. Pay someone to build your website who knows what they are doing. You can have links to internachi but stop thinking about Nachi and start thinking about your business.

Check the total home sales in your area for a time period. Then find out how many inspectors cover that area. You will probably find that there are not enough inspections to keep all the inspectors busy.

In my market, there are over 300 inspectors. Last month 1000 sales. Simple math tells you that there are way too many inspectors and not nearly enough sales. Experienced inspectors with good referrral bases that were performing 10 inspections a week a year ago are averaging 1.5 a week now.

Glad you chose a new career path. Just seems like a poor time to enter a market that is in the biggest slump in 20 plus years.

[Gary Bottomley]

Don't rely on Nachi to build your website or do anything other than accept your checks. It is your business not Nicks. Pay someone to build your website who knows what they are doing. You can have links to internachi but stop thinking about Nachi and start thinking about your business.

Check the total home sales in your area for a time period. Then find out how many inspectors cover that area. You will probably find that there are not enough inspections to keep all the inspectors busy.

In my market, there are over 300 inspectors. Last month 1000 sales. Simple math tells you that there are way too many inspectors and not nearly enough sales. Experienced inspectors with good referrral bases that were performing 10 inspections a week a year ago are averaging 1.5 a week now.

Glad you chose a new career path. Just seems like a poor time to enter a market that is in the biggest slump in 20 plus years.

Bruce:
Thanks for the reply and feedback.
My brother lives in Garner. Been down there a few times and have been thinking about relocating there but have found that as you indicated, the boom has seemed to slow down there as well.
My area is considerably smaller than the Raleigh area but expect the ratio is similar as it seems there is only about 5 inspectors active in this area.
The realtors indicate that most of the homes being sold are foreclosures and it seems that the buyers know they are buying a mesh and don't care to pay a few hundred bucks to find out how much of a mess they are getting, thus, few inspections yet!
I have been thinking about giving up on NACHI for the web site but it is hard to justify the added expense when such little income is coming in.
I looked at your web site and really liked your sample report. Is that a standard report format or have you done extensive customization?

[Bill Emelander]

Gary,

I also work in your area and have been doing so since 2002. I also am a member of InterNACHI and get a wealth of information from that group. But I also have a web sete (not the one NACHI provides) and half of my referrals now come from there. Just yesterday on an inspection in Cadillac I asked my client how he got my name, he told me the Agent gave him 2 names (I was not one of them) but neither had a web site. Then he found my site and he liked the information he found. I was hired. The agent he is working with I upset this spring and have not received anything since.
So get out there and hit the pavement but also look into a web site.

Bill

[Bruce Ramsey]

$1000 will get you a pretty good website up and running. It is almost a mandatory item for any business today. Do not spend ANY money on Yellow Pages. Any money to them is too much money for the home inspection industry. Zero return on investment. If agents are not referring you, then the public has to be able to find you somehow.


Bruce:
I looked at your web site and really liked your sample report. Is that a standard report format or have you done extensive customization?

That is an actual report. Just changed the name and address. Last month I updated my boilerplate to better match the licensing board North Carolina Report Compliance Worksheet. Welcome to NC Office of State Fire Marshal (http://www.ncdoi.com/OSFM/Engineering/hilb/engineering_hilb_inspection_checklist.asp)

The report is written using MSWord. No commercial home inspector software package. Basically I have a 40+ page word doc with all my standard statements. I make a copy of the base report and delete all items that do not apply to the current inspection. Then I add in all the photos from the inspection. Then I write any new comments. If any of the comments are likley to be needed in the future, then they are pasted back to the boilerplate. Usually then I tweak the statements to be generic enough for reuse but specific enough for the actual report.

If you send me an email and I am willing to share the base report.