[photopress:inspectors.jpg,thumb,alignright]I am just beside myself on the topic of home inspectors and asbestos. I don’t care how many inspectors want to tell me why inspectors aren’t “obligated” to call asbestos in the inspection, I will still keep saying: “You have GOT to be KIDDING me!!
I’ve seen more asbestos in homes in the Seattle area than in my entire career to date around the Country.
“Well Ardell, I know we both “think” that’s asbestos were looking at there, but we really can’t say it’s asbestos unless we send it out to a lab and have it tested. So we just have this disclaimer in our contract saying we are not responsible for calling asbestos in the inspection…and that is sufficient for US” US being the home inspectors!!
Yesterday I literally took a razor tool from the inspector and cut open some paneling held together by duct tape in a basement and forced an inspector to look behind it before he wrote “inaccessible area” on the report! I said if you don’t lend me something to do this with, I’m going to use my bare hands!
How come I can get 10 average Joe’s to stand around the asbestos wrapped pipes, who will all say “Yep, dats asbestis alright”, but I can’t get one inspector to note asbestos in a home inspection report?
Oh, and here’s the agent’s lovely comment (I represent the seller and she represents the buyer) “Not my problem. The buyer chose their inspector and if the inspector doesn’t tell him what he needs to know…that’s not my problem, is it?”
In PA inspectors included “testing for radon” by setting canisters in the house and sending them to the lab. They couldn’t see radon or taste it or smell it, but they didn’t put a disclaimer in their contract saying “Duh, Don’t Know”.
Here’s a clue, Risk Reduction equals every buyer KNOWING WHAT the heck they are buying!!, not 25 disclaimer and disclosure forms covering everyone’s butts in the industry! And they have the nerve to tell me that they don’t want me at the inspection because I make them look bad…Oh WELL!!
And if you stick that pointy metal thing and chunk away at the mortar between the bricks of my seller’s house one more time in some silly act of macho bravado, I’m going to take it out of your and and stick it where you don’t want it stuck.
Some days I want to be a waitress…
To Stephane, this entire post should be in bold AND all caps! I am heeding your advice. But if you tell me to stop using !!exclamation points!!, we’ll have to agree to disagree 🙂
