Is the inspector working for me or for the agent who recommended him

Out where I work there are four inspectors within an hour's drive and everybody's list is the same four names. The theory needs a market with enough inspectors to sort them, and plenty of places don't have that.

What's wrong with it is the assumption that a soft report is what an agent wants. An agent's nightmare is a house that closes and then leaks, because that's the call that ends a career by word of mouth. What they actually don't want is an inspector who narrates every hairline crack in a doom voice until the buyer panics over a $200 fix. That's a communication complaint, not a coverage complaint, and buyers hear the referral pattern and assume the worst.

Read the report, not the reputation. I came out of construction and you can tell in ten minutes whether someone crawled the space or shined a light in from the hatch. Ask for a sample report on a house the same age as yours before you pay anybody.

@girder that's the practical version. Also ask whether they'll walk the roof or only look from a ladder, and whether that's their rule or the insurance carrier's. The answer tells you a lot about how much of the house you're actually buying coverage on.

$475 on a $310,000 house is under two tenths of a percent of the purchase price and it's the only line item in my whole first-deal budget where I can't see a reason to shop for the cheap end. The $350 guy is doing more inspections per day to make the same money and I'd rather not be his fourth stop.

I asked my agent flat out how many of her deals died on inspection last year. She answered without hesitating and the number wasn't small, which told me more than the three names did.