Home inspectors are quite simply eyes and ears of home being examined. They are objective voice of home. The mantra of home inspectors should be "if home could speak, what would it say". It is critical that inspector can speak in a manner that makes understanding simple for homebuyer, yet has depth of technical language to detail repairs using terminology common to trades.

Making that right choice of which home inspector is in many ways more difficult than choosing home. A clear and critical approach to selecting an inspector is essential to being happy over time with home selected.

My Friend in Construction It seems that everyone knows someone who "works in construction", and from that relationship comes common desire by some buyers to save professional inspection fee by having friend or family member perform inspection.

At first blush, this seems like a perfect solution. The friend or family member is a known and trusted person. There is no doubt in mind of buyer that loyalty and intentions of this person are above reproach. And then of course, there is issue of saving inspection fee.

These attributes of friend are important. Ideally, all but expense issue would be traits found in any professional home inspector. The difficulty arises in three principal areas; objectivity, creditability, and inspection specific knowledge.

Let's look first at issue of inspection specific knowledge. While it may be that friend is without peer in his particular area of construction, it is rare that he is able to view home in it's entirely - that is, as an interaction of dozens of complex and interrelated systems. The most knowledgeable of heating and air-conditioning contractors may know near to nothing about roofing.

Even more common, however, than lack of a broad base of knowledge, is lack of any knowledge that is useful during a home inspection.

Well, as with anything in life, there are precautions to take, questions you should ask yourself, and signs to look out for. Provided you are careful with who you decide to purchase from, online shopping can be a very convenient and pleasurable experience.

Important Safety Precautions:

Take a good look around website. Make sure you read their Privacy Policy. A Privacy policy let's you know procedures and methods they have in place to secure your personal information. Find answers to these questions...Do they share your information with others? Some companies sell or distribute your information to other companies. You may wind up on everybody's mailing list. Do they have security measures in place to protect your information (i.e. SSL)? SSL is abbreviation for Secured Socket Layer. SSL is security software that encrypts information sent between browsers. What this means in laymen's terms is that your personal information such as name, address, credit card number, etc. is coded or scrambled so that anyone who may try to intercept this information as it is being transmitted cannot read it. But don't just rely on them telling you that their site is secure, check for yourself. You will know when you are in a secure browser by looking at bottom browser bar on your computer (lower right). If browser is secure, you will see a security lock image. Also check web address in your top browser bar. Secure web addresses begin with "https" whereas, non-secure pages begin with "http."