Buyers forgo house checks

Local home inspectors are grappling with a decline in business sparked by a fiercely competitive Washington housing market.

With sellers receiving multiple offers, home buyers who want to win a contract have been waiving the home inspection as part of the purchase agreement.

Some inspectors have started investing money in new marketing techniques as a way to cushion the blow.

Hollis Brown, owner of ThoroSpec LLC in Bethesda, said business has dropped in the past several years. Prior to starting his own home-inspection business, he was doing about 500 inspections a year. When he opened ThoroSpec in 2003, that number sunk to 200.

He said he expected business to perk up in 2004, but it didn’t. And this year, business is down from a year ago, which he said is caused by a lack of inspections.

Stephan Baker, owner of the HomeBiz Inspection Team in the District, has seen a similar trend. In the past six months, he has performed about 100 inspections, down from 200 at the same time last year.

Both home inspectors said they are revamping their marketing efforts to focus on other services.

Mr. Brown said he has invested more money into Internet marketing for insurance claims, expert testimony and home evaluations.

“That’s helped me to weather the slow times,” he said.

Mr. Brown said his business is starting to focus more on environmental testing.

“In terms of marketing and advertising, we’ve started to push those more,” he said.

Other home inspectors also have found that the number of buyers in the area waiving the inspection as a contingency of a home purchase is rising, but say their businesses haven’t seen a drop in the number of inspections they are doing.

“I’m kind of surprised [buyers] are doing the home inspections at all, and I’m encouraged they still want to do it,” said Bill Patterson, owner of Action Building Services Inc. in Bowie.

Mr. Patterson said 40 percent of his clients waive the contingency on home inspections in their offers, but they have not stopped getting inspections.

He said he performed about 400 home inspections in 2004, compared with the 250 he did the previous year.

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