In this episode, Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murry discuss the recent changes to the ASHI standards of practice for home inspectors with guest Jim Katen. They explore the implications of these changes, the necessity for updates, and the potential impact on home inspection reports and client service. The conversation emphasizes the importance of providing valuable information to clients while navigating the complexities of new requirements.
If you’re a member of ASHI, please take the time to read through the changes, found at https://www.homeinspector.org/Resources/Standard-of-Practice. This stuff affects you. If you don’t agree with the changes, speak up by sending an email to standards@ashi.org. The period for public comment ends on December 10th. Thank you.
Check this link to learn more about Inspector Empire Builder: https://www.iebcoaching.com
Takeaways
Home inspectors must follow state standards or choose a recognized standard like ASHI.
The ASHI standards have not been updated in nearly a decade, necessitating a refresh.
New standards require more detailed descriptions of home components, which may not be relevant to clients.
Many clients do not care about the specifics of materials used in their homes.
The focus should be on improving the homebuying experience, not just protecting inspectors.
The changes to the standards may lead to longer, more cumbersome reports.
Home inspectors should voice their opinions on the new standards before the comment period ends.
The standards committee should prioritize the needs of homebuyers over legal protections for inspectors.
Clear and concise reports are essential for effective communication with clients.
Home inspectors are encouraged to engage with the ASHI standards committee to influence future changes.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Home Inspection Standards
04:29 The Need for Updated Standards
11:54 Evaluating the Changes in Standards
17:11 The Purpose of Home Inspection Standards
21:07 Call to Action for Home Inspectors
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is an AI-generated transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is mostly accurate, it will contain some errors due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Reuben Saltzman: Welcome to my house. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast, a production of Structure Tech Home Inspections. My name is Reuben Saltzman. I’m your host alongside building science geek, Tessa Murry. We help home inspectors up their game through education, and we help homeowners to be better stewards of their houses. We’ve been keeping it real on this podcast since 2019, and we are also the number one home inspection podcast in the world, according to my mom.
Reuben Saltzman (00:01)
Welcome back to the show. I’m Ruben. I’m here with Tessa today. We’ve got a special guest, we got a repeat guest, Jim Katen on the show from it’s Portland. It’s Portland, right Jim?
Jim Katen (00:14)
The Portland, the Greater Portland area.
Reuben Saltzman (00:16)
The greater Portland area. Yes, Jim is a longtime home inspector. He’s been at this for 32 years. I have known him through the ASHI forums and many different conferences for the last two decades now. I’ve known Jim for quite a while and I greatly respect his opinion and his way of phrasing things and seeing the bigger picture. So I brought him on the show to talk about the new ASHI standard of practice. But before we do that, gotta give a quick shout-out to our sponsors, IEB, and Inspector Empire Builder. I’ve gotten so much value from them. I feel like that is my community. These are my peeps. I have regular meetings with the people at Inspector Empire Builder. We meet together weekly. We have conferences. We have all kinds of coaching on how to be better business owners, how to be better employers. It’s all of the stuff other than the technical aspects of home inspections. It’s all the stuff to do with running a business, having employees, all that fun stuff. Get a ton from them. And if you’d like to learn more about them, I will have a link to them in our show notes. So Tessa, how are you doing today?
Tessa Murry (01:36)
Hey Ruben, I’m good. You know, I’m excited to dive into today because it sounds like you’ve been kind of thinking about this, mulling it over, and you’ve been actively participating in some feedback regarding this, I guess this topic that we’re going be talking about today. And so I’m excited to hear your thoughts on it and Jim’s thoughts on this.
Reuben Saltzman (02:01)
Sweet. Jim, how are you doing today, sir?
Jim Katen (02:06)
I’m well, thank you.
Reuben Saltzman (02:08)
could. Well, let me let me just set the stage kind of explain what we’re talking about today. Home inspectors in various states probably need to follow their state standards if they’re in a state where you got licensing if they got rules for home inspections, strike the word probably you have to when you’re in other states like Minnesota where we don’t have any regulation, you need to choose some other standard you’re going to follow.
Tessa Murry (02:08)
Thank
This
Reuben Saltzman (02:38)
If you’re going to do a home inspection, you need to define exactly what it is that you’re doing. There are two major organizations for home inspectors. One of them is ASHI, the American Society of Home Inspectors. Another one is InterNACHI, the International Association of Certified Home Inspectors. I have been a member of ASHI for as long as I’ve been doing the home inspection thing. I know that Jim has been a member. How long you been a member of ASHI, Jim?
Jim Katen (03:08)
I’m not entirely sure, but probably close on 30 years. I joined a few years after I started.
Reuben Saltzman (03:12)
Okay, all right. Yeah, and you’ve you’ve done all the things you’ve been a director, you’ve been on committees, all that fun stuff, right?
Tessa Murry (03:21)
Thank you.
Jim Katen (03:22)
I’ve been on committees. I’ve never been a director. I’m not good on board of directors. I don’t play well with others. But I’ve served on several committees over the years. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (03:25)
Okay.
Okay
Okay, all right, cool. so he’s been involved in ASHI and we have this standard of practice. It says what a home inspection is all about. It gets revised periodically. The current version that we’re using was adopted in 2014. So it’s a decade old, time for a refresh. Standards change, the things that home inspectors do change.
and it’s time for refresh. I get it. We gotta stay with the times. I’m in support of updating our standards. The new standards were sent out to the ASHI membership earlier this year. I believe it was sometime early in July and I took the time to read through those standards. I painstakingly read through every line and I sent…
Tessa Murry (04:27)
Thank
Reuben Saltzman (04:29)
I sent an email to whatever the email address. said, if you have any thoughts, suggestions, changes, send us an email. So I sent an email and then just recently they sent out a, a revised proposal for the new standard of practice. And not much that I suggested changing was changed and
You know, I think that the, one of my biggest complaints and I’ve got complaints that I’m not pulling any punches here. One of my biggest complaints with this new standard is that there are a ton of things that we need to start describing as home inspectors that nobody cares about. The old standard.
had us describe a bunch of different things. For instance, if we’re inspecting the structural components of a home, we need to describe the foundation, we need to describe the floor structure, we need to describe the wall structure, et cetera. But with this new standard, just for example, rather than simply describing the floor structure, which today I might say you have a conventionally framed floor structure.
Tessa Murry (05:41)
Thank you.
Reuben Saltzman (05:55)
you know, two by eights, two by 10, something like that, or open web trusses or closed web trusses, something like that. Now we need to describe the subfloor, the floor joists, the beams and girders and the columns and slash peers slash pads. We need to describe what all of these materials are made out of. Now, Jim.
I just got to ask you, okay, so you’ve been doing this for 32 years. How many times have you had a client come back to you after you sent them the report, come back and say, hey Jim, what type of material is my subfloor made out of? I need to know this.
Tessa Murry (06:40)
So, you.
Jim Katen (06:42)
I cannot recall a single instance where that happened. In fact, my guess is that most of my clients would not be able to tell you what a subfloor is.
Tessa Murry (06:53)
Ding ding ding.
Reuben Saltzman (06:54)
Ding, ding, ding. Thank you. Okay. I don’t want to drive this into the ground too far, but speaking of driving into the ground, how many times have they asked you to tell you what type of pad their columns or piers are built on top of?
Jim Katen (07:12)
Never, of course. Most clients, if you ask them about pads, they’re not going to be thinking of building components.
Reuben Saltzman (07:14)
Okay, okay.
No, no. And also, let me just further that if you had to figure out what type of pad you had to describe, how would you even figure that out, Jim?
Jim Katen (07:34)
I would probably say if I had to describe them I’d just say they’re concrete.
Reuben Saltzman (07:40)
Okay, all right. How do you know? No, I’m just kidding. I won’t press the issue. Yeah, they’re probably concrete, but you can’t see them usually. They’re going to be buried below the ground. Yeah, same thing goes for roof structure. Now we got to describe a bunch more stuff. There’s a bunch of stuff in here. And I feel like I’m going to beat a dead horse if I start going into all these different things. It’s going to get boring and repetitive if I keep…
Jim Katen (07:42)
or
you
Yeah, often times, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (08:09)
mentioning these different line items, but there’s one more. just, I have to talk about this one because we had a guest on our podcast. Well, gosh, it must, it was probably a year and a half ago now. Remember Tessa, had Ben, Dr. Ben Fransky. Am I saying his name right? Yes. We had him on to talk about smart home systems and all the different stuff you could do for a smart home. That is now something that the home inspector needs to describe.
Tessa Murry (08:26)
Yes. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (08:39)
We need to describe the smart home systems that are present now. And I mean, I just I think about my own house now. I’m just going to describe some stuff that I have off the top of my head. I’ve got smart window shades. I’ve got a smart garage door opener. I’ve got I’ve got smart speakers. I have a smart security system. I’ve got smart.
Tessa Murry (09:05)
Smart Christmas lights.
Reuben Saltzman (09:08)
Christmas lights. I’ve got smart light switches all over the house. They’re Wi-Fi light switches. I’ve got a smart thermostat. This is off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s a… You know what, Jim? I don’t use the functionality of it, but I do have a smart washer and dryer. They both connect to Wi-Fi. I’ve never used it. I can’t imagine why I would need to, but…
Tessa Murry (09:09)
Thank
Hmm.
Jim Katen (09:21)
No smart fridge.
Tessa Murry (09:24)
I
Reuben Saltzman (09:38)
I have the option to, if I need to, as a home inspector, I would need to describe all of these components, talk about setting somebody up for failure. Not only that, but I think this is all completely useless information. I think it’s onerous. Instead of having to describe, and I didn’t count, but right now we may have to describe maybe 20 different components. And personally, I already feel that
These descriptions are largely worthless. I don’t think anybody cares about these descriptions. Nobody opens the report to find this stuff. So in my company, we, we include it in our reports because it’s required by our standard of practice. But either I put it at the very end of the report or we put it in an area where you got to click on and it’s not really front and center. It’s just kind of hidden because I don’t want to clutter up my reports.
I want things to be clean. want to present my clients with the information that they need. And I have to report all this other stuff to follow my standard of practice, but I just kind of try to hide it because I don’t want to get in in the way of the important information. But now we’re going to have like, instead of 20, maybe we’re going to have 60 of these things that we need to describe. It’s going to add considerable time to
Tessa Murry (10:44)
And that’s all. Have a great day.
Reuben Saltzman (11:06)
my home inspector’s job of writing the reports, it’s going to be more useless information and nobody cares. And so I wrote this long email and I said, look, we got this, we got this, we got this. I detailed all the line items and they changed a few of them that just made absolutely no sense, but a lot of them still remain. And I was on the internal,
kind of hidden ASHI forum and we were chatting about this. And James came back with a much better reasoned response instead of picking it apart line by line. He kind of looked at the bigger picture and James, I was hoping you could share your thoughts on this.
Tessa Murry (11:44)
Thank you.
Jim Katen (11:54)
I agree with everything you’ve said and with what a lot of other people have said as well about all this description and all this detail that’s now being required. But when I look at a change to a document like this, I like to begin by stepping back and looking at it from 30,000 feet. Look at the document and see what fundamentally is changing about it.
Tessa Murry (12:22)
you
Jim Katen (12:25)
And it seems to me like the people who are framing these changes have their hearts in the right place and are trying to get home inspection reports to be more perhaps complete, more.
more comprehensive, but I think that they’re getting stuck in the weeds and they’re not seeing the big picture either. So when you make a change to something like this, it’s easy to jump in and deal with all the individual trees in the forest without stepping back and looking at the entirety of the forest. And in some places, they’re not even dealing with the trees, they’re dealing with the bark.
And when you’re sitting there with a magnifying glass looking at the bark on each tree, you don’t see what changes you’re making to the forest. And one of the things that seems to be falling by the wayside is the overall function of the standard. When you read the rationale behind each change, and the committee was nice enough to provide rationalizations for each and every change that they made.
Tessa Murry (13:14)
Hmm.
Jim Katen (13:40)
It seems like they fall into one of three categories. Actually, I can’t think of anything other than these three categories. The first one was to make the ASHI standards comply with various state standards requirements across the country. And I’m not sure why they want to do that. I think that their idea is that they want ASHI to remain relevant, but that’s not how you become relevant.
That’s the tail wagging the dog. ASHI should be leading the way and states should be following suit. when states began to have a home inspection licensing and writing their own standards, that’s exactly what they did. Lots of the state standards adopted the ASHI standards with minor changes here and there. ASHI is now voluntarily relinquishing that position by trying to conform
Tessa Murry (14:11)
Thank you.
Reuben Saltzman (14:11)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Jim Katen (14:38)
with all of the requirements of all the other states, especially the ones that seem to have really bad standards. The second rationale that I keep seeing over and over again is…
Reuben Saltzman (14:47)
Yeah.
Jim Katen (14:54)
on the advice of our lawyers or the lawyers having reviewed something and these standards are invariably a soup of difficult to understand words that seems designed to obfuscate rather than to clarify. They say it’s there to clarify but it’s so difficult to understand that you can’t really get the point. It’s like they’re trying to write a contract that covers every possible contingency.
Tessa Murry (15:11)
Thank
Mm-hmm.
Jim Katen (15:24)
And the third rationale, which is by far the most common one, is to reduce the risk to home inspectors. And to my way of thinking, this is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. Of course, we shouldn’t be increasing the risk of home inspectors, but the function should be to improve the service that we provide to our customers, the homebuying public.
Reuben Saltzman (15:24)
Yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
Jim Katen (15:51)
One of the things that I have communicated to the committee is that I think that they should walk up to the metaphorical blackboard in the front of their office and write down the words, does this improve the homebuyers experience? Is this providing a service to homebuyers from our members? And look at each change, and if that change doesn’t fulfill that requirement, we shouldn’t make it.
Reuben Saltzman (16:13)
Yep.
Jim Katen (16:21)
We’re in the business of providing a service to customers. We’re not in the business primarily of covering our own butts. Those who have known me for a while know that I have a personal credo that I tend to use when writing my reports. If you cover your client’s butts, your butt will be covered automatically.
Tessa Murry (16:25)
you
Reuben Saltzman (16:30)
Yes.
I may have stolen that from you, Jim.
Jim Katen (16:47)
So that’s fine, steal away. I hope it becomes more widespread. But whoever has been framing the changes to the standard is definitely not doing that. They’re trying hard to cover the home inspector’s butts. And that often is at odds with helping the customer.
Tessa Murry (17:07)
you
Reuben Saltzman (17:11)
Yeah, yeah, so good.
Tessa Murry (17:12)
Wow.
Jim Katen (17:14)
And the one other thing is that I would stress that a good home inspection report, as you described earlier, is clear and concise. It tells the homeowner what they need to know and doesn’t tell them anything more than that. And these standards will make that really hard to do.
I can see where someone might take your approach and take all that useless information that the standards require, put it at the end of the report in two point type or something. Or my favorite, I put it at one section of the report. are things that the state requires me to have in there that I don’t much like. So I put them there. They require it to be on the front page of the report, in fact. But I set the color of the font to white.
Tessa Murry (18:11)
Hmm?
Jim Katen (18:12)
So the state hasn’t caught on yet. Maybe they will now. But it’s there in 12-point type and in bold as they require it.
Reuben Saltzman (18:14)
You’re a gangster.
Hahaha
Tessa Murry (18:24)
you
Wow. You know, I just appreciate, you know, I appreciate your, your insight on all of this, Jim. And I think it is helpful to kind of take a step back and say, what’s driving all these changes. And we’ve got all this pressure from insurance companies these days. Now we’ve got, you know, different States, and their licensing requirements that’s pushing this too. And so it’s just.
Reuben Saltzman (18:29)
They didn’t say anything about font color, did they?
Jim Katen (18:31)
No, they didn’t specify it.
Tessa Murry (18:53)
It really is. It’s like, can we take a step back and say, why are we here? What’s the purpose of this organization? What’s the purpose of this SOP? Who is our client? And regroup because I think already having an SOP that’s several pages long and so many details is hard to, it’s hard if you’re a new inspector and you’re trying to learn all these things and document everything that’s required of you. But it seems like now it’s just going to become even more.
painstakingly detailed on, as you said, things that don’t necessarily help the client. And so I’ve read through so many reports recently doing my, you know, your house coach consulting stuff, where I’ve gotten reports from home buyers in the last few years, and I’ll have to sift through. think I’ve, you know, said this on the podcast before, like 80 pages, 120 pages of just comments that are extremely redundant and pointless. And I’m like,
Reuben Saltzman (19:50)
Blather. Yes.
Tessa Murry (19:51)
Yeah, as a trained home inspector, experienced home inspector, I’m really trying hard to find the important information in the reports. And when it comes down to it after like an hour and a half of skimming through hundreds of pages, it’s like, okay, here’s my five takeaways. Here’s what really matters. And also, there’s a lot of things that they didn’t report on that I want to know.
I feel like as an industry, we’re kind of flailing here and this is just a reflection of kind of the direction we’re going and it feels like we’re getting a little lost.
Jim Katen (20:25)
That’s a good observation. Home inspectors only have so much bandwidth when we’re performing a home inspection and we don’t want it to be taken up with minutiae that’s not important.
Reuben Saltzman (20:37)
Yes. Yes. Well, what? So, you know, I’m I’m not recording this podcast and bringing Jim on to bitch and complain about this. I’m I’m recording this today to have a call to action. If you are a home inspector and you’re a member of ASHI. Know what’s coming down the the the pipe.
Tessa Murry (20:38)
Amen. Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (21:07)
know what’s coming your way and take action. Go online, I will put a link in the show notes, go online and send an email voicing your opinion. Take the time to read this because if these standards do get adopted as they’re written, I don’t know what I’m going to do. It’s either I’m going to remain a member of AStalk I’m gonna…
have to figure out a way to not follow the standard of practice and have my insurance company be okay with it or something else. I don’t know what that would be, but I can just about guarantee you I am not going to be asking my home inspectors to put all this stuff in their report and I’m not going to deliver a report to my clients with all this useful blather. So
I’m asking home inspectors out there if this matters to you, take the time to do something about it. The clock is ticking. The period for commenting is coming to an end. Do you remember what was Jim? it December 12th? December 10th, okay.
Jim Katen (22:18)
December 10th, think. Maybe I’m wrong, but my memory is…
Tessa Murry (22:24)
Well, and I’m just looking at their email right now. says that they’re having the public comment period will end on December 5th. ASHI will also be hosting a virtual town hall on Thursday, December 5th at 7 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Central to answer any questions and concerns. And if you have comments, you can email standards at ashi.org.
Reuben Saltzman (22:46)
Okay. All right. Thank you, Tessa. So the clock is ticking. got about from the date this podcast airs, is this, this podcast is going to air on the 25th. It means you’re going to have 10 days before the comment period ends. So I, I, I implore you, if, if, if this matters to you, take the time to speak up, make your voice heard. Jim, that’s right.
Tessa Murry (23:13)
exercise your democratic rights.
Reuben Saltzman (23:16)
Yeah. Jim, what are your thoughts?
Jim Katen (23:22)
I think that everyone who is an ASHI member should express their opinion about this to the standard committee. And more important, I think that the standards committee should listen to them. I know what it’s like to have worked on a committee. I think they’ve been working on this for over a year. There’s a lot of work behind this. And it’s sometimes hard to do that much work and then listen to constructive criticism and make changes in response to it.
Tessa Murry (23:22)
Thank you.
Yes.
Jim Katen (23:50)
But I’ve got to believe that the guys on this committee are open enough to doing a good job that they’re going to listen to it. And more than anything, I’d like all the people on the committee to be able to step back and look at these standard changes from a distance and make sure that they’re doing what Hashi promises to do for home buyers around the country.
Reuben Saltzman (24:19)
That’s good. That’s good. Thank you, Jim. Well, I think that pretty much wraps up the show. This doesn’t need to be any longer than it needs to be. think we’ve made our point. And like I said, I will put some links in the show notes to make it really easy to find these new standards and give some direction on where you can send feedback. Jim.
Jim Katen (24:22)
Sure.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (24:30)
short and sweet.
Reuben Saltzman (24:46)
Can’t thank you enough for taking the time to join the show and share your well put together thoughts on this matter. Really appreciate it.
Tessa Murry (24:46)
on screen.
Jim Katen (24:53)
My pleasure, thanks for having me.
Reuben Saltzman (24:56)
Absolutely. All right. Tessa, thank you too. Appreciate it. And if anybody has any comments, questions, concerns for the show, please email us. You can find us at podcast at StructureTech.com. We’ll catch you next time. Take care.
Tessa Murry (24:56)
Thanks, Jim.
Good to see you.