To watch a video version of this podcast, click here: https://youtu.be/1qYegm0FXug
In this episode, Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murry are joined by Andrew Harshman of AJF Inspections in Arizona to discuss builder workmanship inspections and the growing demand for detailed inspections of new construction homes. They explore Arizona’s workmanship standards for licensed contractors, how these inspections differ from traditional home inspections, and why homeowners are requesting a closer look at cosmetic and construction defects. Andrew explains how his company structures these inspections, the importance of documenting defects within warranty periods, specialized inspection tools, pricing considerations, builder restrictions, and how inspection companies can create a specialized service around new construction standards.
Here’s the link to Inspector Empire Builder: https://www.iebcoaching.com/events
Takeaways
Builder workmanship inspections are more detailed than traditional home inspections and focus heavily on cosmetic defects and construction standards.
Arizona has workmanship standards for licensed contractors covering areas such as HVAC, electrical, cabinets, concrete, landscaping, and more.
Some defects must be documented within specific periods, including a 10-day window for certain issues, a one-year window for others, and broader two-year warranty coverage.
A separate workmanship report helps distinguish standards-based findings from recommendations typically included in a regular home inspection report.
These inspections can take two to three times longer than traditional inspections because inspectors document many additional details and cosmetic issues.
Common findings include damaged surfaces, stucco issues, landscaping concerns, improperly positioned light switches, tile problems, shower surround gaps, and electrical equipment that is not level, plumb, or true.
Inspectors may use specialized tools such as gap gauges, tile-tapping tools, and levels to identify workmanship issues that might otherwise be overlooked.
Homeowners should understand that builder workmanship inspections are an additional level of service and are not necessarily included in a standard new construction inspection.
Training a dedicated team and using a separate report template can help inspection companies maintain consistency and efficiency.
Builder restrictions may limit what inspectors can inspect before the homeowner takes ownership, so these limitations should be clearly communicated and documented.
The key takeaway: Builder workmanship inspections can provide significant value for new construction homeowners, but inspectors need clear standards, proper training, specialized tools, and a well-defined scope of service.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Welcome to the Show
01:42 Introducing Andrew Harshman of AJF Inspections
02:04 Andrew’s Background and How He Became a Home Inspector
03:47 What Is Launchpad?
05:28 Finding Andrew Harshman Online
05:51 Why Arizona Is Driving the Builder Workmanship Discussion
06:51 Arizona’s Workmanship Standards for Licensed Contractors
08:19 Warranty Periods and Why Documentation Matters
09:23 Blue Tape Inspections vs. Regular Home Inspections
10:31 Creating a Separate Builder Workmanship Inspection Report
11:38 Comparing Arizona’s Standards to Minnesota
12:08 The Role of the Registrar of Contractors
13:27 Types of New Construction and Warranty Inspections
14:53 Pricing Builder Workmanship Inspections
15:24 What Is a Builder Workmanship Inspection?
16:22 Educating Clients About the Additional Service
17:44 Combining New Construction and Warranty Inspections
18:37 Why Homeowners Are Requesting Workmanship Inspections
19:17 Detailed Standards and Nitpicky Inspection Findings
20:43 Do Inspectors Enjoy Doing Builder Workmanship Inspections?
21:04 The Challenges and Benefits of Detailed Inspections
23:07 Building a Specialized Workmanship Inspection Team
24:37 Separate Report Templates for Workmanship Standards
25:36 Why Keeping the Workmanship Report Separate Matters
26:14 Should a Home Inspector Perform the Workmanship Inspection?
27:14 Applying Broad Workmanship Standards to Additional Defects
28:40 Using Specialized Tools to Measure Construction Defects
29:19 How Builders Respond to Detailed Workmanship Inspections
30:10 Electrical Equipment, Levelness, and Acceptable Tolerances
31:20 Why New Construction Homes Aren’t Always Perfect
32:07 Managing Two Inspection Templates During an Inspection
32:37 Training Inspectors to Know the Workmanship Standards
33:26 Documenting Issues That Fall Outside Specific Standards
34:14 How Many Clients Choose the Workmanship Inspection?
35:13 The Value of Clearly Defining Inspection Services
36:20 The Growing Market for Cosmetic Inspection Services
37:06 Creating Workmanship Standards for Different Builders
37:37 Builder Restrictions and Communicating Inspection Limitations
38:56 Specialized Tools and Techniques for Detailed Inspections
40:01 Closing Thoughts and Where to Find Andrew Harshman
41:02 Final Thoughts and Listener Feedback
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 (00:00.97)
Welcome back to the show, Tessa. How you doing today?
Tessa Murry (00:04.88)
Hey, surviving inside, of course, heat index of a hundred and nine today. So not going outside. Yeah. How are you doing?
Reuben (00:10.85)
my goodness. I’m doing well. I can’t complain. It’s we got a mild day, you know, might be 80. It’s a good day. I’m gonna repaint my front door today. My wife and I are gonna do it together. We’re gonna strip it and we’re gonna repaint it. Cause yeah, I don’t know. It that’s up to her. I haven’t asked her yet, but we got when it got real we had repainted it when we moved in, and I don’t think we did a good prep job and
Tessa Murry (00:23.546)
You are. New color?
Tessa Murry (00:32.876)
Ha ha ha
Reuben (00:38.988)
And I mean it was fine for seven years, but then after this last winter, during a really cold spell, I don’t know what happened with the door shrinking or whatever. All this paint peeled off, and so it it looks it it doesn’t look good, it looks really janky walking up to my house, and it has been that way since winter. And finally, my wife and I are like, It’s a nice day, let’s do it. So I’ll let you know how it goes. Yeah, yeah. Well, we’ve got
Tessa Murry (00:39.419)
Yeah.
Andrew Harshman (00:41.711)
Tessa Murry (01:02.406)
Perfect. Very exciting. Very exciting.
Reuben (01:06.774)
A guest on today to continue our discussion of new construction inspections and nitpicky standards and looking at cosmetic defects and all that. and and this is somebody that I have met through IEB, our show sponsor, Inspector Empire Builder. We get conferences and we meet together in person. And I I meet with Josh with
Well, you know what? I I’m not even gonna get into that. Let’s just talk about Andrew. Andrew, how you doing today, sir?
Andrew Harshman (01:42.682)
I’m good. How are you doing?
Reuben (01:44.446)
never better. It’s a good day.
Tessa Murry (01:46.426)
For listeners, this is Andrew Harshman out of Arizona with AJF Inspections. Correct, Andrew?
Andrew Harshman (01:52.124)
That’s correct, yeah.
Reuben (01:53.698)
Yes. Andrew, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? We got we got your name and company, but how long you’ve been doing this and what what got you here today?
Andrew Harshman (02:04.634)
Okay. I’ve been an inspector since October of twenty twenty. It was a COVID job. for a long time I worked in hotels. Actually, well, I wanted to be a youth pastor for most of my life, and I went and I have a bachelors in Christian ministries, and then eventually I got a master of divinity. And all the while I was working in hotels, you know, hospitality-oriented stuff, and never became a full-time youth pastor, volunteer at church and things like that.
But COVID in March 2020 shut all the hotels down. And you know, they thought we’d all go back to work by May. And then they thought, well, maybe after summer, and that’s when they laid everybody off for most hotels in September. And then so what happened was my friend Dylan Bucknovich, who had been a friend of mine for a long time, probably about 15 years, he’s he would been an inspector for a long time, became a realtor, became an inspector again, and
Tessa Murry (02:39.93)
Mm.
Tessa Murry (02:47.035)
Mm.
Andrew Harshman (03:02.768)
Said, why you come work with me? He was working at a company called Dwell Inspect Arizona. And I went and checked it out and thought it was really awesome. And so got my license. And here in Arizona, we have required, it’s a regulated state, so we have different requirements. did all the stuff I needed to do, became an inspector, and after a little while became the service manager at Dwell Inspect Arizona and then launch pad.
Purchased Dwell Inspect, and we merged in with AJF, who’s already a launchpad company. And I’ve been AJF since October of last year.
Reuben (03:42.101)
And for anybody who doesn’t know what launchpad is, can you can you explain that a little?
Andrew Harshman (03:47.889)
Launchpad is a collection of home inspection companies, and there’s a software company, and but basically there is a gentleman who had the idea to how you know, I think all home inspector comp inspector owners want to be like, how do I provide benefits? How do I provide insurance? How do I give my inspectors more than I can ever do? And so the idea was to join companies, you know, kind of like under an umbrella.
So now we have six hundred or so employees we can provide benefits and we have a payroll person and we have IT support and we have paid vacations and holidays and all that stuff that somebody can’t always offer, you know, even a company that has twenty inspectors, even a big home inspection company can’t provide those types of things. And now now we all can.
Tessa Murry (04:37.04)
Yeah.
Reuben (04:40.801)
Yeah, yeah. And and would this be considered private equity?
Tessa Murry (04:41.232)
Wow. That’s awesome.
Andrew Harshman (04:46.564)
I don’t I’m not a hundred percent sure. I don’t think we’re private equity right now, but I think there’s it is involved in that and eventually I think the goal would be to sell the company and things like that to another company, but I don’t know how all that works.
Reuben (04:52.022)
Okay.
Reuben (05:02.839)
Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. So, you know, y you’ve you’ve reached out to me a number of times with like great stories and like some fantastic videos you’ve made. Love love seeing your content. but
Tessa Murry (05:03.354)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (05:13.151)
yeah.
Tessa Murry (05:18.042)
You have the best videos. When I’m on when I’m on Facebook or Instagram, your reels always pop up and they are hilarious, some of them.
Andrew Harshman (05:27.132)
Good. I’m glad.
Reuben (05:28.651)
Yeah, and and just while we’re on that, I mean we’re teasing it, if people wanted to find you online, where would they find you on YouTube or Instagram or wherever you’re posting content?
Andrew Harshman (05:38.652)
Basically just my name Andrew Harshman, H A R S H A N. And you can find me different places if you want, reach out or watch me post videos about home inspections or whatever.
Reuben (05:43.531)
Okay.
Reuben (05:50.572)
Okay, cool. Cool. Thank you. So we we’ve been on this kick on new construction and you know getting into the nitpicky weeds of cosmetic stuff. You’re in Arizona, and I think I think Arizona is much to blame for all of this that we’re dealing with right now. It’s I think
Tessa Murry (05:51.17)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Harshman (05:52.923)
Yeah.
Reuben (06:15.649)
There’s a lot of people creating content and not necessarily in fact, I haven’t seen any of this from you specifically on documenting cosmetic stuff, but I think there’s a lot of it coming out of Arizona that’s shaping the public’s perception of what home inspectors do, or at least changing the public’s perception. And what why is it Arizona?
What is going on in Arizona that’s that’s messing it up for all the rest of us? No, I don’t I don’t mean it exactly that way, but I kind of do. What what’s happening, Andrew?
Tessa Murry (06:45.202)
Okay.
Yeah.
Andrew Harshman (06:51.44)
Yeah, I and I do post new build, you know, I like resale homes and so I’ll post resale stuff, but also I you know, we do new build homes and I’ll post stuff from there. I think the last three or four days I posted new build stuff. But basically, if I had to sum it up, there’s an inspector out here named Cy Porter with Sci-Fi Inspections, and he got really good at doing social media and really good at doing new build homes he locally.
And so he started posting and created a following of all these different things that he’s finding on new builds. And now Arizona’s different than most states. All builders have their type of warranty or the kind of the items that they will fix for homeowners when things pop up. But every builder is going to be different. But in Arizona, we have the what’s it called? The workmanship standards for licensed contractors.
And basically, we have the register of contractors here, and they put out these standards that they hold themselves to all their contractors. And it’s a whole checklist. you can Google it. but basically, you know, from air conditioning to cabinets to concrete to landscaping, they have standards for all of these different things. And there’s different time periods for those, so a lot of things.
Tessa Murry (07:58.259)
And it’s a small trackless on your mobile night.
Andrew Harshman (08:19.068)
you know, fall within a 10 day window. So you want to catch certain things within 10 days, like a window scratch or you know, a cracked toilet or some sort of manufactured surfaces that might be broken. Then they have a lot of the stuff in their standards give you a one year window for getting certain things fixed. And then in general the entire thing’s two years. And there’s also bigger things like bigger structural stuff like that get eight year warranties. But basically it covers two years, but again with some with 10 days and one year.
And so you need to catch those things and document them within those periods for your builder to then fix it. Because the builder can say, it’s been, you know, six months. That window scratch could have happened at any point. But if you have an inspector come in, whether before you take ownership of the home or within your first 10 days, they’ll fix those types of things, or at least they’re supposed to. And so that’s what where these inspections came from.
Tessa Murry (09:14.873)
Hmm. Hmm. So
Reuben (09:15.083)
Okay. All right. And so to document all this, is this just something you do during a home inspection now? Yeah.
Andrew Harshman (09:23.312)
Like a regular home inspection? No. There might so we so we used to and I think a lot of companies out here in Arizona started to kind of do tr trying to. we at Dwell tried to, and for example, people want a blue tape inspection. So while we’re doing our regular inspection, we might be blue taping stuff or pointing out certain things that might be above and beyond, but we really
Tessa Murry (09:37.89)
Come on.
Andrew Harshman (09:51.921)
didn’t have a standard for what we’re looking at or what we’re taping or things like that. And so
Andrew Harshman (10:03.314)
so anyway, and so I just one time Cy followed behind us, and he basically emailed Dwell and said, Hey, you guys can do a better job at this. you know, there’s these standards out here, and you know, he’s trying really hard to educate the public on those things. And you know, we said, Yeah, we can do a better job on those types of inspections. And so we put together the way we want to do them and the way we want to sell them to the public, and we started doing that. So for us, it was
Tessa Murry (10:21.89)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Harshman (10:31.706)
We have our regular home inspection report and we have our report for the builder workmanship inspections. and we separated those so that way when someone wanted that level of service, we would give them a separate report that has kind of the language and the wording from their standards, and we would look for those things and put them in that kind of report. for things that they maybe didn’t have a comment on, we would put in our regular home inspection report. And so
Tessa Murry (10:50.938)
Hmm.
Andrew Harshman (10:59.994)
That’s how we differentiated it, but they take twice as long, sometimes three times as long as a regular home inspection, depending on the size of the home. a 2,000 square foot home might take somebody five to six hours instead of two and a half, you know, or two hours. I did a 2024 home yesterday. It was, you know, a newer home, but it took me about two hours and fifteen minutes. It was two thousand square feet.
If that was a brand new new build it would have taken me probably five hours ’cause I’m taping things and looking at all these other things that I normally wouldn’t look at on a regular home inspection.
Reuben (11:38.508)
Yeah. And can can you get into it a little bit more about why it’s special in Arizona? Because I’m trying to compare to Minnesota. And you know, we’ve got we’ve got standards that builders can follow. Like I had mentioned on another podcast, we got the Builders Association of Minnesota, and they’ve got a set of performance standards that houses are supposed to be built to. But if we find stuff that doesn’t meet the standards, I don’t know that there’s any teeth where people need to fix it. What do you guys have?
Tessa Murry (11:39.512)
Andrew Harshman (11:46.875)
Okay.
Andrew Harshman (12:08.732)
So the registered contractors, I don’t know if you guys have that, I would think you might have something similar, but every contractor in Arizona, whether they’re a HVAC person or electrician, they are registered under with a license under the roc, the registered contractors. And so that’s where these standards come from. And now if you catch something within the first 10 days, like you know, at fifteen feet, if you can see a s window scratch and that’s documented.
within the first 10 days, that builder is required to fix it. Now, if they don’t fix it, you can file a complaint with the register of contractors, and then they’ll either do an investigation, and if they find the investigation proves that they were right, they are required, they would then they tell the builder to fix it. If they won’t fix it, they’ll give them a citation, which they really don’t want a citation on the record. And so homeowners have this, the ROC on their end to be able to make those complaints and
hopefully get things taken care of before that builder gets a citation.
Tessa Murry (13:09.914)
Hmm.
Reuben (13:10.093)
Okay. So you’re spending way more time on these. Can you give me an idea of what you guys are charging for a typical home inspection versus what you’re charging for the home inspection with when do you call it a blue tape inspection? Is that your your official name for it or what?
Tessa Murry (13:17.488)
Awesome.
Andrew Harshman (13:27.792)
We don’t because we you know we’ve gone over names multiple times and we just want people to understand w what we’re calling them. But we we have th three types of inspections. We have what we call the new construction final inspection. That would be like a the builder still owns it or you just purchased it, like it’s still brand new. And then we also do a one year inspection where usually with before the one year mark at ten or eleven months, we’ll come out and do another inspection or
Maybe they have one previously, now they’re doing it again, or maybe they never did a one one at the beginning because their builders sometimes say, you don’t need an inspection. We took care of it. You know, do a one year. Either way, whatever. We’ll go and do that before that one year runs out. so we document, you know, the stuff that’s covered at under the one and two-year warranty. for charging, at first we were charging like double or triple the price. So if a home inspection is $600, we would charge $1,200 or $1,800.
Because we want to make sure that that inspector who lost their second inspection out for the day is paid appropriately, as well as you know, the business loses money. If you can book a home ins a resale home inspection in the morning with a sewer scope and a termite inspection and, you know, whatever else. And then you can also book a resale inspection with those same amount of services. A lot of times you’re you can’t book all those extra services. Sometimes you’re not even doing a termite or a sewer scope because they don’t want one. And so
Tessa Murry (14:43.226)
Mm.
Andrew Harshman (14:53.232)
The company loses money doing those types of things. But we have lowered our prices since it’s not double anymore because honestly we weren’t we were missing out on some of them. And so we’ve reduced the price, but we’ve increased the amount that we pay the inspector on that reduced portion because we still want to make sure everyone’s paid appropriately and that we’re actually having work for everybody and feeling the need when people do call us for these things.
Reuben (15:18.157)
Sure, sure.
Tessa Murry (15:18.548)
Hmm. How how long have you guys been offering this what did you say the name of this inspection was this?
Andrew Harshman (15:24.794)
Okay, so so we called the additional portion the builder workmanship inspection.
Tessa Murry (15:29.638)
Builder workmanship. How how long have you guys been offering it? And and have clients come to you basically just asking for it or have you tried to sell it? And then is there confusion or pushback from the client saying, Well, I thought this just was what you guys offered when you inspect a new construction house? Why do I have to why I have to pay you an additional, you know, twelve hundred dollars to a a normal inspection?
Andrew Harshman (15:52.145)
So we started at Dwell Inspect. I can’t speak for AJF’s history on when they started doing them, but I think it was last year in 2025. probably around the beginning of 2025. I feel that man, I it’s hard to remember. I don’t know if we started doing them at the beginning of 2024 or 2025 with Dwell, but probably 2025. I’m not 100%. But
Tessa Murry (16:15.098)
Mm.
Andrew Harshman (16:22.074)
Yeah, so it hasn’t been very long since, you know, again, we were always saying, Yeah, we’ll do a new build inspection and kind of throw up extra tape and stuff like that, comment comment on more cosmetic items, but really weren’t holding ourselves to any standards. And so when people call in and they say, Well, why are you so much expensive, more expensive than this guy who’s doing the same thing, we we ask, are they really doing the same thing? You know, are why are they doing all these things? So it’s a lot of education for our team that’s you know on the phone answering these phone calls.
Tessa Murry (16:45.628)
Yeah.
Andrew Harshman (16:52.194)
trying to provide some sort of education on, hey, we’re doing above and beyond, and this is why it takes so long, and this is why it’s more a more expensive inspection, because this is the thing that you’re looking for. We will still do an inspection if they don’t want that. And we just kind of explain that they know we kind of we want them to know what they’re getting or not getting. So we give them the information to say, do you want this or do you want this or or both, you know, and so we explain it to them and let them choose.
Tessa Murry (17:12.87)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (17:17.873)
Yeah.
Andrew Harshman (17:20.838)
But yeah, it’s been a lot of education for for us as inspectors, for our team who’s kind of selling these inspections, and also for our clients who don’t know the difference between a regular s inspection and this additional service.
Reuben (17:35.905)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (17:36.486)
Hm. So is there a like a discount if they do the the regular home inspection and one of these workmanship ones together?
Andrew Harshman (17:44.679)
I think they get some sort of discount, you know, especially like when you do like a pre-drywall and you know, you know, a f new construction final inspection and then a w a warranty inspection or a one year inspection. You know, there’s things you can re-look at, you know, did you can look at the same stuff and did they fix the things from the previous? I’ve done a couple of those recently and you know, people are frustrated because they they pay for these inspections and they give it to the builder, but the builder doesn’t fix anything and then they come back a year later and like,
Tessa Murry (18:03.122)
I don’t know.
Andrew Harshman (18:14.788)
I thought they fixed all this stuff. I’m like, no, it’s not fixed.
Tessa Murry (18:18.512)
Wow. Wow. So people have been have been kind of wanting these services and you think part of it is just social media landscape and so they’re kind of coming to you and you don’t really have to sell it or push it. They’re like, I I want this. The only education piece is helping them understand it’s not part of the normal inspection.
Reuben (18:21.366)
Yeah.
Andrew Harshman (18:37.466)
Yeah, people are wanting them. Like I said, they’re watching Cy Porter. There’s another friend of mine out here named Sean Doherty with a good look home inspections, and he has really good videos and he’s always posting, you know, what he’s doing. And I mean, I watch their videos every day because I’m always seeing different stuff and learning. And I talked to Sean, I’m like, hey, what do you do on this? And I talked to Dylan Waneki. that’s Cy’s preferred partner that he sends his overflow inspections to at what’s it called?
tech property inspections and so I’ll call Dylan or text him and say, what do you do? So th the the for example, there’s a standard in here that says on gyps gypsum wallboard, it tells you where the
Was it gypsum wallboard? No. I don’t know. I forget which section it is it, but it’s something saying where the where the light switch has to be. And basically it says light switches should not be located behind doors. but then the acceptable tolerance is the idea that it’s not just that it shouldn’t be behind doors, but then it says it should be located on the site opposite the hinges. And so, you know, I I s said to Sean, I said, What do you do? Do you
It’s not necessarily behind the door, but it’s on the same side as the hinge. He’s like, I call it out. I talked to Dylan, he’s like, I don’t call it out unless it’s actually behind the door. I’m like, Okay, well, I’m gonna call it out if it’s on the same side as the hinge.
Tessa Murry (20:03.654)
my gosh. my gosh.
Andrew Harshman (20:05.348)
Like, you you walk into a room and you want to open the turn the light off with the other hand. And so I’m looking for those things. What side does the light switch on compared to the hinge? And sometimes you don’t have any space to put it on the other side. I’m like, I don’t really care. Maybe they turn the door around, put the hinge on the other side, but that would look stupid. So it’s like, fix it, don’t fix it. Like, I don’t know what they want them to do with it, or if they’ll, you know, as the homeowner, are you gonna actually push back and make them put it on the other side? Maybe.
Reuben (20:06.965)
Tessa Murry (20:08.486)
So wow.
Andrew Harshman (20:34.072)
Maybe you’re not going to, maybe you’re just going to take the information and like again, it’s up to you as the homeowner still to decide what you want to do with that information.
Reuben (20:42.123)
Yeah, yeah.
Tessa Murry (20:43.186)
Do you find that a lot of your inspectors like doing these or do they dread them? Because for me personally, I think I would dread doing one of these.
Reuben (20:50.613)
I I would not enjoy this.
Andrew Harshman (20:53.068)
it just depends. There’s positives positive positives and negatives. I think part of the negative is that
Tessa Murry (20:53.091)
Me neither.
Andrew Harshman (21:04.666)
It’s boring. I feel they’re boring. You’re looking at the same stuff. and it you know, if you’re on the exterior of a home and let’s say, you know, you’re doing it in right now where it was like 90 degrees today, it’s actually cooler day, but it’s kind of humid. You might be outside for two hours, maybe a little bit more than that, looking at stucco cracks. And then you’re on the roof, you know, and if you know, maybe looking at more stucco on the side of the home.
And you’re out in the you know looking for rocks that are too thin. If you can see dirt below the landscaping rocks, that’s a call out because they didn’t put in put enough rocks down. And so you’re looking at all these little things, but you’re outside a lot longer. you know, when you’re inside, you’re you know, it’s you just gotta be super focused on this stuff. And it you sometimes feel like you’re not doing the client a service. Like, what am I doing? but I did take a poll of you know a lot of different clients, and they said, No, this was really helpful.
Tessa Murry (21:41.596)
My gosh. Wow.
Andrew Harshman (22:01.702)
And that was helpful for our guys or our inspectors to say, okay, we really are doing something cool. but the positives are a lot of times you have you only have one drive. So if it’s your only inspection for the day, you don’t have that middle inspection. You don’t have two review times, you only have one review time. So that cuts about an hour as well. So it takes about two hours out of your day and kind of gets rid of those because you’re only at one place. And so
You go to one inspection and then you go home at the end of the day. And if you get really good and faster at them, you can take what might be a five or six, seven hour inspection and cut it down shorter. So now you still are going home earlier. and you know, some guys are just kind of like that new build aspect. One negative is it’s always outskirts. And so, you know, Phoenix is very large. You can go from one end of the city to the other and be like an hour and you know, fifteen minutes.
Tessa Murry (22:42.394)
Mm.
Reuben (22:50.785)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (22:55.578)
Mm.
Andrew Harshman (22:59.47)
And so depending on where you live, you know, that’s all all the new constructions on the outsides. And so they can you can have farther drives.
Reuben (23:07.095)
Sure, sure. That makes sense. Huh. And so if when you guys first started doing these, and I mean well, just even today, I gotta assume that everybody who’s doing these is it everybody in your company that does it, or are there just some people? Okay. So you gotta select group.
Tessa Murry (23:07.852)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Harshman (23:21.904)
No.
At Dwell Inspector was we had five inspectors at Dwell Inspector six and we were all doing them and all trained on them. But at AJF we have thirty inspectors and so we have a team of about
10 people that can do them. But even within that team of 10, ideally I would love it for us to have one or two or three guys who really want to do them. And we gave them all to those guys. But sometimes that’s just difficult because they might be booked or requested for other things. And so we have more people that can do them. But I I would love just to have like a dedicated team. Like we have certain guys that only do pre-drywall because they know how to do it really well.
So I would love to have certain guys that only did these in as you know, our market in this kind of in inspection expanded, we’d be able to add more people to that team. But we’ll see how that goes.
Reuben (24:18.273)
Now okay, I I’ve got more questions, but hold on. first one thing at a time, finish this chain of thought here. So you’ve got people who specialize in this. I gotta assume that the people doing these are very familiar with that book you held up with with these construction standards, and I gotta assume that you have a separate report template just for these types of inspections. Yes.
Tessa Murry (24:18.566)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (24:22.874)
One of them.
Tessa Murry (24:36.723)
Yeah.
Andrew Harshman (24:37.094)
Yeah, right here.
Andrew Harshman (24:47.686)
We kind of do yes. So we have our regular home inspection report and then we have this this one. And we we we we use a separate template for this. we don’t have a separate template with those added into it.
Reuben (24:56.406)
Okay.
Reuben (25:00.098)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben (25:03.713)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s just two separate reports. Good. Okay.
Andrew Harshman (25:06.928)
Correct. We thought about that, but you know, you know that you’d have to maintain two different templates. If if we added all this stuff to our regular template, it would be difficult because every time, like right now we’re doing some revisions in our template. So for doing that, then I have to go revise the other template as well. So and and I think it helps people with a visual understanding to most inspectors combine them into one and you know, they say this was this is a register contractor.
Tessa Murry (25:07.154)
Okay.
Reuben (25:24.493)
Of course.
Tessa Murry (25:25.882)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Harshman (25:36.131)
issue. But I like the separateness of it because it basically says we have pictures with their standards and their words. And we don’t edit their words. We don’t add to this template. We don’t delete from it. We just add photos. And so it’s like if we’re wrong, then we’re wrong. And you know, maybe your contractor won’t repair it. But if we’re right, they have to fix it because this is their wording. And so it I feel it gives them a little bit more like, you know, hey, we’re charging extra
Reuben (25:59.65)
Yeah, yeah.
Tessa Murry (26:00.825)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Harshman (26:05.2)
Here’s a separate report. And if you know, your builder has to do everything in this as long as the inspector was right on their call outs.
Reuben (26:14.391)
Well, and I I I’m just thinking here, I mean, if we were gonna start doing this at my company, I feel like I’d wanna pick one or two people and and train them on this and have them do it. But then I thought, no, take a step back. Don’t even use a home inspector for this. You just take somebody with a really nitpicky eye.
Why do you even need to be a home inspector when you’re primarily looking at cosmetic defects?
Tessa Murry (26:44.945)
Mm.
Andrew Harshman (26:45.126)
You don’t have any licensing out there, so it doesn’t matter for you guys. we can’t do that here because we could we don’t sell them as a separate thing. We don’t sell BW like Builder Workmanship or home inspection. We sell home inspection plus, but you can’t get the other one separate because there’s so many things that you would miss. Like there’s no comments in here for like, you know, a water heater or a garage door. They don’t there’s no topics in here. There’s like
Reuben (26:48.523)
Yeah, yeah.
Tessa Murry (26:50.298)
I know.
Tessa Murry (27:00.619)
Okay.
Reuben (27:02.187)
Okay.
Andrew Harshman (27:14.768)
Broad topics that cover things like that, like maybe plumbing or weather stripping or different things in general. But there’s also a rule in here, like in their intro, that’s basically just says it’s rule four-nine-one eight workmanship standards. It says a contractor shall perform all work in a professional workmanlike manner. basically, all work should be done with applicable, you know, the correct codes and industry standards. And
So there’s a rule that kind of just says it’s a broad rule saying everything that a builder does should be within code and within standards, manufacturer standards, things like that, installation instruction standards. And so while there may not be a rule on how to install a shower surround in in their standards, I’m still gonna call that in the home inspection report and say, hey, the shower surround was installed wrong. And you know, here’s the manufacturer installation instructions.
For example, if you you’ve all seen those three piece or four, you know, if you have the tub and then three sh three sides and they all snap together. Well, if there’s gaps bel be under under them that are greater than one thirty second second of an inch, so we have these little like cool blocks, we have these little tools. And so this one is one sixteenth of an inch. So if I could fit that in there, then it’s wrong. And they’re supposed to rip it out.
Reuben (28:40.593)
my
Tessa Murry (28:41.328)
my gosh. Ruben, you need to add this these spacers to your toolkit. I can see your your excitement right now.
Andrew Harshman (28:46.128)
Actually we some blue ones, some blue AGF ones, so
Reuben (28:49.965)
my goodness.
Tessa Murry (28:52.275)
my goodness.
Andrew Harshman (28:52.346)
Right here, this one’s three sixteenths of an inch. If I could fit that in between, like you know when you do a driveway or walkway with pavers interlocking pavers? If I can fit this in between any of them, they’re supposed to rip it all out and make it tighter.
Tessa Murry (29:03.94)
my gosh.
Reuben (29:06.977)
The builders have to love you. Ha we have the same thought. Seriously, what what do the builders what do the builders say about this?
Tessa Murry (29:07.115)
But the builders hate you.
Andrew Harshman (29:09.316)
I know.
Andrew Harshman (29:19.504)
They understand that there’s a market here in town for it. And so they understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it because people want these things. And usually the you know, I don’t get much pushback from the builders because they’re not there being frustrated with me. but I have seen, you know, videos where there’s builders that are really upset. I just haven’t encountered any that personally.
Tessa Murry (29:29.225)
yeah.
Reuben (29:42.36)
Yeah, I t Tessa, we talked before the show about how this this kind of hit a nerve. We’ve got a lot of emails from other home inspectors and I’ll I’ll read on another one, but one that I remember, one story was he he was he he was on the complaint board or something for home inspectors, and the home inspector had had reported on the doorbell was not perfectly plum and he had a level held up to the doorbell button and it was like a little bit
Tessa Murry (30:10.599)
Yeah.
Reuben (30:11.709)
off a bubble and I just I mean, I dropped my jaw. I just went, What? Are you kidding me? yeah.
Tessa Murry (30:17.052)
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Harshman (30:20.87)
There’s a rule in here that says, it’s it’s in the electrical where the switches shouldn’t be behind the doors. Basically says electrical equipment, not level, plum, and true. There’s no acceptable tolerance, and the contractor should make necessary repairs. So what does that mean, electrical equipment? Like anything electrical? Receptacles? Doorbells? Yeah.
Tessa Murry (30:42.577)
my goodness.
Reuben (30:43.059)
Well, yeah, that’s electrical. wow.
Tessa Murry (30:47.73)
I think I would move states if I was a builder to one that didn’t have one of these workmanship standards. I mean, it’s hard enough finding, you know, the labor these days, but let alone labor that can do this type of quality work. I mean, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have it. It’s nice that there’s regulations and people are asking for it and it’s being upheld and and you know, and everything and and but it’s it and it’s being met, I guess. That’s another big thing. I can’t believe builders are able to
build houses and meet these standards and, you know, pass these inspections. It’s impressive. They’re
Andrew Harshman (31:20.4)
What they’re not meeting the standards is the hard thing. That’s like, you know, you watch some of the my friend, you know, some of these videos and they’re like, I’ve never seen a perfect house. I’ve never seen stucco done correctly ever. I’ve never seen a house perfect. You know, I have Sean, my friend, he’s always saying, But it passed city inspection. He points to like the city inspection in the electrical panel. He’s like, Look at these broken trusses, but it passed the city inspection, you know, and just on and on.
Tessa Murry (31:47.567)
Wow. Well, so going back to the okay, so you guys don’t offer just the workmanship standards inspection. They ha that has to be an add on to the standard basic inspection. So if they’re they’re doing both, then I’m assuming the inspector is going through the house and are they doing them both at the same time and going between templates or are they completing one and then going through and doing the other?
Andrew Harshman (32:07.686)
They’re going between templates similar where you might see a sewer scope and a home inspection report on you know your on Spectora or your software. It’s very easy to switch. You just have to push the home button, it jumps you back to like the templates, and you just jump into the other one. So once you get good at it, you said, you know, having our inspectors learn this stuff. I just, you know, we’ve all spent time talking about these things. We have a separate Google chat that we just talk about, new build stuff. you know, I just remind them.
Tessa Murry (32:23.729)
Okay.
Andrew Harshman (32:37.414)
You know, e every you know, every night before you do one, reread that thing. Just skim it takes about thirty minutes to read through that if you skip the the really big pool and all the roof sections, which you don’t really need those that much. But it it’s a very quick read. Th this is only about I think it’s like seven that’s like fifty pages or so.
Tessa Murry (32:56.028)
put me right to sleep. Sounds like a great idea, Andrew.
Reuben (32:57.633)
Yeah.
Andrew Harshman (32:59.14)
It’s but it just it just puts that in their mind, be like, because like I said, we’re jumping back and forth between templates and you know, we have tile roofs out here, and here’s an example. They have comments in there for chip tiles and crack tiles and things like that. But one thing we always see is the mortar caps, those little cement balls in between the transitions on the tile roofs. Those aren’t supposed to be cracked either, but they don’t have a comment for that. So we put those in our regular home inspection report.
Tessa Murry (33:05.458)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (33:10.278)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (33:26.673)
my gosh.
Andrew Harshman (33:26.748)
So anything we can fit into that report or into that template, we will. So if it’s a little broad, we’ll still put it in there. electrical equipment malfunctioning. Well, we’ll sh put it in the in the builder workmanship report because the idea is the builder should fix these things. I don’t want the builder thinking that’s just a home inspection report. Home home inspectors make recommendations all day long. They don’t know what they’re talking about. So we try to put it in that report as much as possible.
Reuben (33:57.046)
Okay. Here’s what you can do, Andrew. I got an idea for you. You take those standards and you do an an audiobook version of them for your inspectors. And then they can listen at 2x speed on their drive to every inspection.
Tessa Murry (33:57.277)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (34:14.148)
Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Record yourself reading it. But you know, I’m curious, what percentage of of of these new construction inspections you sell people choose to do this add-on workmanship, you know, inspection? Are we talking like half of people clients decide to add them? Really? Wow.
Andrew Harshman (34:14.448)
That would be so bad.
Reuben (34:16.539)
yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Harshman (34:31.408)
Yeah, about half. And every every home under two years old that is being sold, our office recommends they they ask them if they want it. Because we want we don’t want people thinking that’s just what we do as part of our inspection that we’re looking at walls not ninety degrees. You know, seventy percent of walls are not ninety degrees. they’re always a little bit off. I put my level, my trying, you know, up to every wall and be like, nope, not nine, whatever. But we want people to understand.
Hey, do you want this level of service or do you want this type of inspection? And so we explain them to the difference. We might send them an email if they want more information on it and we let them choose, yes, I want it or no, I don’t want it. It’s about half.
Reuben (35:13.419)
Hmm. Yeah. Well, and and I mean, I th there’s a lot of wisdom in that because as soon as we started offering sewer inspections, we never got another complaint about a problem with the sewer. Because people then understood, that’s not part of a home inspection, but I could have asked for it. Same thing with mold. Soon as we started adding on mold, we we didn’t get complaints about it. It’s like, all right, here’s the solution.
Tessa Murry (35:13.478)
Wow. Wow.
Tessa Murry (35:33.101)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben (35:41.458)
we just start offering the same thing. I mean, I like the name of blue tape inspection, something like that. We’ll charge five thousand dollars for it. just pray that nobody ever asks for it and because I don’t want to do but people will get the message. Like, that’s not what we’re doing. Yeah, I’m I mean I’m saying it tongue in cheek, but
Tessa Murry (35:50.392)
Yeah.
Andrew Harshman (36:02.384)
Yeah, and it’s hard. You know, like you said, peop you know, I I don’t know if it was
your podcast with Eric but you wherever it came from where you know it’s pe peop people wanting the cosmetic stuff done and you compare different reports to I think you did like a what’s it called when you reviewed some other inspector and you p you paid them to go out inspect and you compared reports and they had all this cosmetic stuff. And but really people want those things because that that’s what they’re seeing on the internet. And there’s a market for it. It’s just do you really want to do them and what standards are you going to do them by? And
Reuben (36:20.781)
Yeah, we do a secret shop. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (36:38.767)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben (36:41.153)
Okay. All right. Well this th this this helps me, gives me a better understanding of what’s going on in Arizona.
Tessa Murry (36:41.681)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (36:49.71)
Yeah, no kidding. Very informative. Yeah, I think it I I think a lot of the answers just depend on what state you’re in and what clientele you’re trying to serve. if you have the ability to expand into this kind of new market, I guess, as a company or want to. Yeah.
Andrew Harshman (37:06.992)
Yeah, I have a friend yesterday, my friend who actually brought me into this business and he I I put up a story saying, Look, the green the piece of green tape that was here a year ago is still up and the builder didn’t fix the crack in the the paver, the exterior paver. And he sends me a message, he’s like, Yeah, I just I’m gonna start doing them eventually, but right now, you know, until he gets another inspector on his team, he just doesn’t really have, you know, the
Capacity to do these things. But like you said, you know, maybe you have one or two inspectors learn how to do them. You pick some sort of standards, you say, this is how we’re going to inspect, these are our standards. And then you can sell it as an option to people who want that weather, you know, maybe it’s on newer construction. You maybe you compile a bunch of, you know, D.R. Horton and Taylor Morrison, all these different builders and their their standards, and put in Chat GPT and say, make one big standard out of this. And then spits it back and
Tessa Murry (37:37.788)
Yeah.
Andrew Harshman (38:05.668)
It says here, and then you your inspector inspects to that and you can give that standard to the people you’re selling this thing to. And you can put tape up as long as the builder allows you to. You know, there’s a lot of restrictions. The builder says, No, you can’t put up tape. No, you can’t walk on the roof. No, you can’t go in the attic. No, you can’t go in the electrical panel. So we ask all of those questions to every builder so that way we also re- relay that information to the client saying, just so you know, these were the restrictions the builder gave us, so we can’t do these things.
we can always do that after they own the home, but not while the builder still owns it. So we put down the report, builder restrictions were these and these and these things. so that way everyone’s aware.
Tessa Murry (38:46.208)
Reuben (38:48.887)
Yeah. this is such a different animal. Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (38:52.142)
It really is. Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben (38:56.525)
All right. Well Tess, anything else we should have covered? Anything I forgot? Or Andrew, anything I should have asked you and I didn’t?
Andrew Harshman (38:56.784)
That’s that’s good.
Tessa Murry (39:01.592)
Yeah, Andrew, it was yeah, anything we missed that you want to share?
Andrew Harshman (39:05.444)
No, I mean get you w you you get a whole cool new set of tools. You get these blocks, we have these tile tapper things. We it’s like a it’s like a pole that extends like, you know, five or six feet, has a metal ball on the end, and we run over every tile with it, listening for noises and for like to make sure the tiles are set correctly. And if they’re not, it’ll have a different sound and you know that tile’s hollow. Checking the lips on the tiles, making sure they’re not, I think it’s
Reuben (39:29.013)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (39:29.412)
my gosh.
Andrew Harshman (39:34.832)
I think it’s one sixteenth or three thirty seconds of an inch and you know, making sure that the tiles are, you know, level to each other and don’t have big lips and things like that. It’s real detailed.
Reuben (39:43.991)
Goodness. my goodness. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (39:45.487)
my goodness. Wow. Wow. It’s blowing my mind.
Andrew Harshman (39:49.936)
You have to do one with us next time you come down to Arizona, Ruben. You have to come do one of these inspections.
Reuben (39:50.005)
All right. Yep.
Tessa Murry (39:53.374)
Okay.
Reuben (39:54.157)
yeah, I’ll have to have some extra coffee.
Tessa Murry (39:59.558)
Yes.
Reuben (40:01.229)
All right. Well, Andrew, this is this has been very enlightening. And like you said, if people want to find you, they know where to find you. You type in Andrew Harshman on any of your favorite places to go. But for the company, where would they reach the company? What’s your website?
Andrew Harshman (40:17.154)
AJF Inspections. I I don’t know if it’s AJF Inspections.com. Yeah, it is. Or my email is aharshman at AJF Inspections dot com. Yeah, if you have any questions.
Reuben (40:28.461)
Okay. Cool. All right. Well, thank you so much for the for your time. Thanks for coming on the show. I was looking forward to this.
Tessa Murry (40:31.332)
Okay.
Yeah. It’s been a pleasure having you on, Andrew. Thanks for thanks for coming on and you’re one of our longtime listeners, aren’t you, Andrew?
Andrew Harshman (40:35.29)
Yeah, appreciate you guys. Yeah. It was nice talking to you both. I did, yeah, yeah. When you know, like I said, I started in October of twenty twenty and pretty soon after that started listening to podcasts and you were one of them. And I listened to all your past episodes from before that and have just stayed up to date. So yeah.
Reuben (40:57.773)
Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.
Tessa Murry (40:59.42)
Awesome. It’s been great having you on.
Andrew Harshman (41:00.336)
Yeah, appreciate you guys. Thank you so much.
Reuben (41:02.359)
All right, and for the listeners, other home inspectors out there, anybody out there, if you got thoughts on this, I I’d love to hear from you. You can email us. It’s podcast at structure tech dot com and we will catch you next time. Take care.
Tessa Murry (41:17.983)
Yeah.