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  • AI Is Starting to Say What We Can’t

    jboni21

    By jboni21

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    Every inspector knows the rule: Don’t give repair estimates.

    It’s there to protect us — keep the report factual, not financial. But after two decades in this business, I’m starting to wonder if that same rule is also what’s boxing us in.

    Clients still expect numbers. Agents still push for “rough ideas.” And when we stay silent, they go looking elsewhere — contractors, Google, TikTok, whoever will talk. Meanwhile, we’re left looking like we’re hiding something.

    Now, new AI tools are showing up that analyze inspection reports and generate local cost ranges automatically. No inspector input, no opinions, no bias — just data.

    It’s doing the one thing we’ve been told not to do for twenty years: talk about money.

    That should make us stop and think — not because it’s replacing us, but because it’s saying out loud what the market’s been begging us to say all along.

    What do you think? Are we protecting our professionalism, or just protecting a rule that stopped protecting us a long time ago?

    — Jason Boni
    Guardian Home Inspection, Pittsburgh PA
    21 years in the field

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    Mercado_Robert

    Mercado_Robert 0

    Posted

    Hello Jason.

     

    I was thinking about the same topic couple days ago.

    So far I have come to the conclusion that there is couple of ways we could go about it and so far it is better to stay off and distant as much as we can if possible.

    Here is my experience:

    A techy customer got his report and put it into one of those services and He got numbers in 3 ranges: low , mid and high. He even called couple of contractors to compare prices and said that AI was off for couple hundred dollars.

    His deal felt thru because the sellers did not accept his repair request, his numbers were to high even in the low range. As for realtors I would not mind too much about them , trying to get numbers without killing the deal for themselves… We all know the low balls they try to pull off when they know the house committed suicide by itself.

    Another customer did the same thing after the repair request and negotiations and all that [ and repairs performed by Joe hold my beer ] , and He was short for a couple thousands on a defect that needed more repairs that the offered by sellers…

    Try to copy and paste a random summary of an inspection you have performed and ask google Gemini to give you an explanation followed by numbers and check in your local market if the numbers are off or not…

    I tried one summary and I got the impression that google numbers were about right; but I would not offer that option to a client , it is better that they do their own research; that way we are not the ones in the middle trying to inflate their expectations.    



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