hausdok

Well, There, that just proves my theory; he's got an O' at the front of his name too. O'Reilly, O'Hornet, O'Handley - all bloviators extraordinaire! OT - OF!!! M.

Well, I've been doing that. I thought I might reformat it and upload one of these alternative systems on it just to see what all the chatter is about. OT - OF!!! M.

[:-yuck]

CHICAGO, February 5, 2008 SIRVA, Inc. (SIRV.PK), a global relocation services provider, today announced that it reached an agreement with its lenders to restructure its senior secured debt through a voluntary, pre-packaged Chapter 11 reorganization, which will allow it to finalize the restructuring of its debt while continuing to operate its business and serve its customers. SIRVA’s operations outside of the U.S. are not part of the Chapter 11 filing. SIRVA, Inc. is a leading provider of relocation solutions to a well-established and diverse customer base around the world. The Company handles all aspects of relocation, including home purchase and home sale services, household goods moving, mortgage services and home closing and settlement services, including home inspections. SIRVA conducts more than 300,000 relocations per year, transferring corporate and government employees along with individual consumers. SIRVA's well-recognized brands include Allied, Allied International, Allied Pickfords, Allied Special Products, DJK Residential, Global, northAmerican, northAmerican International, Pickfords, SIRVA Mortgage, SIRVA Relocation and SIRVA Settlement. SIRVA said it is taking this action to free up its operations from a heavy debt service burden and to strengthen its balance sheet so that it is better positioned to weather the continuing weak U.S. housing market. The restructuring is embodied in a plan of reorganization which received overwhelming support from the Company’s lenders. The plan will reduce SIRVA’s outstanding bank debt by approximately $200 million and annual cash interest expense by approximately $54 million. “SIRVA undertook a comprehensive strategic review to evaluate all the options for restructuring our balance sheet and, after careful consideration, determined that a prepackaged Chapter 11 filing provided the most efficient way forward for the Company,â€

In the same vein - it appears that with their recent mandatory HIPS (Home Information Packs) that alphabet soup has now landed in the UK. Please welcome, tada! NARHI! Click here!

This is an interesting case. A builder constructed a home and sold it. That home was subsequently sold, and then resold, and then a buyer discovers mold and sued the builder, because an investigation by an inspector determined that it was shoddily built. The builder claimed immunity because his warranty only extended to the original owners. The Iowa supreme court sided with the homeowner and the case is now headed to trial. Guess we just never know, do we? To read the entire article, click here.

Where is that malefactor? I'll have his ass on a bus to Timbuktu by tomorrow! [}] OT - OF!!! M.

Knock, knock, Earth to Chris! Earth to Chris! Chris, I love ya, Guy, but I don't think you're thinking this through very carefully. First, you have to feel around first before you put your weight on anything in an attic - that's just the way it is. I prefer doing it on hands and knees. That way, using my hands I'm better able to tell what I'm going to be placing me weight on. Yeah, I get a little bit of insulation on me, but it's nothing that the vacuum can't handle when I climb down - besides, by distributing my weight over 4 points instead of one, there's less likelihood that something that's structurally weak is going to collapse beneath me. Being a rather, uh, er, "stout" fellow, I have to pay attention to that. Damage the insulation? I could understand that if we're talking about foamed-in-place stuff but not when we're talking about batts or the typical blown-in stuff. Just back out carefully and fluff the stuff up and smooth it out again. Sure, it takes longer than the actual attic inspection, but you don't miss stuff that way. I couldn't care less if a seller wants to blame me for insulation that's unevenly distributed; the absurdity of such an accusation will be pretty obvious to everyone involved - including the seller, once it's uttered. There's usually plenty of evidence up there to show that it was the guy who installed the cable, the alarm system, the bath fan, etc., or it was never done right in the first place. I know that I'll redistribute and re-loft the areas I walk through, so I'm not reporting those areas as being unevenly distributed anyway. If sellers ever told me that they didn't want me to disturb the insulation in an attic, I'd ask them how they expect their own inspector to inspect the home that they'll be buying when they move out of the one they're selling. If the seller insisted on remaining a peabrain, I'd tell the buyer that the entire attic and everything in it, including the framing and the underside of the roof, wiring, ventilation, etc., was excluded from the inspection because the seller had just made it inaccessible. No skin off my nose - it's just less for me to include in my report - I'll still charge the same amount and, as far as I'm concerned, will be freed of any liability for any attic issues or roof issues that were left undiscovered because it was inaccessible. If you're stepping on a truss web caused the ceiling to pop off you can be sure that it has nothing to do with you stepping on the truss web - the damned thing wasn't secured properly in the first place or there's something up with that truss web (You said "joist" but I think you meant truss web - no?). If it isn't you that causes it to pop off, it'll be the cable guy, or the..... Let's get serious here; all manner of folks must be able to get in and out of the attic - alarm installers, pest guys, cable guys, electricians, sometimes even plumbers when you've got slabs or PEX, the homeowner when they occasionally check their attic out (You do tell them to occasionally check conditions in their attic and crawlspaces, no?). It's up to the folks that move through an attic to redistribute the stuff when they back out. I just don't understand how anyone can not inspect an attic because they don't want to disturb blown-in insulation when disturbing it is going to be a simple fact of life sooner or later during the life of a home. Hell, builders know that - I've done hundreds, maybe even thousands of new home inspections, and I've never had a builder complain that I messed up the insulation in an attic by walking through the attic. They know I have to look at stuff and they know there's no way to do it without disturbing the insulation - unless one is Chris Angel, of course. What do you do when there's an L-shaped attic and the hatch is at one end of one leg of the L? Disclaim everything over that other wing? What happens if the buyer climbs up in there after he's bought, finds $10,000 dollars worth of damage or uncompleted work? I can understand it if the seller has made it impossible, as in the example above, but if the seller hadn't objected it's my opinion that you could get sued? Are you really going to sit there in front of a judge and say, "I couldn't inspect the area over that wing because I didn't want to disturb the blown-in insulation." You gotta know that the other side will be prepared to make the argument that as an "expert" you should be able to do so without ruining the insulation, since the cable guy, the alarm guys, the electricians,...... ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike P.S. Wow, just posted this and saw how long it is. Jeez, the ability to type fast can be a curse sometimes. It makes it look like I'm a windbag. Oh,wait a minute, I forgot - I AM!

Hi Les, I'm not sure how many of these were meant for me - only one has my name on it - but, Except for my client, a seller, I've never had to answer any questions on any of these I've done. I don't talk to buyers, I tell the seller that my report has answered the necessary questions. If they have additional questions, he'll have to answer them because the report is done for him - not them. I don't worry about a dummy coming in behind me. If he finds that I screwed up, I deserve whatever the consequences are. I worry more a competent guy coming in behind me and finding that I screwed up. That will kind of sting and it will mean that I'm getting complacent. So far, neither scenario has occurred. Yes, it's been my experience that the average guy will distrust the seller's inspector and get his/her own inspection. Like Gary said, it's twice the revenue for the inspection business, regardless. Hell no! I fully expect that they're going to say that they've had the place pre-inspected by Mike O'Handley of Your Inspector LLC., and I fully expect that the buyer won't trust them (Do any of us really trust real estate folks. Those of us that aren't married to them, that is.) When they do, and the transaction doesn't stall due to a lot of undiscovered crap that ambushes the seller, the buyer will probably say to himself, "Crap, I should have hired O'Handley to do a pre-offer inspection for me," and the agent on the other side is going to say, "Man, that went pretty smoothly. What a kewl idea!" Do I do a lot of these? Nope - probably only about a couple of dozen in nearly 12 years, but it was taught by the franchise I used to be with and I have to admit that it seems perfectly logical - to me anyway. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hmm, Undisturbed insulation has never stopped me. I just plow through it, do the inspection, and then back out - smoothing it as best I can as I go. I just figure that, if Rufus from the cable company can get in there to run a cable, I need to get in there to inspect it. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, I think they're a great idea and I like the idea that those on both side of the transaction should do it. It would help to weed out some of the folks in this business who are incompetent because it would function kind of like a peer review. Whenever I get a house where they tell me that they've had a seller's inspection, I tell them that I don't want to see the report or know anything about it until I'm done with my inspection. I tell the client that if I don't find everything that's in that guy's inspection report they can put that check back in their wallet. That's never happened, but I bet there were a few inspectors who got a phone call and ended up refunding their fees for some major sh** that they'd missed. Can you imagine revealing to a seller that his home had been in a fire and his seller's inspector - who'd also done the inspection on the home when the seller had bought it - had completely missed the fact years before? Last I heard, that guy had gone back to work at Boeing. Kurt, I know you don't like to do them, but imagine, just for a minute that you did. You go in, do your usual thorough inspection, write a decent report, and then you turn it over to the seller. The seller then tells any buyers that he's had a pre-sale inspection. Naturally, they don't trust it, so they hire their own guy. At this point, unintended peer review kicks in; if the guy is completely incompetent and misses half the stuff that you found, the seller can point it out to the buyer - "Gee, it's too bad you wasted all that money on that inspector, 'cuz my guy found a whole lot more stuff. See, here it is on the disclosure form and in this report that you didn't want? By the way, as we told you previously, we don't intend to fix any of these things because our price reflects these issues." Buyer turns around, nukes the other guy and demands the fee back. If that happens enough, that guy will be out of business. So, what happens if the other guy finds something you miss? That's easy, you go back, confirm the issue and then you either admit you missed it or you show why it's not a good call. Chances are, if you missed mentioning something it's going to be a small issue that you really didn't need to comment on anyway; if it turns out to be something serious, well, refund the fee, apologize, and use it as a lesson - bet you won't miss it next time. Either way, there's peer review in play. The seller, the listing agent, and you, will all be awaiting the results of that report. If the other guy botches it and misses a bunch of stuff you found, or starts calling out silly crap just for the sake of being able to report something, you're going to look better and folks on both sides of the transaction are going to move the other guy's name to the 'don't call' pile. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Now you're giving incorrect legal advice, Dan. Here's what I suggest, call your lawyer and ask him/her if it's possible for a 3rd party to sue you through subrogation. Unless you're state is radically different than most others, you're probably going to be surprised. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I've got vista on the wife's machine upstairs and XP on this one. I've installed my HI program on the vista box just in case I need to use it when this one is down. I don't see much difference. Initially, it seemed a little glitchy, but I set it up to automatically go to MS Updates once a week and get whatever it needs, and to automatically dump all of the temp files and other garbage, as well as defrag the hard drive once a week, and it seems to be ticking like a Swiss watch now. You guys think you've got problems with vista? Ha, I've got NT on my laptop and I might just as well have a couple of cans and a piece of string. Nobody supports it anymore. Guess I need to load a new operating system on it. So, what's everyone recommending for that - windows, linux, or Ubantu or whatever it's called? OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, Yes, Caoimhín, thank you. Now, about that moderating job.... OT - OF!!! M.

By Dan Schuerman In today’s saturated market, it is not just a lack of buyers causing difficulties but also the resistance of sellers to aggressively position their homes to sell quickly and for the maximum price possible. Most homes sold throughout the U.S. will have a home inspection completed by the buyer prior to closing. For years the home inspection process has been positioned at the end of the real estate cycle. A home is listed, an offer made, a contract written and then, just before closing, the home inspection is ordered - leaving sellers, buyers and agents feverishly trying to fix, replace or get estimates for problems uncovered in the inspection. Due to the current market situation, some real estate agents are figuring out how to use the home inspection as a fast-track selling tool. These agents are instructing their sellers to have a pre-listing (or pre-sale) inspection performed. A pre-listing inspection, paid for by the seller or listing agent, provides a written report as to the pre-sale condition of the property and may uncover concerns which might compromise a sale. By moving the inspection to the beginning of the sales cycle, these agents are able to shorten the process by removing obstacles before they can interfere with a potential sale. Pre-listing inspections are nothing new. They have been a part of the inspection business for a number of years but are rarely performed during strong sales markets. During strong markets, buyers purchase a home inspection to make sure there aren’t any surprise defects and to substantiate the purchase price. In an up market, sellers often have backup offers to fall back on if negotiations break down with a prospective buyer. Sellers forego a pre-listing inspection knowing buyers are not likely to walk away from a deal. They will have an inspection performed as a part of the contract. In weaker markets, when there are more properties available and/or fewer buyers, the seller is at a disadvantage. The buyer will sometimes use the home inspection to verify condition and to negotiate a lower price to cover repair and improvement costs. It is when there is a higher-than-normal level of homes for sale that the seller can attract buyers by pre-inspecting their home prior to placing the “for saleâ€

Randy, The only thing you really have to know when deciding what to do on an inspection is to inspect the way you'd inspect if you were going to buy the house yourself and the owner agreed to let you do your own inspection. That's what I've done from day one and I've never allowed myself to worry about time. I get done when I get done. Back when I was with the franchise and consistenly doing 2 inspections a day I was consistently late for my afternoon inspections and would work into the evenings because I refused to hurry myself on the afternoon inspections. I think that one can do that and speed it up - but only by working with somone else. OT - OF!!! M. I

If anyone that lives in the vicinity of a Fry's electronics store is interested, their flyer in todays paper has a 7 Mp camera with a 3X digital zoom for sale at $89. It might be a decent deal for someone looking to begin using digital photography on-site. OT - OF!!! M.

The home looked fine to both the clients and the inspector, until the new owner moved in and began to notice things. To read the entire story, click here.

There aren't any state-wide uniform building codes in the state of Maine. However, new mandatory energy standards as well as a new state-wide building code are being considered by the Maine legislature. Under the new proposal, since municipalities don't have inspectors in place, private home inspectors might be licensed to do municipal inspections. The concept is that builders would hire authorized inspectors to inspect homes under construction and certify that they have met building codes and energy standards. To read more click here.

That's a pretty interesting demo, Chris. Do some more! OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, I suppose it could be if you could keep the barrier clean. Their effectiveness is drastically decreased when they get dirty. However, blown-in insulation and dust go hand-in-hand, so I don't think it's practical. OT - OF!!! M.

Thanks Walter, but I didn't exactly dream that up. When Steve J. and I worked together a few years ago, we did like you and Rick did onsite using FM wireless intercoms. We didn't have any video feed, though. However, video is being used in this manner by the Army, so it's not so far fetched. Last year the Army began field trials in Iraq of a new squad command system. Troops each wear a headset with a tiny video camera and flip-down computer monitor that's in front of one eye. There's a little cigarette pack sized computer in a pouch on their hip. During an operation, what they see is transmitted to their squad leader and headquarters so that leadership can get real-time information about operations, and, when necessary, direct them in the field from headquarters. With this system the squad leader can switch his feed to see and hear what each of his soldiers is seeing, he can see a display of a map of the operation that shows the exact position of each of his troops on the battlefield, and he is able to see photos and other documents that are transmitted to him from higher. Since he or she can see what's happening in real time, if a C.O. needs to, it's possible to direct the movement and actions of the operation while sitting in a tent miles away. Like most things that start in the military, it won't be long before they're applied in civilian life. I've begun noticing that some action TV shows and movies have featured something similar and I recall last year reading something about how a municipality was using a network of wearable computers to link all of their muni inspectors together. You never know, it might not be too far in the future before someone attempts to apply it to what we do. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I can see it now, A huge dark circular room with large flat video screens mounted high on each wall. The room is full of rows of computers with operators sitting behind them. At first glance, one could easily mistake this room for NASA's mission central in Houston. Standing in the center of the room wearing a headset, like the captain of a Starship, is Walt Jowers. The computer operators are all wearing two-way headsets and are running various software programs; Inspect Express, Intelligent Writer, 3-D, etc.. They're watching the video screens and are receiving, and listening to, live video feeds and commentary being transmitted via satellite from video headsets being worn by inspectors at various inspection sites around the country. As Katen in Oregon describes an issue to his client, his operator, listening it, makes a few deft clicks of the keys, slams Katen's boilerplated comment into the report, and then quickly edits it to make it apply to that particular house. Jowers, curious, sees that the video displays "Katen - Oregon," walks over and looks at what the operator has typed on the screen. He nods approvingly; no passive voice there, it makes sense and is defensible in court - no need to interject anything into one of Brother Katen's reports. Suddenly, a red light begins to blink on monitor #12; it's a relatively new inspector from Maryland who's hit the assist button on his headset. Jowers dials his headset control to channel #12 and turns up the volume. The inspector is trying to make a couple of bewildered looking buyers understand the significance of an unflashed ledger. The reason he's hit the assist button is that he's unsure of himself and how to handle these folks. Jower's presses the talk button and chimes in, "Steady boy, there's nothing to be nervous about. Just tell 'em that without flashing the area behind that ledger can rot and that, if it does, it's going to be expensive to fix. They need to get good deck builder out there to fix it now." The inspector has heard this on his headset but the clients are oblivious to it. Jowers turns to operator #12, who's been listening to his input, and says, "Make sure you include all of that in that comment." The operator nods, slams away at his computer for a few seconds and then hits a key to display the finished comment on screen #12. J Jowers briefly scans the comment for logic breakdowns, correct grammar and syntax, and lack of passive voice. It's OK; he gives the operator a thumbs up. The screen reverts back to the video feed from the Maryland rookie, who's been stalling the clients for a minute while Jowers handles things at his end, hits a key on his keyboard and the rookie hears a bell sound in his headset that tells him to move on to the next item. Under his breath, the inspector lets out a sigh of relief, Uncle Walter has saved his bacon again. An alert signal appears on screen #6 on the other side of the room and Jowers turns his attention to it; it's an inspector from Nevada. Jowers turns to channel #6 and listens in. The inspector is trying to make a pigheaded reel-tour lady understand why an issue needs to be fixed by a pro and not by Rufus, the neighborhood handyman. The reel-tour lady is obviously one of the manipulative types who thinks home inspectors live and breath to bath her feet and she's being a royal pain in the ass. Jowers feels his adrenaline go up; he's going to enjoy this, there's nothing he likes more than to skewer some wise-ass Lexus-driving realtorzoid. He presses his talk button, talks softly into the microphone and watches as the inspector parrots his words and the big hair lady turns white and is reduced to a stammer and walks away looking very deflated. "Yes! Rip their hearts out and feed them to them," he thinks. And so it goes. As inspections are completed, the operators send them via email directly to the various clients' email addresses, the processing fee is added to the inspector's monthly bill, and the operator keys in the next inspector that's standing by to be served. At the end of the day, Captain Jowers is feeling pretty pleased with himself; he's prevented at least 30 inspectors from making huge costly mistakes, skewered at least a dozen know-it-all realtorzoids, and made more in a single day than he used to make in a week as an inspector and home inspection pundit. It's time to go park on the porch and enjoy some libation. Life's good. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It's a very basic concept: What's the issue? Why is it bad for the house? Recommend correction. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, It wouldn't work in about 85% of the crawls I see. One needs that extra inch or two to get under the ducts. I'd have to get off, slide under, reach back and pull the thing forward, climb back on, move on and then repeat. Plus getting past the swales, sewer pipes, etc., it'd be a huge waste of time. I'm sure it works fine in a crawl with a smooth hard-packed or concrete-covered floor and not a lot of ducts blocking the way but it would be next to useless around here. OT - OF!!! M.