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According to an article in this month's Builder Online, The New York State Attorney General's Office has filed suit against eAppraiselT, a large appraisal management firm, for colluding with Washington Mutual to inflate the appraisal value of homes. According to a statement released by the AG, Andrew M. Cuomo, "The independence of the appraiser is essential to maintaining the integrity of the mortgage industry. First American and eAppraiseIT violated that independence when Washington Mutual strong-armed them into a system designed to ripoff homeowners and investors alike. The blatant actions of First American and eAppraiseIT have contributed to the growing foreclosure crisis and turmoil in the housing market. By allowing Washington Mutual to hand-pick appraisers who inflated values, First American helped set the current mortgage crisis in motion." To read more click here.

This article from Remodeling Online gives some insight into the pros and cons of restoring old windows versus replacing them with modern materials. To read more click here.

The U.S. Green Building Council has just re-launced its website at http://www.usgbc.org. According to the USGBC, the site is cleaner and mmore user friendly and contains tens of thousands of pages of content pertaining to green buildings. To read more, click here.

Maybe some of you have heard about pre-cast concrete foundation systems but you didn't really understand what they were. Here's a 3-1/2 minute video that will help you understand what's involved with their manufacture and installation. Click here

The State of Hawaii will soon adopt a single statewide building code that's based on the 2006 edition of the international building code. Thereafter, they plan to update their code every 3 years. To learn more click here

According to an article in the Sun-Sentinel, the My Safe Florida Home Program, a free wind inspection program run by the State of Florida, is saving consumers in Palm Beach County an average of $399 a year on their homeowner insurance. To read more about the program click here.

Mandatory home information packs (HIPS) were supposed to debut on all homes in England and Wales in June. However, based on claims from those in the lending and real estate industry that the process would cause a shortage of available homes on the market, the British government had only required them on homes with four or more bedrooms. The British government has reviewed the market sales since June and has been unable to find any evidence that the process is impacting the market. Therefore, the government intends to require inspections on all homes for sale, regardless of size, from December 14th. Not surprisingly, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) - a surveyor is sort of like a cross between a professional engineer and a home inspector - which prior to June had a manopoly on home surveys (inspections) in Great Britain, is now claiming that the process will cause the price of homes to increase so much that first time home buyers will be caught between a rock and a hard place as home prices go off the scale. To learn more, click here]/url].

In this Q & A in the Contra Costa Times home inspector pundit, Barry Stone, explains to a homeowner who relied on a seller's inspector that he might have a case against the inspector anyway. To read the entire article click here.

Here are some responses from sellers and buyers to the Charlotte News & Observer Editorial that's linked above. Click here.

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According to a November 19th Article in the Wall Street Journal, the current market value of commercial real estate is beginning to drop after more than 7 years of continued growth. The current credit crunch is at the crux of the issue. To learn more click here.

Kewl, That's a good suggestion. You'd want to do that late in the course, right? OT - OF!!! M.

Even in a day and a half, I soaked up a lot of info there. Two weeks ago, I inspected a co-op built in 1947 that has in-floor radiant hydronic heat. The system has been recently upgraded and there are two new boilers installed alongside an old boiler. In days gone by, I would have disclaimed everything to do with the hydronic system and referred it all over to Northwest Mechanical. This time, I knew what some of the new components are, where they should be in the system, was able to easily recognize how the old system is laid out, and I actually understood everything that I was looking at. If that were a 3-day course, and it focused more on those last three bullets above, as Kurt pointed out, I think I'd be very comfortable looking at any of these, regardless of how complicated they are. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Steve, They not only want to hold the classes in Springfield; they're hoping that we can help them tailor a seminar presentation that will spark more interest in learning more about these systems. Given the push toward green technologies, I think knowing a lot about these is going to one day be requisite in this business. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi All, Well, it's been a couple of months and I recently heard from the Watts folks. They're interested in continuing to work with TIJ to bring good hydronic and radiant heating training to home inspectors and they're asking for more input. So, I'm hoping that the dozen folks who attended the first course with me can help us design a better course. Let's try first to stick to the same concept of a 2-day course. and see if, now that we know what their capabilities are, we can tweak the training to achieve a better result. My initial thoughts are: less emphasis on the types of PEX less emphasis on the manufacturing process more emphasis on their appropriate uses more emphasis on the various components of a hydronic system more emhasis on where these components need to be located within a system and the negative aspects when they're not so installed more emphasis on common problems encountered and what their indicators are That should get us started. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, I'm sorry that this piece seems to have upset so many folks, but what some folks seem to be missing is that I don't pick and choose these things on whether I think they'll be of interest to me or any particular members of the board. If I think that some home inspector somewhere will want to know about it - say, in this case, an inspector from the Chicago area who might want to respond to the Chicago Herald about the guy's rant, I post it. What some are saying is that they'd rather that TIJ not get involved in anything controversial - that we just stay quiet. It doesn't work that way. Advocating that is like the readership of the Seattle P.I. demanding that the Editor of the PI not run a piece about Idaho Sen Larry Craig because doing so might tick off some republicans, or refuse to run a story about Obama's recent admissions to school kids that he used to experiment with drugs, because it might tick off some democrats. It's the reader who decides whether it's newsworthy. To some of you this piece isn't, to others it is. For all this fuming, folks have lost sight of the fact that the Editor of the Chicago Daily Herald did think it was newsworthy because he allowed to to run. Do you have any idea how many such letters to the editor and soapbox pieces get tossed in the trash at papers every day? One of my clients works at the PI and sorts those all day every day and she told me that they toss fully 99% of them. My thought is that if a publication like the Chicago Daily Herald thinks that it is worth running, the least I can do is post a link to it for those who might be interested. That's about all I have to say on the subject. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

OK, Ol' Buddy Now, you know how dense I am, so please clarify for me - the title is In The Middle? You know me, I'll be stumbling around 3rd Place Books like Zippy the pinhead going, "Nancy Atwell; concise descriptions; Nancy Atwell, concise descriptions; Nancy Atwell, Concise descriptions!" ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Noted and accepted, Richard. The purpose for posting links to these articles is not to bash, it's to lead inspectors to what's going on around the country. That guy posted an opinion piece to the Editor of that Chicago paper. By posting a link to it, other inspectors - those who agree or disagree with the premise of his argument - will know about it and can, if they wish, write to that paper with their own arguments in support of his position or opposed to his position. I think that if inspectors take the time to make these arguments where those not in the profession will see them, I believe that the public will gradually become more attuned to what home inspectors are and what a home inspection is. We do a great job of keeping each other informed, but the public still only has a vague idea of who we are and what we do. Instead of reading all of the propaganda posted on all of the HIs' websites and those of the various associations, maybe it's time they learned that there's a whole lot more to this business than meets the eye. Take a look at how effective the grass roots campaign by inspectors was in North Carolina last month. Prior to that little brouhaha, I bet half of the state had no idea who or what home inspector are. Bet most of them do now. I agree with you; I think there are a whole lot of interNACHI guys who're very good people and very competent - far more than the few thimbleheads who spend their days patting each other on the ass on their forum - and I also think they're intelligent enough to see TIJ for what it is - a neutral entity that's not burdened with any association baggage. Remember, we don't go out and make this stuff up - it just happens that there have been 3 or 4 incidents related to interNACHI lately and there haven't been others with the other associations to balance those out. That doesn't mean that there won't be - there've been times in the past when there has been plenty of stuff to post about other associations and I'm sure that there will be in the future. No, you aren't wrong with believing that the intent of TIJ is to promote excellence, but one of the other reasons I started this was to get news about the profession out to everyone because the associations and franchises were keeping a lot of things to themselves on private forums. News Around the Net is exactly that - stuff that's coming off of the internet about home inspectors. Some of it's good and some of it's bad, but we don't create it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Richard, I never try to deliberately piss off anyone. I didn't make the article. I get emails all day every day from a variety of news feeds with lots of stuff that refers to home inspections. Most of it is consumer oriented. I sort through it and I post what I think might be of interest to home inspectors, regardless of whether it's going to piss someone off or not. I'm getting a little weary of all of the harping about how we're picking on folks. All are welcome here except a few select folks who agreed to our terms of use and then persisted in constantly breaking those rules. I'm not going to refuse to publish something just because it's unflattering to one group or another. There will always be some folks who agree with one point of view and others who disagree. If I tip-toe around an issue to placate one group, then another group will accuse me of favoring the other side. I'm sure that you don't agree with everything published in your local paper, but you read it anyway. Right? OT - OF!!! M.

In this Q & A column, a real estate pundit claims that a builder in Pennsylvania must disclose the presence of radon as a material defect, even when the buyer opts not to have a home inspection or radon testing done. Does that sound right to you? To read the entire article, click here.

Although it's the law that a rental property has to be inspected before it changes hands in South Africa, homes that are for sale still don't require inspections. Despite that, home inspections there are on the rise. To read more click here.

In this Chicago Daily Herald opinion piece, a Chicago Area inspector clarifies inspector qualifications in the State of Illinois. To read the entire piece click here.

That's cute Erby, When I was about 3, we lived on the second floor of a 3 story walkup, downtown. There were full length back porches where the moms hung out the laundry on clothes lines. We had a yellow tiger cat named Tom-Tom. Somewhere I overheard someone say how a cat always lands on its feet when it falls. Being 3, I decided to test that theory. I walked outside, found old Tom-Tom sleeping in his favorite spot on the back porch and hauled him up to the third floor, shoved a wood beer case over against the porch parapet, climbed up on top with a great deal of difficulty while maintaining control of that poor cat, leaned over, and dropped him. Sure enough, Tom-Tom landed on his feet; whereupon, I went down those stairs as fast as I could, rounded him up, and did it again, and again. The poor old guy was a Mensch. He never complained, never clawed me, just let me do it. Something happened on the third go, 'cuz when I got there that time there was a bunch of blood. I picked him up, hauled him upstairs, and plunked him on my mother's lap. She was sitting there with a couple of other folks - don't know who - and all hell broke loose. I got my bottom soundly paddled, which is why I think I remember the incident so well, and Tom-Tom disappeared for a few days. When the old guy returned he avoided me for a loooong time. Cats have always regarded me with a certain sense of distrust. I'm convinced they have some kind of telekenetic news system and keep records of such things. On the other hand, dogs just love me - even the ones that folks are afraid of. The things you never forget. How's that for thread drift? OT - OF!!! M.

LOL! That just brought back a memory, Richard. Back in 1973 I was living on East Main Street in Torrington, CT about 200 meters from a little downtown shopping center where there was a Chinese restaurant. I used to go over to the Dunkin Donuts every morning for coffee. One day a sign appeared on the front door of the Chinese Restaurant "Closed by order of the health department." There was an article in the paper that day or the next. Seems that cats had been going missing all over town and a garbage truck driver had discovered a bunch of cat heads and skins in that restaurant's dumpster. I moved away that year; I don't know if anyone was ever prosecuted for it or not. Maybe they just moved to the other coast and maybe it isn't 'coyotes' that are the cause of all of the cats going missing in Seattle recently. OT - OF!!! M.

[:-spin] Please click here. OT - OF!!! M.