Home Inspection Business: Has anyone ever purchased one? Any Advice?

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June 14, 2020

by a searcher from University of Virginia-McIntire - McIntire School of Commerce in Philadelphia, PA, USA

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Reply by an investor
from Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon, Portugal
One point I would add is that you have a new generation of real estate companies are using data and other tools to buy real estate fast, upgrade them and then flip them. This might mean less of a need for an inspection service from the client side (as they will likely do this for them) but the emergence of the need for services like inspections from these large companies, so if you get the big contracts, might be a very interesting place to be at and to get recurrent revenues.
Having been an investor in an inspection business (although it was a car one) one more thing I will say, one of the parts we found was more challenging, in addition to managing large workforces, is normally the client acquisition bit particularly if you don't control it, as this is a business where people buy houses on average every 8 years (US) and the odds that they know someone else buying a house at the same time are low, so word of mouth is hard to use to build momentum, you're dependent in the likes of google and partnerships with realtors, etc, which may disappear or you may get priced out very quickly. So to make it a truly sustainable business your client acquisition strategy needs to be spot on (like most businesses, but particularly relevant on this one) and you should have some sort of long term differentiation/angle vs the competition.
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Reply by a searcher
from University of Colorado at Boulder in Boulder, CO, USA
Hey Andrew - There are a few reasons, but the biggest is my view that home efficiency is likely to become a much bigger focus in the next ten years and is likely to see more local regulation. It is also clear that houses are becoming more technically complicated to inspect (solar, geothermal, charging equip, batteries, etc) so the value of an inspection is likely to be higher 5-10 years from now. As you mentioned, I have a few ideas of interesting ancillary services that can be offered that most independent inspectors are overlooking. Multiple-inspector businesses seem really tough to find though.
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