is this the DE listing?

While this is probably a hugely fragmented market, I'd be concerned about dwindling margins since it would seem that barriers to entry are low. Would there be advantages to scale through a roll-up strategy? What value add can you bring? Are home inspectors one-man shows, or are there several under the same roof? Is it a competitive real estate market where people forego the home inspection? (This is becoming more and more the case in Vancouver, for example). These are some questions that I'd want answers to see if it would be a good market.

Francis - did you have any success in finding a home inspection businesses? It is a business that I am interested in.

Trevor- Curious what has you interested in this space. Most of the inspection businesses I have seen are one-man shows living off referrals from real estate agents and must be licensed where I live. I have noticed that most inspectors stop short of connecting buyers with individuals that can do the needed repair work. Maybe there are some opportunities to provide additional value-add services?

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.

Trevor - Thanks for sharing. Interesting perspective on the increasing complexity of inspections. Gives me something to think about.

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.