How to Spot Costly Issues Before You Buy a Home | Home Inspection Tips

Bobby Bush (00:00)
And I started to walk across the floor where the refrigerator would be. It was like stepping on a
Cause it looked like your foot was going to come through the floor.
There was so much termite damage I said, we’re looking at probably 60 to $70,000 just in the foundation repairs.
I think he probably would have walked away from the property anyway, but my inspection and our work helped to solidify the inspection report and solidify our findings before he needed to really, really make a critical decision.

Erika (02:04)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pro Show. I’m your host, Erika, and today I’m thrilled to be joined by Bobby, a certified master home inspector who’s making, excuse me, a big impact in the home inspection world. Bobby, it’s awesome to have you here.

Bobby Bush (02:23)
Thank you, Erika. It’s great to be on the show. I’m looking forward to having a conversation with you.

Erika (02:29)
So let’s dive on in. For those who aren’t familiar with your world, give us the rundown. How did you get started as a home inspector and what drew you to this field?

Bobby Bush (02:39)
Excuse me. I became a home inspector kind of as a byproduct of my wife and I doing ⁓ real estate investments in the Florida area. I acted as a general contractor and I have a background in the trades and gas and electric. So that was a natural connection for me when we moved up here to South Carolina from Florida. I met a friend of mine who was at the time was restaurant manager and he had just become a home inspector and was leaving the restaurant industry.

So we became friends and I ended up going to the same school he did based on his recommendation. And that was almost six years ago. And ⁓ I am now a master home inspector here in ⁓ Morey County, South Carolina, which is right on the coast. And ⁓ we also serve George County and Florence counties as well.

Erika (03:32)
What’s your main focus these days at Eagle Eye Home Inspection and what makes your approach stand out?

Bobby Bush (03:40)
Well, ⁓ when I recently in the last six months became a certified master inspector, I realized that I needed to expand my ⁓ influence, if you will. And the way that I could do that, the best way I could do that was to contact and be in touch and work with the best agents here. And so I did some research and ended up getting ⁓ some information about…

the top 15 % of the real estate agent producers here in my county and the local counties here. And my approach to them was a simple one. ⁓ We are really good at what we do. And there are two of us, two home inspectors on every inspection. And being a master inspector, we are able to be more efficient and effective with the inspections we do. And on top of that, we do same day inspections and reports.

And for a lot of agents and clients, we’ve discovered that that is a big hot button. They want the inspection done in the morning, but they want to have the report done and over to them before close of business that day. So those were things I’ve learned over the last probably year that have definitely affected my business in a very positive way. And agents have made comment about that. They’ve said,

you’re easy to work with. You give great information. You’re very helpful. You’re responsive.

The inspections are thorough and detailed and we get our report right away.

Erika (06:03)
That’s awesome. How do you manage to do that? Are there things that you’ve streamlined in your process so that you can have it done the same day?

Bobby Bush (06:12)
There are, well, some of it is technology driven. Some of it is knowledge driven where we give you an example. When I’m out doing a single family home inspection, the other inspector that works with me, he does the roof, he does the attic. And then if there’s a crawl space, he’ll do the crawl space. Now part of that is because I can no longer physically do that because as I explained to you earlier, I am a right.

leg, lower leg EFT. Now that doesn’t stop me from doing what I do, but it does limit me some. So I work with another inspector. So he handles the exterior of the home. I handle the interior of the home. Between the two of us, we’re very effective and very efficient at what we do. We also use things like infrared technology so we can see at the walls for the type of insulation and the volume or amount of insulation that’s there.

We can check flashing ⁓ with thermal view. And then we have some other technology that we use that allows us to look at things a little deeper, but more rapidly. Gaining information quicker helps us be more effective and efficient with our time. So then by the time we’ve got our images and our videos from the inspection, we actually do all that by phone. He’ll give me all his information by phone. I have that on my phone. I come home.

And then I do the report online. And ⁓ usually from a normal home inspection takes about an hour and a half for two of us to do a single family home. The report, even being super efficient and effective with technology and everything, it still takes a couple of hours. The average report takes about two hours, some take a little longer, some take a little less. So hopefully that explained it a little bit.

Erika (08:04)
Totally. Home inspections are such a critical piece of the real estate puzzle, as you know. Bobby, what would you say is the most common issue that you’re seeing with homes right now, and how do you help clients navigate those findings?

Bobby Bush (08:19)
That’s a great question. And I get this when I’m working with an investor. So I get to put my investor hat on for a second and go, okay, how would I look at this? So when I do the report and when I, and sometimes the investors will meet me on site. So what I typically do is I look at the hot buttons. The hot buttons for home if you’re going to invest in it are the roof, the HVAC equipment, the electrical and the plumbing.

Now, windows and doors are technically still kind of could be put in that category, but those are the four top things that you want to look at. The thing that I see a lot here in South Carolina, ⁓ it’s probably, it can kind of go between ⁓ roofing and electrical. Those are the two things that I see that usually have the most issues here. Now,

And running a close third would be crawl spaces. Because crawl spaces, they inherently have their own set of issues. If a crawl space doesn’t have the proper ventilation and it doesn’t have the proper vapor barrier, you’re going to have problems with the floor, subfloor. Some houses here are built like that. They’re built on a crawl space, but they’re not properly vented and they have no proper vapor barrier.

So you’re just asking for trouble. Usually with wood rot in the floor and when you have wood rot, you have a field day for termites. And we see that a lot. But

would say that those three things, crawl spaces, next up would be electrical and then at the top of the list, roofing. We just see it all the time where the roof hasn’t been serviced or maintained and it needs to be replaced. And roofs here, depending on the size of the home,

depending on how many squares are involved, you could be looking at $10,000. Sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more, it depends on the size of the house. So for an investor, they’re breaking that down. They’re looking at my report and they’re breaking the numbers down, looking at what kind of money they’re going to have to put into this place to flip it. If they’re going to make it set up for an Airbnb, or are they going to just flip it and sell it? All of those things are going into their

are going into their mind, their thought process, terms of deciding whether they’re going to buy that property or not. I’ve done some here where we’ve inspected and there were beach houses built in what’s called a post and beam, so the underneath here is all open. That’s if there’s a storm surge, that kind of thing. The problem is those areas get neglected. I’ve done several here where, based on our report, the investor walked away because it had foundation issues.

And one thing we did not get involved in is speculation. As a home inspector, my job is to tell you what is the exact condition of that home from top to bottom with everything at the time of inspection. However, I am not an engineer. So I am not going to in any way, shape or form speculate about the foundation. What we normally do is we’ll say there are clearly issues with this foundation that are undetermined by the home inspector.

but they are issues and they’re affecting the house. And then what I do is I recommend further evaluation by a structural engineer. I’ve done that several times. The investors have thanked me and they have not bought the property. One of them actually contacted a structural engineer. They came out and gave their report, which gave my report validation that there was in fact an issue with the foundation and they confirmed that. And then they also told them what the

approximate cost would be to replace that foundation for the house or repair it. And the investor said, no, thank you. That’s too much. I can’t put that kind of money into it. So hopefully, I’m sorry for the long-winded response about this, but I think it’s important. What I’ve shared here is very important information. These are the kinds of things you have to look at as an investor. You really do.

Erika (13:11)
Yeah, and you know, you’re a certified master home inspector, which sets a high bar. What would you say is a misconception about home inspections that you wish more buyers, sellers or investors understood?

Bobby Bush (13:26)
That’s the best question anybody’s asked me in the last month. You know what it is? I’ll tell you what it is. It’s very simple. The misconception is that we go in and we’re going to take everything apart. We’re going to start drilling holes in walls and doing all this stuff. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, A home inspection is meant to be a non-invasive inspection review.

of everything in the home from the top of the roof all the way to the foundation. However, it’s a visual inspection of everything that can be seen. We don’t drill through walls, don’t make holes in things, we don’t move furniture, we don’t do any of the stuff that people just assume that you do in a home inspection. Now we do open windows, we do open doors. We obviously check lights and circuits. We want to make sure that the GFCIs for the home are working.

We also note if there’s no AFCI for a particular home, and a lot of older homes here, the code changed and nobody ever did the updates because technically their grandfather did. But an AFCI circuit is an arc fault circuit interrupter and that’s designed to protect the home from fire. A GFCI circuit protector is designed for the bathroom and the kitchen for shock hazards when you’re around water.

So the two are completely different. And an arc fault circuit interrupter will, if you’ve got

happens in the outlet in the wiring and there’s a surge, that protector in the panel will trip and that’ll protect that outlet from creating or causing a fire. So whenever I do an inspection, I will note whether the house has an arc fault circuit interrupter

in their home for specific coverage. And in many cases, older homes here do not. So I always put that in report. It’s recommended you upgrade. It’s not mandatory. The other thing I’ll just say that we do not do as inspectors, we do not speculate on the age of anything. We will tell you what the condition of the roof might be, but I can’t tell you exactly how old it is.

unless it’s in the property disclosure form for the property, and then they’re going to have that information anyway. They’re not going to need me to tell them. But I’m going to tell you the condition of that

I’m seeing lots of granules in the gutters, which is a sign that the roof is starting to wear out. The shingles are wearing out. Here in the south, and I’ll just tell you, when I do an inspection,

I’ll tell you that shingles are not made the way they used to be even 20 years ago. They’re not manufactured the way they used to be. There are also different classifications of shingles. So if you’re building a new home, I would go with a higher classification rating on a shingle. Why? Because it’s going to last longer and you’re going to get a better warranty. The typical average shingles here, if you get a 20 year shingle, you’re going to be lucky if you get 13 to 15 years out of it. That’s a fact.

And it’s because of the way they’re made and because of the sun here in the south and being near the coast, have salt and wind and other types of things that affect shingles more so than they would inland or in another area where they don’t have those kind of conditions. Does that make sense?

Erika (17:41)
Yeah, absolutely. Bobby, I’m sure you’ve experienced this before, being a pro in the industry. Maybe you got a story where things got real, an inspection uncovered something unexpected, or there was a tricky situation with a client. Can you share one of those moments from your career?

Bobby Bush (17:59)
Oh, I got plenty of them, but I’ll share one in particular. And this was because it’s real estate related and you do have investors to watch the show. A couple of years ago, I did a inspection for a property on a little beach for an investor. The realtor called me and said, here’s the

Now we have properties where we can either get in with like a little, the traditional lock box that has these little dial type things and you.

put the code in and then you flip it down and you get the key out. Here in the South and in the Warrior, they have what’s called a super key. It’s called supra key. And the key is in a digital lockbox. And so because I’m registered with the local real estate authority here, I have access to that property via what’s called showing time. And then my super key access to my phone, I put my code in and it unlocks the lockbox. So now I get the key out.

So at the time it was an older style thing. We go into the property and I could tell from the outside just looking at it that there were going to be issues. I could see that the roof was older, the chimney for that house. You could see that there was a lot of ⁓ degradation going on with the brickwork. So we get inside, pardon me for coughing, I’ve got sinus issues. So my friend goes into, my fellow inspector goes under the crawl space.

I’m in the kitchen doing my normal thing.

And I started to walk across the floor where the refrigerator would be. Something told me not to do that.

I took my foot and I pressed my foot on the floor.

it was like stepping on a

Right at the same time,

my fellow inspector is underneath in the crawl space. And he saw me, he saw the floor moving.

And he texts me and he goes, what are you doing? And I said, well, I was just testing the floor to make sure it’s okay. And it’s not, he goes, well, that’s good. Cause it looked like your foot was going to come through the floor.

And I said, well, that’s good. And he goes, it’s not good under here. So I’ll give you the, I’ll give you the brief version of this. So he comes out immediately after being under there for 15 minutes. We’re looking at, I’m looking at the pictures on his phone.

There was so much termite damage

to the beams and the crawl space that were supporting the flooring that you could see the streaks across the beams in the wood. When you could see termite streams, I call them streams in the wood, you’ve got a serious infestation. So he goes up into the attic, he’s chatting, the bricks needed to be pointed up, they were crumbling.

The roof had, there were leaks at all of the plumbing vent stacks. It was a nightmare. So I immediately, we hadn’t finished the inspection yet and I called the realtor and I said, I’m not going to tell you his last name. said, Chris, this property’s got serious issues. Please let your investor know that in my opinion,

The foundation alone, I know a little bit about foundations, the foundation alone is going to be super expensive to repair. You’re going to need to get an engineer to come in here and tell you exactly what you’re going to need to put into it in terms of money and repairs. But I’m going to tell you right now, just guesstimating this, and I’d probably be off a little bit, but not a lot.

I said, we’re looking at probably 60 to $70,000 just in the foundation repairs.

Please call him. We’ll finish our inspection and I’ll talk to you later.

We had just finished our inspection and the investor calls me and he goes, I saw the pictures that you sent Chris, my agent. It looks like it’s your recommendation that I do not invest in this property. I said, that’s putting it mildly. I said, there’s just too much here. There’s too much to repair. It’s just not worth it. And we’re probably well over a hundred grand.

And I said, don’t listen to me. You’re welcome to get a contractor in and tell you, but I have experience doing rehabbing and properties. And I will tell you right now, we would never invest in this property. There’s just too much involved in terms of cost and work. that’s the story. He thanked me profusely for telling him that and saving him doing something potentially stupid, but he was pretty savvy.

I think he probably would have walked away from the property anyway, but

my inspection and our work helped to solidify the inspection report and solidify our findings before he needed to really, really make a critical

He can make an on the off the cuff decision based on what I told him. so that made me feel good. It’s sort of funny, but it’s not funny. I can tell you some funny ones. They’re funny now, but they were definitely not funny at the time. So hopefully that helped.

looking to make sure I give information here that helps people.

Erika (23:17)
Yeah, it’s been very helpful. But I want to talk a little bit more about what you have going on. Bobbi, what are your plans for scaling eagle eye home inspection? ⁓ What are your plans? Tell us more.

Bobby Bush (23:34)
That’s a great another great question. Well, part of what we’re doing right now is ⁓ obviously a podcast, any type of podcast, especially a really good one like you guys. That’s a feather in our cap. I can put that up on Instagram and Facebook on our website. It adds credibility, certainly adds credibility and all of all the stuff you’re doing. But for me as an inspector, it adds credibility because now people go, okay, this guy’s in the mainstream.

He’s not just one more inspector out there like all the other fish in the barrel. So my efforts now are basically looking to generate separation from all the other fish in the barrel. And one of the ways I’m doing that is doing podcasts. One of the other ways I’m doing that is ⁓ I’ve decided that I’m going to start actually interviewing, doing it my own podcast, if you will, of some of the agents that I serve.

not going to be long because these agents are out hustling and working all day long. They can’t spend an hour and they can’t do it, but they might be able to spend 10 to 15 minutes. So my quote unquote podcasts are going to be very short, but they’re going to be dealing with the personal ⁓ efforts of those agents and how I can partner with them. And in many cases, how I already have partnered with them.

And then I’m going to continue my efforts in reaching out personally and directly to agents. We have some plans to attend and be involved in having a booth at some upcoming events that are going to be happening in the fall. ⁓ Some of the local real estate folks put on these events where, you know, you can spend a little money and get a booth and you get to hawk your product and service and all that. So we’ll be doing that as well. ⁓

much it right now. I had toyed with the idea of a newsletter, but the issue with the newsletter is people have to have time to read it. And my clientele, believe it or not, first and foremost, I get the majority of my business directly from agents. Secondarily, I get my clients from people that go online. So they’re looking in Google. So they’re looking at my reviews. So my SEO is very important. So I

play around with that every so often to make sure I’m maximizing that. So I’m big on Google reviews. And I tie those to Facebook and Instagram, which does help. And then I would say, ultimately, the most important thing is, and you said it, and it’s a great comment. You become a master at what you do, partly by your certification, and partly by your background experience. But you also on that

with the people you’re working with because they’re the ones giving you the credibility. yes, he is a master home inspector. I work with him all the time and I highly recommend him. That’s way better than just wearing a shirt that says master home inspector. You got to prove it. You got to prove yourself every day. I recently had a guy call me and he goes,

I selected you because I went to your website and I did a couple of other things to look you up.

And your reviews are, they’re all five star. And I said, well, thank you. ⁓ We take pride in that. We’re very, we worked very hard at what we do. We are very diligent and efficient and effective with what we do. But our big thing is we serve people. So we communicate well, we communicate and we’re very responsive. And we want to make sure that you have all your questions answered. So that to me is personal service. That’s the difference between somebody just clicking on something going, yeah, they look good. Let’s go with them.

Like really? It’s like throwing a dart board in the dark. Like you said that earlier. You might get lucky and get a good inspector or you might not. Just saying.

Erika (27:33)
Yeah, Bobby, before we let you go, if someone wants to connect with you, book an inspection or learn more about what you do, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Bobby Bush (27:43)
Well, some people want to go to the website, go to the website, there’s a contact form there. That’s okay. But I personally, I’d rather have you reach out to me directly. Because if you’ve got questions, you want questions answered, I’ll take five or 10 minutes and spend time with you on the phone. So call me on my direct direct cell. It’s 843-360-2483. Again, 843-360-2483. And I’m Bobby Bush.

Erika (28:14)
It’s clear bringing a ton of value to the real estate community in South Carolina. Thanks so much for sharing your insights and story today, Bobby.

Bobby Bush (28:23)
You are very welcome. Erika, thank you so much for having me. It’s helped me to give you some phenomenal questions. And hopefully I’ve done a really good job answering them.

Erika (28:34)
Thank you, you have, for everyone tuning in. If you love this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pro Show. We’ve got more conversations lined up with pros like Bobby who are crushing it in their field. We’ll see you on the next episode.