Your Home Inspector Could Save You $50K

The fastest way to lose money in real estate, skipping the inspection. Today, we are joined by 5 M Inspections. Indy's best family-owned inspectors, who are roots exclusive inspection partners. They built their company around competence, clarity, and integrity, helping both retail buyers and seasoned investors understand exactly what they're walking into before they close. Today, they're going to share their story and tell you exactly how to avoid the most critical mistakes when going through an inspection. Watch till the end. It will save you literally thousands. Chris, thanks so much for coming on to our podcast today. Thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it. When you're launching an inspection business, what's the hardest part about getting it off the ground? Uh, for us, it was really just kind of developing the inspection report to where it is cohesive of everything that a home inspector needs to inspect. Um, but also making it relatable to every type of house. Um and also two as a real estate agent you see in different types of reports and the clarity of one compared to the next. You want to really streamline um the type of reports that we do issue out. Um that way when you are ordering an inspection, you kind of know what to expect as you go through. I think it's uh fascinating how there's so many parts to the home. It's kind of like the human body. we're made up of so many bones and you know from the outside you don't see that until you get into a report that's like a whole health report of the home. Um sometimes can be intimidating when they're 97 pages long and you know you're trying to flip through and discover like uh the ones where there's a grid and it's like 7B and 7B was five pages ago and you're like what's wrong with 7B? I forget because I'm trying to flip around pages. I've always liked how you've been able to engineer the even through different softwares and keep the integrity of uh a systematic flow where it's like, okay, I know I'm in the roof section. I'm thinking about the roof uh processing through what the attic looks like and it like flows top down almost. Um and then you get into like the appliances and things that are all the the smaller priced items. Um that's been great to be able from the the receiving end. What is the logistics like? I'm just fascinated on the business model. So, you know, Morgan and I, my wife and I started this company back in 2019. Um, we've have extensive amount of real estate background with our family members. Uh, I actually had a real estate license a long time ago as well. So, I just know what the business needed in this little market. Um, I also growing up just have been always working jobs within construction and stuff like that. So, I kind of mixed both of my loves into one. And um one of our our key things was when I did start this business, it was to create and research software that home inspectors use. Um but then find ones that is customizable. So, um, for us, my main goal when starting this whole thing was, okay, when we inspect this house, as you just stated, kind of work outside in, top down. And so, as I'm going through our software, we do that as we're inspecting it. So, we'll start on the roof, we'll start exterior, and then we'll go attic and work down. Well, if you had looked at my template and everything, it will be in that same order. So when we do go to an inspection and we are starting it, we're doing the same thing every single time. It gets repetitive, right? So it's nice because it kind of helps keep you on track and all that. So that was one of my main focuses when starting the business. Um the other key to starting this business is that we are a family family-owned company. Um like I said, my wife and I started this uh my wife background is a teacher. Um, she taught for several several years. Uh, very very successful in her in her background, but what that helped her do is get the communication skills. So, the nice thing about when you call 5M Inspections, you're getting Morgan, right? So, you have that familiar voice. You have that familiar person that you're talking to. You, she's very knowledgeable now on the home process and the home buying process that she can not only even some of the inexperienced real estate agents help guide them to. um you know this is kind of the process and steps that you know we take and go through. I think what's special about your guys' company is really how you've developed it um to scale and to just have a massive reach. I would say it seems like from the outside looking in you're like the number one in indie. I'm not sure if you actually are but you have that perception and I think when I first like learned about you is because of that sort of development skill you guys had. You were commenting on everyone's Instagram. I think it was Morgan, but maybe it was someone else. I feel like Morgan was kind of the face and the personality, if you will, of the business, which it helped because like most inspectors are like these retired handymen guys who like they don't want to talk. It's like a one-word text, they respond. But she's like commenting on our post like, "Way to go, good closing." It's like she wasn't even you guys weren't even the inspector. M but then that realtor friendly approach of like we're going to advocate for the the purchase and the process and educate um and like when the client comes into the home, you're not just trying to check the box like I've experienced with some like, oh gosh, the client's here, you know, we're going to like have to do more work. It was like we're excited to have you here. Let's like look through this and put things in perspective because a lot of first-time home buyers, they read this 70page report and they think this home is going to fall apart tomorrow. You guys instead, I think, break it down to reality. What are the two to three or five things that are actually necessary to pursue in this transaction? So, um I would say those that personality and development piece is like really noticeable and really makes you guys I think stand out. I appreciate it. You did a great job with that. Thank you very much. Yeah, that's kind of our with us being a familyowned, we also want the customers to be feel like they're family, too. So, you know, customer service to me is the most important thing. You know, again, every in home inspector has to inspect the same things, right? But it's the relationships that we build. It's the effort, the energy, it's the time that we put into not only real estate agents, but also our our buyers and investors. I mean, some investors are out of state, out of country. Um, some buyers are here, they're you got exceed, you got your seasoned buyers who this is their 10th purchase, and then you got ones that are the brand new first-time home buyers. And if you go into the mentality of like, oh, this is a season, I don't need to go through a lot with them. You know, that's that to me is the wrong mindset. um seasoned or not, new new home buyers or not, you want to be a make sure that they know that they can trust you and they can feel comfortable with the home buying purchases because it is a very stressful process. Um again, that's why you get yourself a good realer like root roots to where you guys are going to help guide them. We essentially set up what I call the the road map when we do a home inspection, right? We're going to give you a road map to kind of take a street over here and say, "Okay, let's let's get the roof looked at. This is why I'm seeing A, B, and C." Right? And then, or here's the foundation issues, A, B, and C. Everything's repairable on a home. Um, I mean, we've done almost 8,000 homes. There's probably two that I called the investor on and was like, I don't know if you know how bad this house is, but it's falling in. And they were Tyler's listings. Yeah. Yeah, they were ours. Yeah, unfortunately. But, you know, I mean, out of those 8,000 houses, you know, just the fact of just two of them, and again, these were these were really bad dilapitated properties, but every everything else is certainly repairable. It's funny because um my first home I remember, well, the very first one, I don't I don't remember the inspection at all. I don't I don't even know if it happened to be honest. My grandparents were realtors. like, "Oh, we'll tell you everything that's wrong cuz they own like 18 homes." Then my second one, my real who was pretty good on the the transaction side, but like he was like, "Checklist, like, do you want to ask for this? Do you want to ask?" I was like, "Gutter, you know, uh, you know, back slow. I don't know if this is important, like this spot mold." So, I just was like, "Uh, no, no, no." And then picked one random thing to say yes. I had no context. And that I think going back to when I was buying realizing we don't know what's important. We just see these numbers and colors. You have to really get into the weeds and discuss and break things down at a human level which you guys have done well. Uh my question is you know you've expected now not hundreds but thousands. What are the biggest pitfalls that let's just say retail we'll start with retail buyers then maybe go into inspectors that retail buyers you see them falling into? Yeah, with the home waving waving the inspection. Obviously, we're in a little bit different of an age now. We're in 2026. Um 2020, this was very common, right? We were in bidding wars. Um houses people were putting in purchases, purchase agreements to just wave the inspection just so that they could win the bid, right? Um some of those are getting hurt by doing that. Um you know, waving an inspection I think is the biggest pitfall, right? Um, so with that said, you know, they'll purchase a home, they get in and then all of a sudden they start having major issues, right? Even if it's minor at the time, right? They think, "Oh, we can fix that. We'll take care of it." Well, all of a sudden, like negative grading or something on the exterior of the home. Now, all of a sudden, after living in there for a year because you waved on the inspection and you didn't ask the sellers to repair or remediate anything like that, then we start having a much bigger issue that costs a lot more money. Um, so that's kind of one of the big pitfalls that I see. It gets very expensive very quick. And uh, I think people are like giving up their first born in 2020 2019 2020. That's when I bought my first home and I didn't do an inspection. I bought it off market with unrepresented. Just went to the title company in the bank and got it all done. And uh, yeah. I mean, we got into the crawl space and it was pretty nasty. The furnace was rough and you're like, "What's this stuff down here?" Right. It's like, what is this? This black spots on the ground. Oh, it's rodent uh stuff. Oh, there's the raccoon. Holy And like that would have been called out on an inspection. A lot of different things. So, actually the big one for me that I ran into at practical. There's particle board under LVP flooring where they just ripped up the old I don't even know carpet maybe was over it. Um, and at some point they had a cat and it just absorbs all that moisture. So, the LVP that was laid uh poorly on top was snapping. And once we went to fix one piece and we ended up having to fix the whole house because and particle board to pull up, it's not an easy thing to do, especially when it's been damp for years. So, that was almost $21,000 right there that like, oh, I bought off market. I got a great deal. Uh well, turns out I paid like five grand too much for the house and then I had a 20k unexpected bill on my first home. Luckily, the market did the market thing and and it balanced out and there was plenty of equity. Uh but a repeatable learning there. Yeah. Well, I think there's that perception that if I go off market away the inspection, I'm going to get an amazing deal, but I actually know if you pay fair market price and get a 10,000 concessions, you're in a better boat. Yeah. Going through the safe tried and true. There's a reason we have these processes, right? Yeah. And this the whole ASIS, right? You know, so like when people buy homes as they think, oh, we can't do an inspection. I can't tell you how many inspections we do for people that are under contract as is. It helps them and in most most as you guys know contractwise some if there's some major issues even asis, you can potentially still get out of them. Um but I I that's one of the misfalls, right? You know, I'm buying an ASIS. That means I don't need to do an inspection. I just going to have to handle with what I'm purchasing and we'll take it from there. Um, but no, I mean, like I said, I we do so many inspections for ASIS buyers, and what it really gives them is, like I said, the kind of the roadmap to say, okay, these are the kind of the big red flag type items that we need to take care of and address immediately. Um, if not even before moving in. Um, and then here's some of these other natural repair type items and things like that. What about for investors? We obviously at roots represent hundreds of investors per year that are looking to build wealth and build equity and cash flow in these properties. The inspection is a a massive component to um leveraging that and making sure they're they have a safe investment. What is the most expensive mistakes you see investors making as it pertains to inspections? Yeah, I think with uh investors, you know, one of those things are incillary services. You know, a lot of times when you're an investor, um, you know, you think, okay, just going to do a home inspection or the most basic inspection, just give me the big red flags, right? Um, incillary services such as like radon, sewer scope. I mean, sewer scopes probably are number one, uh, incillary service. And you're not talking about a $1,500 repair in most cases. You're talking 15,000 to 20,000 depending on the length and of the line and what's there. Um, so you know, as an investor, we have kind of we've developed two different types of inspection reports. Um, one is for an investor that's willing and ready to just say, "Hey, I'm I got to rip this house down to the studs. I already know that. I don't need to see all the cracks in the wall." You know, you don't need to report on that. So, we have like what we call a five-point inspection where we look at the five major components of the home. Um, that will help give you, like I said, more of a a direct road map of these are your major issues if we find any. Um, but don't skip out on the incillary. Um, sewer scoping again might our number one add-on. Uh, radon testing, even if you the liability of having if you're going to plan to turn it into a tenant own tenant occupied home, you want to make sure it's safe for them too, right? mold testing, air quality testing, things like that. And be totally honest with you, as a home inspector, the profit margins on ancillary services are tiny, but we want to be able to provide at you um as the buyer the entire knowledge of the home, you know, and and again, we're not trying to upsell, but we're trying to give you let you know these are the things else that you can also learn that are outside the standard scope of an inspection. you know all too well about the value of getting a seos digs that I've had to do. Shout out to Joel with Helier Plumbing. It's like you guys to him is like the common playbook for me. Yeah. And then insurance sometimes but that will inform you should I have utility coverage and should I call citizens and your utility companies sometimes cover that. So, you get some sort of warranty added on to the purchase. And yeah, I mean, you've you've been fortunate uh with your purchases where it's like, oh, something actually did go wrong in the first two years, but you got the right coverage in place to be able to take care of those things from the education of and adding the the extra service on. What's the like nastiest, worst uh inspection horror story that you have just in in home? I don't know, homeless people inside or Well, we've we've definitely dealt with that. Uh, we definitely dealt with some squatters. Um, we've dealt with some raccoon eyes staring at us when we pop our head into the crawls and the attic spaces. Um, those are definitely scary in the moment for sure. Um, just any even some roofs, walking some roofs, some of the sheathing that you know. So, we we've developed some drone. We use drones now a lot of times too on some of these more older homes where you can you pull up and you can see the sheathing starting to to waver, right? So, you don't want to fall through the roof. I want to do that for a bad day. Yeah. Or a bad week. Yeah. You're out of business and you know then can't do anything. But um Yeah. No, those are kind of like your your every day you're as a home inspector, you're kind of aware of it, right? You're getting in a crawl space that has probably not been in in 20 years, you know? So sometimes you run into some standing water. Um and and it's we want to make everybody knowledgeable on like okay if there's a crawl space that has standing water in it we can't get in that. Um there's home inspectors across the nation that have unfortunately passed away because they've been electrocuted you know electrical lines in standing in the water things like that. So, you know, we we one have to make sure we check out the safety for ourselves and my inspectors first and foremost, but two, by finding those things, I mean, that's an immediate huge red flag that needs to get addressed. Now, is it an expensive one? Probably not in most cases. Um, you know, pest removal and remediation, things like that, not a big deal. Pumping out a crawl space and drying it out and fixing out the drainage system and all that, you know, it's always always typical to do. But yeah, those are kind of the the scary parts of the job. Yeah, it's unexpected of still water. Like you have no idea what's hiding down there. What do you think the advancement I know that you like the tech side of it uh with AI and being able to take inspection reports and getting quotes directly? I know a lot of people who are developing software um some locally like off leash constructions doing a ton with this where it's like we're in the middle of negotiation. pop it in their quoter instead of waiting a week to get somebody out there. Um, and they're they're getting pretty accurate. Have you seen some of that stuff? I have. And even our software that we currently use, um, there is an AI feature to it that, uh, essentially helps kind of write it a little bit better. um you know so you know some of them I utilize sometimes we don't but you know there's we use it to kind of more clean up our report make it more um understandable easy easier to read um but yeah I mean it time is the essence when it comes to buying a home um that's one thing we always say try to if you go under contract try to reach out to Morgan uh and 5M and and say okay I got a 10day window uh to do my well We try to get you in as early in that window as we can. That's what you guys are so good about is just that communication piece of like understanding you've been there before. You know, you sometimes have that two-day window or whatever. Yeah. And like you can prioritize and move people around and Morgan's just so great to talk to. And um it doesn't have to be Morgan. I'm sure you could find other good people later if you know that you guys reach out and it's not Morgan. I don't want people to freak out. Yeah. You guys know what you're doing. Um, if someone wants to get the most value out of their inspection, uh, whether they're a first-time um, buyer or investor, uh, what should they do to make it worth every dollar? Because it costs money what, 350, you know. Yeah. So, I mean, your average, you know, single family home. Yeah. I mean, right now our average inspection cost uh for 2025 and 2026 is a little over 550, but that's with incillary services and ads on and stuff. Um you what example I did yesterday, we did a we did a very large house um up here on Gist. Um the house has been vacant for several years. Um just the sounds like the person probably inherited it but never lived in it. Um he's looking to sell it and it has a wood sheet shake roof. Um so I mean very expensive to replace. The roof is in in really rough shape. We had some foundation issues. We had we had kind of the whole gamut as far as like kind of bigger red flags. um you know that you may spend a thousand bucks on an inspection and all the you know the full gamut of what we do but he may you know I don't again we don't know what the contract does a home inspector stuff we don't see what's the end result but most cases I mean he could potentially get I mean this is an odd situation but you could get 100k off the price you know so in a in a more realistic everyday situation you spend three, four, 500 bucks on a home inspection. I mean, you typically, in most cases is probably more better answered for by you guys. You typically will see you can at least double that back in concessions or anything of that nature. So, think of the home inspection not only as the road map of what you need to take and go and what direction you need to go, but also too as an investment itself. I don't know that I've ever had someone who regretted getting a home inspection. Literally, even the new builds, like, yeah, they found some nail pops in the roof, but they had peace of mind knowing everything's good. Yeah, they sleep better at night. That was worth something. Well, I'm glad you brought up new builds because that is probably one of the most soughtafter, you know, uh Oh, it's got a they city inspects it, right? Um, so the city inspectors, they they go by code. So, city inspectors will go to a new build and they'll go through the phases as it's being built, which we do too do as a third party private inspector. We like to go and do the foundation pre-slab pour and look at how it's all set up. That's your that's your bones to the property, right? And then you go to the pre-D drywall before the drywall goes up. All your plumbing, all your electrical ran, all the HVAC's up, but then we can actually see this wall structures and the ceiling structure and everything as well. That to me is my favorite phase. Um, you would be shocked on how long those reports are. Um, no dig on any of the builders in the area. I think we are very fortunate here in central Indiana to have really good builders. Um, I think it a lot of it really depends on the project manager on site. Then if he's up able to keep up with the subcontractors and everything of that nature, but everyone's human and if you got like 15 subcontractors in the building at one day, you know, if something's going to get missed, something's going to then communication between the two contractors are not going to hit off. So, um, there's so many things and I I will say a lot of these project managers that I have relationships with is that they are all under the understanding of we just want to get make sure we have the best product for our client as we can get and it'll limit the amount of warranty work after they move in and all of those stressors as well. So, it's kind of a win-win for both parties. So, um, but yeah, we Morgan has received numerous phone calls as far as, "Hey, I bought my new build. We're coming up on our one-year warranty. Uh, we really want to order an inspection because we didn't do it, you know, through the build process, but we're experiencing some issues." Then it is get a little more trickier to work with the warranty department than it is actually the builder. When he's there on site, he has all the subcontractors at his hands and it's as simple as, "Oh, hey, yeah, let me call him over. we'll get that fixed versus, okay, I see that negative slope plumbing line. Let's, you know, let's uh and it's caused now a drip in the ceiling. So, now we have to do repairs to the ceiling and drywall, try to match the texturing of it. Also, we got to fix the flooring now. So, I mean, again, it saves each side of the transaction. It's very beneficial. Yeah, I I find it awesome on the new builds any one that I've done uh where you guys have been able to come in and give that knowledge from the ground up and then even just like having the historic pictures of where like the uh layout behind the walls is at of the studs and stuff, you can't get like exact, but if you're standing in and you blow up the picture, you can start to figure things out and uh be able to add to the house and and make renovations down the line. So yeah, I think if you're doing new construction, if it's an investment, if it is your 17th home, an inspection is absolutely worth it. Especially the getting the sewer scoped in Indianapolis. You have to do that. Like there's so much money there that that value can be added. Uh what's the best way that people can find you guys to reach out to book an inspection? So now with our we developed a new software um to where you can honestly schedule online. Um, you'll see my name and my other inspector's names pop up uh kind of in a drop- down menu and see our availability. Um, so you can do that. You can always shoot Morgan. Uh, our business line goes straight to her cell phone. We we have three little kids, but we work till typically midnight every night. Um, so you know, you may get feel free to text us when and wherever and we we will certainly get back to you. Um, but Morgan's available by phone call, text messaging, emailing, um, our online scheduler. But, you know, again, in most situations, everybody will just kind of call call Morgan, see what our first available is, and you know, if you have a specific request for one of our guys, and that's the other thing is we we have really developed um the family motto, as you said. I mean, it's my father's in one of our inspectors, it's myself. Um, and then we do have one non-family member that's a full-time inspector, but we we essentially not only I hope he feels this way, treat him as family, we have staff meetings literally every week to every other week. Um, so we we have developed to where we are getting a consistent inspection no matter essentially who's on site. So Morgan and I have kind of purposely not expanded our business just so that we can continue to give that type of personal relationship to it. Um, and I don't I don't plan to I I plan to keep it kind of nice and small and familyowned and and reliable and trustworthy and you know, you see the same faces over and over, especially as realators. Um, you you Oh, hey Nick. How you doing? Hey Chris, good to see you again today. You know, it's just that comfortability and know that you're going to get taken care of. Yeah. No, I love that. If you guys are getting a new home or buying an investment or have a problem in your current home, make sure to reach out to the guys at 5M. Uh we'll have all the information linked down below. Thanks for coming on, Chris. Thanks for having me, guys. I really appreciate it.