Other Posts By: Marshall Hall

Home inspectors interact with not a few animals during the course of their day-to-day work.  It comes with the job. Probably half of American households include pets some of which can present challenges. 

Non-domesticated animals can likewise give the most intrepid home inspector some memorable moments, as do skunks and snakes in crawlspaces and raccoons raising their young in the fireplace smoke-chamber.  In the attic of an old carriage house, I was once surprised, putting it mildly, to encounter two very large vultures building a huge nest up there.

Some people mistakenly assume a new house does not need a home inspection. After all, the builder commonly does offer a warranty. Based on my experience as a home inspector, I know better.

Punch Lists: Most newly constructed houses are far from completely finished. Typically, many details, some little and some not so little, need attention by the builder. The enumeration of these details is referred to as a Punch List. The home inspector can provide a Punch List to be given to the builder by the buyer.

Tales From the Road is a forum to share amusing or enlightening stories collected over the years from our inspectors.  The names have been changed and some of the details have been altered, but these are based on true events.

My good friend and fellow manager (now retired) Dale Hruby, from Virginia, shared this story with me a few years ago:

As usual, I arrived early at the inspection site and began taking some preliminary notes. Soon the buyer's Realtor drove up, followed shortly by a mini van driven by my client, the buyer. The van was expertly wheeled around into position, backing part way up the shallow slope of the driveway. This was a custom outfitted van with wheelchair lift and all kinds of hi-tech gear to accommodate the fact that the buyer, a young lady in her late thirties, whom I will call Susan, had apparently been born with some significant physical disadvantages, including being completely without arms, all of which left her wheelchair bound.