My Home Inspector Messed Up. I Was Surprised at How Few Options I Had

When buying a home, it's typically a good idea to have an inspection performed. (Even if your mortgage lender doesn't require it.) A home inspector can catch problems that the average person can't and the expert advice that an inspector provides could potentially save you from buying a money pit if the house turns out to have a ton of problems.

Unfortunately, getting an inspection doesn't always save you from big financial losses -- as I learned the hard way.

My inspector made a big mistake

When I was going through the buying process with my first house many years ago, I had an inspector assess the property. One of my big areas of concern was about a crack in the swimming pool. The crack looked pretty minor, but we wanted to make sure it wasn't going to be a big issue to fix, so we hired an inspector with pool experience.

The inspector said the crack was a surface crack that would cost a few thousand dollars, so we negotiated that amount off the price of the home from the sellers and we moved forward with getting our mortgage loan and buying the house.

Unfortunately, after the purchase when we went to make the repairs, it turned out that there were major issues with that crack that would cost over $10,000 to fix. The pool companies that visited to check out the pool noted that the inspector should easily have been able to see that and tell us about the extent of the damage.

My recourse was limited

In response to having to pay much more than I thought for the pool repairs, I contacted the inspector because I assumed they had some kind of insurance or guarantee to protect against mistakes. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

And when I talked to a lawyer who reviewed my contract carefully, the lawyer said that the inspector had included a clause in the fine print specifying that the only remedy for mistakes in the inspection was a refund of the money paid for the inspector to do the job.

This clause is common in home inspection contracts. It's called an exculpatory clause, and it makes it really difficult to get an effective legal remedy. Unfortunately, suing the contractor for malpractice or professional negligence would not have been useful, thanks to this clause. I would have only been able to get back a few hundred dollars I paid for the inspection and not anywhere close to the amount of money that the inspector's mistake actually cost me.

If you are getting a home inspection of your own, you should be aware that this exculpatory clause may be included and that it will limit the recourse that you have if the inspector messes up. It may be hard to find an inspector who doesn't try to limit their liability this way, but you can always ask before you hire one.

You should also be aware that while an inspection should still identify major issues in most situations, it's no guarantee every issue will be caught. And getting a home inspection doesn't guarantee that you'll know every problem you could face after you move in. Be sure you have some emergency money set aside before buying a home, just in case you're faced with an unexpected issue soon after buying, like I was.