Dream Home Consultants, LLC. is one of the most highly qualified home inspector, expert witness, and residential building consultant in the Jacksonville Florida area. Read further and contact us to learn why we make this bold statement. We may be a little more expensive, but we provide exceptional overall value.
You Get What You Pay For
Thorough
Bruce inspects areas of attics and crawlspaces that are reasonably and safely accessible. These are the places where many major defects are located. The best and often the only way to find defects is to get as close as possible to them. State and national inspection standards allow inspectors to inspect attics and crawlspaces only from access openings and service platforms. Some inspectors do this more limited inspection, but it is not the best inspection practice.
Bruce walks on roofs that are reasonably and safely accessible. Experienced inspectors agree that the best roof inspection is when the inspector walks the roof. State and national inspection standards do not require inspectors to walk on roofs, but again, the best and often the only way to find the defects is to get as close as possible to them.
Bruce invests whatever time is required to perform a thorough and professional inspection. He usually performs only one inspection per day, so he does it well. If the inspection takes all day, that’s OK. If the report takes several hours to write, that’s OK. Bruce treats your inspection as if it were his own.
Bruce provides the most thorough and professional written report in the profession. Even the best inspection has limited value without a thorough and professional written inspection report. Bruce takes great pride and care to ensure that his reports comply with Florida Standards of Practice. For this reason and others Bruce does not use checklist style reports and we do not issue reports on site. Bruce finds that taking the extra time required to carefully consider and report about our inspection findings makes his reports more useful to all involved, and makes them more difficult to dispute. His reports:
- Identify systems and components that are not functioning as intended, significantly deficient, unsafe, or are near the end of their service life
- Explain the nature of the problem with the identified system or component (e. g., the risks caused by the identified system or component)
- Recommend whether you should repair, replace, monitor, or seek additional information from a qualified contractor regarding identified systems and components
- Cite, where appropriate, the current accepted standards upon which we base our finding and recommendation.
You get what you pay for.
Professional
Bruce’s professional education and training far exceeds that of most inspectors. Bruce holds an advanced college degree (MBA) from a nationally ranked university. He has experience and training at one of the country’s largest public accounting and consulting firms. He has extensive postgraduate education in home inspection, building codes, and law. He is a published author of numerous technical articles, and of comprehensive books about the residential building code. His education and training helps him identify, analyze, and document defects in ways most inspectors cannot.
Some home inspectors have no construction experience at all. Some home inspectors worked as trade contractors (plumbers, handymen, carpenters, construction superintendents) prior to becoming inspectors. The training of home inspectors who learned as trade contractors is limited by the experience and competence of the people for whom they worked, and is limited to their area of experience. The training of many home inspectors may be limited to a week or two of classroom work, and some parallel inspections with another inspector. Few inspectors have Bruce’s level of professional education and training.
You get what you pay for.
Experienced
Bruce designed and built over 110 custom homes, and he is is a licensed contractor. There is no substitute for actual design and construction experience when it comes to inspecting a home. From lot selection to foundation layout through final grading and landscaping, the contractor needs to know how the thousands of components in a home will interact to make the home as trouble free as possible. As a home inspector, Bruce brings his knowledge and construction experience to work for you. Although construction experience is not required to become a home inspector, Bruce holds contractor and home inspector licenses in North Carolina, Arizona, and Florida as proof of his experience.
Bruce is a certified building code inspector, and is the author of several books about the residential building code. Home inspections are not building code compliance inspections; however, the building code plays a significant role in determining what a builder must do to correct a defect. No person should inspect new homes without expertise in the residential building code.
Bruce is an American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI) Certified Inspector. This level of national certification requires that the inspector: perform at least 250 fee paid inspections, pass the National Home Inspector Examination, and have inspection reports verified as being in compliance with the ASHI Standard of Practice. Bruce has performed many more than the minimum number of inspections. Make sure that the inspector who actually performs your inspection is an ASHI Certified Inspector.
Bruce is a leader in the home inspection profession with many years of service to The American Society of Home Inspectors at the state and at the national level. He was chair of the ASHI Standards of Practice Committee for six years. During his tenure as chair, he led the projects to revise the home inspection Standard of Practice, and to develop the ASHI Ancillary Standards of Practice. His service has earned Bruce the privilege of serving as the ASHI President in 2021.
Bruce has served as a subject matter expert who helped write questions for use by the National Home Inspector Exam (NHIE). He also has served on the task force that determines the subjects that are covered by the NHIE.
You get what you pay for.
Fair
Bruce’s duty and loyalty is to you, his client. Most inspectors rely on real estate agents to refer business. This can make it difficult for the inspector to clearly identify the client. Is the client the person paying for that one inspection, or is it the agent who refers many inspections? Bruce’s answer is clear: you are the client. He owes an honest and fair assessment of the condition of the home to all parties involved; but when he must make a judgment about whether and how to report a defect (and he must make many such judgments during every inspection) he always makes the judgment in your best interest.
Bruce understands the needs of all people involved in a home inspection and sale. He has walked in the shoes of the home buyer, home seller, and home builder. While he has not walked in the shoes of a real estate agent, he has been in the business long enough to understand their needs. Bruce understands that everyone needs a fair and honest assessment of the condition of the home. An unnecessarily alarming assessment or an unrealistically rosy assessment serves nobody’s needs. Bruce always tries to be fair, and tries to balance the needs of all people when conducting our inspection and when writing the report; however, his duty is to his client, and he will make close calls so that his client’s interests are served first.
You get what you pay for.
Exceptional Value
Buying a service is different from buying a product. Product features and benefits are often available for comparison, and similar products often have similar features and benefits. It is also possible to find independent comparisons and ratings of many products. When buying a product, price is often an important consideration because you can use price to select among similar products.
When buying a service, you are buying the thoroughness, professionalism, knowledge, and experience of the person providing the service. It is far more difficult to verify and to compare a person’s features and benefits than it is to compare a product’s features and benefits. This is what makes buying a service more difficult than buying a product. For example, a company can claim features and benefits for the company if only one owner or employee of the company actually has the feature or benefit. A company’s features and benefits are of little value to you if the person providing the service does not have all the claimed features and benefits.
At Dream Home Consultants, the person providing the service has all the features and benefits that we promise. We encourage you to verify each and every one of them. When you compare our fees to the value of our features and benefits, we believe you will find that the value of our service far exceeds our fee. In fact, we are often told that we don’t charge enough.
You really do get what you pay for.