Crossroads Engineering

We were disappointed with Mr. Haslem's service. He did one thing very well: He identified serious problems with the house we wanted to buy. When we scheduled follow-up inspections with specialists, the major problems he had pointed out--with the roof, with the HVAC systems, with the electrical system, these were all confirmed by others. This is probably the main thing you want in a home inspector--someone who can correctly identify serious and costly problems. That was great. The thing that was not good is that Mr. Haslem relies heavily on the idea that the prospective home buyer will be present at the inspection. That sounds good. I didn't want to hire an inspector who didn't want us there. However, in practice, it meant that Mr. Haslem did not provide us with a thorough written report. He somehow believed that pointing to things in person and explaining things orally was good enough. It wasn't. There is both a buyer and a seller in each home buying/selling transaction. It is not enough for the buyer to be convinced there are problems with the house, the seller must also be convinced. In our case, even though we discovered that the house we wanted to buy had serious problems, we still wanted to buy it. But we needed the seller to lower the price after the serious issues were discovered. We did not have a convincing and authoritative report to share with the seller. We ended up spending a lot more money getting additional specialists to inspect and issue reports. This made Mr. Haslem much more expensive than he initially appeared to be. One other issue: I got the idea that Haslem thought that buying any home built in the 1960s was a bad idea. Naturally, these homes have more problems than newer houses, but those of us who live in built-out areas have to buy older houses. I want to know the truth about what is wrong with the house, but I don't want to be made to feel bad about buying an older house. People who want to live in our area have to accept the problems with older housing stock and do their best to cope.

I liked the fact that because he came in January and it had just snowed, he couldn't do the roof inspection. The real estate agent had him come back when the snow melted, which was good because his business was 45 miles away and he had quite a drive to come back out. He is very knowledgeable, and he had his college degree in that area. He has his bachelors to follow up, so he has actually gone to school and had a lot of credentials to back it up.