The First Home Inspector

DSCN8213  Up walked a mild, thin, quiet and smiling older fellow, as we were catching up with Ron Passaro, better known as ASHI inspector #1, at the ASHI national convention last week (1/12-15/14).

“Welcome to the first home inspector,” Inspector #1 beamed, greeting John Heyn.
“You have go to hear this guy’s stories.”

THE FIRST HOME INSPECTOR

Part 1 – The History of Home Inspecting
© 2014 by PLI and Steve Keeney

ASHI Inspector #1 was right. John J. Heyn is a gold mine of home inspecting history, and how we all got started.

Heyn placed the first ad to inspect homes – for a fee – in the Baltimore Sun in 1968. Which makes it the first time we have found a home inspection advertized for a fee.
At the same time, he printed a brochure. He hardly used it.

1st HomeInsp-back-21st HomeInspector-2The brochure – shown here – was subtitled “We Inspect Everything.” The fee — in big red type on the back — “for the Inspection and report” — was $35. You read right. $35.00. “It can save you a lifetime of headaches and expenses!” (In case you’re wondering, that $35 then is $234.30 today, in 2013 dollars. 2013 is the most recent year for fully corrected consumer price index inflation numbers.)
He never used that brochure much because the ad was so successful, he was swamped. He printed a new brochure – and raised his price to $50. (That’s $334.71 in 2012 dollars, by the way. So if you’re charging less than $335 to go out, you are cheaper than John”s 50 bucks was back then. You’re backsliding. Want to know more? Check the link at the bottom of this article.)
Heyn called his company National Home Inspection Services.

First Home Inspection Report

InspectReport-1

In Aug., 1971, John was hired to inspect by the Consumer Crusader of the time – Ralph Nader. Nader is the man best known for his 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed, about hazards in Corvairs.

Unsafe At Any Speed

 

 

 

 

 

In December, 1973, Heyn testified in a U.S. Senate hearing in support of Sen. Phil Hart’s “Truth in Housing” bill. Hart (D. Mich.) succeeded in passing the country’s “Truth in Packaging” law for consumer products, but died of a heart attack in 1976 before “Truth in Housing” passed too. One of today’s Senate office buildings today is named the Hart           Senate Office Building, after him.
John always wore a tie and jacket for his home inspections.
John’s inspection report was one page. He had space for a 3-line summary at the top. Then there was space for another 3 lines of notes, under each of 8 headings – Roofing, Exterior, Interior, Plumbing, Heating/Cooling, Electric, Basement, and Foundation. He had a short “limitations and conditions” notice on the backside of the page.

Then he signed and dated it, under an italic sentence that said “I hereby certify that I have no interest, present or contemplated in this property its sale or its improvement and that my inspection compensation is not contingent upon any reported conditions disclosed in this report.”
Now you have a pretty good idea where ASHI’s SOP actually came from.
He used pay telephone booths to return calls (no cell phones back then). Reports were on NCR “carbon” paper — no email then. He used printed City Directories to find houses.      You guessed it: no GPS either.
“There were no mold problems, no Radon, no asbestos, no lawyers,” John said. “It was a good 10 years before I heard from a lawyer – and I missed a few cracked heat exchangers and window ropes, I know.”
Before starting his home inspection business, John wass a homebuilder and remodeling contractor.

     A class John led at the 2014 convention on “The History of Home Inspection” drew maybe 20 people — all senior inspectors even older than Steve. John looked great, was sharp as a tack, and ran a delightful session.

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If you have not raised your fees in years, it is easy to see what you old fee will buy today. Go to http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm.

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By most accounts, John Heyn was the first home inspector (working for a fee). His first ad ran in The Baltimore Sun newspaper in 1968. Steve is still working to build a list of everyone inspecting in those years, anywhere in the U.S. If anybody knows of any ad for a home inspector the same year or earlier, please contact Steve or the PLI office.
In particular, if you have any information about Arthur Tauscher, or Home Inspection Services, of Long Island, NY, we would be grateful to hear from you. Tauscher appears to have been inspecting for a fee very near the same time.
Special thanks to John Heyn for the copy of his first brochure he gave us at the convention.

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