As a very young and inexperienced engineer I have a question here for those answering this topic that is more of a situation than question. If you do in fact want to make money as an engineer on the side, and occasionally wouldn't mind walking through homes with someone. If not to say, "yes the floor/roof/whatever is likely supported like this so if you wanted/need to change/fix it you may end up needing to do such and such", at least just to tell the homeowner what you may see that is alarming but may be a non-issue upon further inspection. How would you do this? It seems like the answer to this question and similarly OP's is "don't, the client is not your friend and any desire to help should be disuaded by the possibility of being sued by those both too ignorant and arrogant of what an engineer can and can't do". Beyond the money, doing something like this does seem fun as a little side job and also even charitable in being able to give people your opinion in the hopes that it helps them buy a home. But, if the result is just litigation ending in stress, lost time and money, and even licensure issues then it seems ridiculously difficult to even TRY and be a 'good' engineer in this way.
Agreeing with JAE: if you have ANY engineering side hustle, have it very clear where the liability sits, how it's insured, how it's limited, who is the experienced engineer in charge etc. I have an engineering side hustle too but I know the answer to all of those questions so it's ok.
In terms of helping people...I am a sucker and have helped many friends and family buy houses, which is harder than in most areas due to the complex post-earthquake insurance shitshow here. I love it and I love to help people, and worst of all I never get paid for it... My key thing is that anything important goes in writing and I do my best to stick a disclaimer/clarifier at the start. I also make sure I have chats with them in person so that they understand that there is risk to me in helping them, and that they are on the same page as to how much an engineering inspection can/cannot investigate.
A tip I use for doing site visits is to show people the kinds of things that I am looking for. That way you can argue the inspection is 'educational'. Sticking a laser on cladding to see if the bricks are level, taking measurements on floors and benches to see if the house has moved, getting into subfloors or roofs, shining a torch over walls. Show your client and talk them through why it is important. Tell them that you are there to highlight obvious risks, not to tell them whether they should/should not buy it. If you strongly feel that a place is bad, you can use wording like "I would not buy this myself based on what I have seen today" or "If my own son/sister/whoever asked me for my opinion on this house I would be advising them not to buy it". My Dad uses that one a lot when helping family friends' kids with buying houses (happens surprisingly often).
Something to be careful of is that, in my experience, most people don't actually want to hear that they shouldn't buy a house. I have watched people bid huge sums of money on houses that we have flagged risks all over the show. It is very difficult for most people to conceptualise construction risks as the timeframes for the failure are usually far in the future and the cost to remediate is nebulous.
We did have one client pickup from our report that his potential house was a lemon and not buy it though, so there are occasional wins.
