House Review - Site Visit without report?

[Ben29]

Would you do a cursory review of a house without providing a report? I was contacted by a man who just wants a SE to walk a house with him that he is interested in purchasing. He doesn't want to pay for a report. Quite frankly I don't want to do a report because they are so time consuming. But I am interested in walking the house to point out structural issues that I see.

It all comes down to liability, I know. So if you feel a report is absolutely required, how can you write a report in such a way that it takes less than an hour and also has CYA verbiage built in?

 

[XR250]

I think it is fine to do this if you have a contract that limits your liability. Honestly, I do verbal consultations all the time without reports.

 

[LittleInch]

Take a go pro with you and then just send him the file.

There are services which transcribe audio if you wanted something written.

 

[JAE]

Any time you provide an engineering service to a client you need to document what you provided.
Otherwise it's your word against the client's word if anything were to go wrong.

 

[TRAK.Structural]

I would at least send a summary email afterward which gives the highlights so that you cover yourself. I always price these jobs assuming I will write a report whether they want it or not, that way my time is accounted for to compose some kind of deliverable.

 

[KootK]

I do some stuff sans report. It very much depends on the nature of the advice though. I certainly don't try to specify any work without documentation. If it's more like "no, you can't remove this post without remediation", I don't sweat documentation or just follow up with a quick email.

Sometimes I do this kind of thing for homeowners in the evenings under the guise of "Pizza Money Engineering". Put my dog in the truck when my day is done, do the thing for a few hundred bucks paid in advance, blow it all on dinner and drinks with the fam the same night, never touch it again.

My crew digs the spontaneous night out and I gotta make this stuff fun somehow.

 

[SE2607]

I think it is fine to do this if you have a contract that limits your liability. Honestly, I do verbal consultations all the time without reports.

Here in California, there are no limits on liability with the exception of limiting the scope of work. When I've done an inspection it was for a specific reason (i.e., "Is this beam failing"?). In those cases, I've written a letter report, usually an email that I print, stamp and sign.
If the home owner wants you to evaluate the whole house, but not pay for a report, that should be a big red flag. I would suggest the home owner find a home inspection service, who would provide a report, probably at not much more than you should charge for going out and looking at it.
Just my two cents.

 

[skeletron]

Recommend always documenting your consultation somehow. My preference is always the standard report and if the client doesn't want to pay for the report then go to another guy. But there are ways to reduce your reporting time such as:

• Sending an email with a summary of your concerns and outlining your scope of review
• Using a memo format instead of a report. Kind of like a handwritten field review report. If I were doing this, I would have a second page of boilerplate CYA liability statements similar in style to what geotech's include at the end of their report.

At the very least send an email that outlines your limited scope and also what is outside of your scope.

I don't recommend using a GoPro and giving them the file. IANAL but from what I gather, transcriptions are probably the easiest way to make a flub.

I used to love this type of work because it seemed like decent money for an easy job that kind of floats away after its done. But more and more people were attempting to leverage my cursory review to benefit $10-50k worth of savings in their home negotiations, or they needed it within 12 hours because their terms, or they would use it as their pièce de résistance against a builder's warranty. It's so not worth the headache to under charge.

 

[JAE]

Just from my experience - there are far more engineers embroiled in lawsuits from disgruntled homeowners compared with our larger commercial, industrial, public, or educational projects.

Just because a project is a small house don't kid yourself that you don't have to be careful with what you say and do and how it's all documented.

 

[ANE91]

Verbal is fine. Written is better. I often do verbals for money-conscious clients. A verbal report is still a report, though. That’s why I maintain a “file,” no matter what. That file contains the client’s specific request, their approval to pay my fee, materials I relied on (e.g., photos, other reports, etc.), emails / client communications, relevant technical references, whatever else I need to run future conflict checks, and my own field notes, even if it’s just a scribble on a napkin.

Clients “misremember” things all the time; protect yourself from mischaracterizations, but don’t let fear cripple your ability to communicate. It’s rare that anyone is intentionally interested in your $1M insurance policy, especially if there’s a contractor they can go after, instead.

Story time: I knew an engineer who got sued for not telling the homeowner that their contractor was going to do X, Y, and Z foundation work. Owner had hired the contractor, and the contractor had hired the engineer. Owner’s whole argument was that he/she would’ve saved thousands of dollars, had he/she been afforded the opportunity to stop the contractor from doing X, Y, and Z, the means and methods of which he/she found objectionable for whatever reason. Contractor was merely executing what he understood the scope of work to be — a scope provided by the owner. Contractor goes out of business and disappears partway through the suit. Engineer was found to be on the hook for $~70k…

 

[Greenalleycat]

I just spent a day on a Negligence & Liability course and they used an example that was similar to this.
The homeowner sued the pants off the engineer and the engineer had nothing in writing he could fall back on to prove his vague recollections.

Terrible idea, I would not recommend it. What you have is a client who wants the world but isn't willing to pay for it. Any decent client would understand that they should expect something in writing. Otherwise I guarantee you are getting in for a world of hurt, especially because residential pre purchase inspections are SO RISKY at the best of times (at least in this part of the world).

Now, a reasonable compromise is that you don't write a full report and just do a long email or a summary letter or something - we have done this several times before. It's just a statement of facts/observations and potential risks. You are careful to avoid definitive conclusions as to what the client should do - that's their job to figure out.

I wouldn't even do this for friends - heck, for my own brother I wrote him a 7 page report when I did a pre purchase inspection. I really think you're opening yourself up to an excessive risk for such little monetary gain.

 

[Ron247]

I would be cautious because of your situation; you are doing your inspection WITH the Client present. They see what you do and don't do. They will interrupt your "inspection methodology" a 1,000 times with questions. You will find it hard to stay focused. Miss something, and later, in the lawsuit, there will be another "qualified engineer expert witness" saying you should have caught it.

I have had Owners present while I was inspecting for the Buyer. I note a crack in a wall, and here comes the statements and questions from the Owner. "A lot of houses have cracks", "Been that way for 20 years, so it is not a problem", "Why are nitpicking everything, this is a 20 year old house", etc. It is similar with a Client, "Is it going to get worse?, "how do i fix it?", "Are you sure this is a problem?", etc. I have a "Leave me alone and let me do my job" speech I had to use just about every time. I allow the Client to point out a concern, like a sloped floor, but that is it. I won't get into all the facets of it during the inspection. For Owners, I tell them they can leave me alone and let me do my job, or I can leave. I have left several times.

But in all cases, I wrote a report. If you do it without a report, you better have a really good contract with definitions of simple terms like "readily visible", "visual inspection" etc. Defining "visual and accessible inspection" that you are doing also needs you to define a more aggressive inspection that clearly states you are NOT doing but can for an additional fee.

 

[XR250]

I just spent a day on a Negligence & Liability course and they used an example that was similar to this.
The homeowner sued the pants off the engineer and the engineer had nothing in writing he could fall back on to prove his vague recollections.

Terrible idea, I would not recommend it. What you have is a client who wants the world but isn't willing to pay for it. Any decent client would understand that they should expect something in writing. Otherwise I guarantee you are getting in for a world of hurt, especially because residential pre purchase inspections are SO RISKY at the best of times (at least in this part of the world).

Now, a reasonable compromise is that you don't write a full report and just do a long email or a summary letter or something - we have done this several times before. It's just a statement of facts/observations and potential risks. You are careful to avoid definitive conclusions as to what the client should do - that's their job to figure out.

I wouldn't even do this for friends - heck, for my own brother I wrote him a 7 page report when I did a pre purchase inspection. I really think you're opening yourself up to an excessive risk for such little monetary gain.

It is hard for me to believe any judge would side with the customer on this. It is a he said - she said situation. Especially since the customer chose not to get a written report.

 

[XR250]

To be fair, I would never evaluate an entire house anyway. Way too much liability there.

 

[Greenalleycat]

It is hard for me to believe any judge would side with the customer on this. It is a he said - she said situation. Especially since the customer chose not to get a written report.

In this particular example the judge did not fully side with the customer who had magically produced 5 pages of notes years after the inspection which apparently led the judge to doubt them somewhat. So they did not get the full settlement. However, the engineer still got hit with a big fee because they had nothing in writing and couldn't remember what they had done years after the inspection.

Several times during the course we debated whether it was fair to sue the engineer for whatever had happened in a particular case study. And the lawyer had a very fair point: the engineer may well have managed to defend themselves in the case, but the whole point is that YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SUED.

Doing a pre purchase inspection and not issuing something in writing is just downright dangerous. You are opening yourself up to be sued. And yes you could maybe defend yourself well from memory if it happened in a month....but what happens if it is 5 years down the track and you have nothing in writing?

 

[Ron247]

Winning the lawsuit 100%, will still cost you $16,000 at least to your lawyer.

 

[Eng16080]

It all comes down to liability, I know. So if you feel a report is absolutely required, how can you write a report in such a way that it takes less than an hour and also has CYA verbiage built in?

Even for something small like this, you should have a signed Agreement before doing anything. Most of the CYA verbiage should be there. For a quick house review (don't use the word inspection), it should be made very clear that structural problems may very well be missed by you during the site visit. Many problems are hidden, and others which aren't may still go unnoticed, especially if time is limited.

In terms of writing a report in under an hour, I have no idea. I tend to be really thorough (and slow). The best I could do would be to get back to the office, organize my thoughts and notes, and write a brief, yet concise, email. Personally, I wouldn't leave anything of importance to only verbal communication. An email is far better. The client will forget what you said or misunderstand what you meant, you'll forget what you said in a few months, etc.

I occasionally do these sorts of jobs and don't feel there's an unreasonable risk provided I do the things noted above.