BUYERS BEWARE!!! John inspected our split level Urbana house we purchased in 2021. We chose him…read morepurely off our realtor's recommendation as this was our first home purchase. The first red flag was that he insisted that we did not attend the inspection. Now, this was 2021 and COVID-19 was still somewhat of a hot button issue, though with a vaccine out and available to anyone by this point, it should have been more obvious that this was going to be some sketchy work. He said in the email that he cannot legally keep us from attending, but would essentially have to remain out of the same room as him as he did the inspection. Nevertheless, we figured he was just still super cautious about the disease and wanted to keep more than the recommended distance at the time and decided we would comply with his request. Inspection came and went and we went through the buying process with few concessions. After close, we started to see how he missed stuff as well as blatantly lied on the report. I almost got electrocuted trying to install a new dishwasher because he failed to notice uninsulated wires pulled out of a electrical box under the sink. Had an electrician put wire nuts on the wires and close it up. We went to start the hot water heater, which he said in the report was functioning properly, and the pilot light would not stay on. Had a plumber come look at it and they said the thermocouple was broken and would kick out the pilot. I asked the plumber if this would have broken in the 2 weeks or so since the inspection and he said it was very unlikely. The worst ones are to come. John noted that there was no roof damage. Two weeks in, water started leaking into our kitchen. Had a roofer look at it and they said there was rot under that area of the roof. Asked if a home inspector should have know about it and they said absolutely, no possible way it developed between the inspection and then. If john had actually looked in the attic, he would have seen that plain as day. Had to pay a roofing company nearly 3 grand for that one. Most frustrating one, which full honesty, cannot be 100% the liability of the home inspector as we took his advice and should have checked it with others, was the crawlspace. There was a broken sump pump in a bucket buried in the dirt at the lowest part of the crawlspace when we moved in. John noted that it did not work, but was not needed. This caused us to not concern ourselves with fixing or replacing it with a proper sump. Four months after closing, we started noticing that our basement carpet kept getting wet, but we thought it was the dog at the time. Poor puppy as it was actually the crawlspace next to the basement filling up with water and flowing over and down into the basement! We didn't know this until the entire carpet was wet! I ran to the store and grabbed a pump to start getting water out of the crawlspace. We had to rip up all the flooring and replace it, as well as installing a proper sump in the crawlspace. Unfortunately, our HOI did not cover these expenses and we were out another 3 grand in repairs, plus the sump install. Note: we did reach out to john when these issues started happening (before the roof leak or crawlspace issue) and he offered to refund us, but only if we signed a very shady document where we could not sue him for any future issues due to his negligence. We obviously saw right through that one and did not sign. Tried to reach out to a number of lawyers and no one was interested in taking the case, my guess is because the settlement would be relatively low in the 10's of thousands and not worth their time. The cherry on the cake is that our realtor sent us a bottle of wine after closing with his and Pristine's logo on it. Obviously they get some kickbacks from working together and are probably just drinking buddies. Bottom line, if you are a buyer and your realtor recommends Pristine, fire them and find someone else! TO Sellers: You probably can't go wrong getting a pre-inspection done by Pristine. They will make sure they find nothing wrong with your house and hopefully your buyers don't read this review!

One of the worst compounds central Illinois to use for inspections. Shoddy work. Dishonest…read more Unprofessional. Not trustworthy in the least. Does not stand behind his mistakes Absolutely the worst. Missed multiple issues through my 10year old home including damaged framework from insects. Simple thing not even looked at. GFIs bad, completely rigged wait filter broken faucet rotted frames Avoid like the plague