HouseMasters is a franchise business - this review is for HouseMasters Home Inspections, Albany,…read moreNY. Marcus Rotundi was our inspector. We hired them based on a recommendation from a trusted acquaintance.
If your goal is to learn more than which outlets in the home work, water comes out of the sinks, and the toilets flush, then DON'T HIRE HOUSEMASTERS!! Their contract has a ton of small print, in which the list of things they DON'T review/inspect is longer than the list of things they do inspect.
We didn't realize they allot only 2 hours per home inspection, regardless of home size. This is not the first property we have ever purchased and had inspected, so we didn't expect such a short time limit on the inspection. In the past our inspections have taken 3-4 hours and the homes were smaller. The home HouseMasters was inspecting for us was 3900 sf. In order to stay within the time allotment, Marcus was running all over the house. The thing he spent a huge amount of time on was checking to see if the outlets worked and was extremely concerned about which switches were 3-way switches.
As a result, there were many things overlooked or glossed over during our inspection..
1. During the inspection we asked Marcus to take time to explain the heating system to us. He said he would as soon as he finished the inspection. That didn't happen, instead at the end of his inspection he said that overall the house was in good shape, as it was only 10 years old, but there were a few things that needed to be addressed (broken a/c, no ventilation in the garage attic & missing soffit), and that everything we needed to know about would be in his written report.
2. Within two days of closing, we discovered that the hot water heater was leaking. This was not in the report. When I contacted Marcus/HouseMasters to initiate a warranty claim I was told that unless the report noted that the item in question was determined to be 'satisfactory,' the warranty wouldn't cover any claim. Of course the item was marked 'fair' with a note that said "Rust and corrosion noted. System was functional for age at time of inspection." That's correct, it was functional. What was missed was that it was leaking, therefore in need of immediate repair! Cost for replacement that should have been part of our renegotiation with the seller: $1500.
3. For the heating system, which is a propane boiler, all Marcus did was turn it on to see if it ran and in the report said we should have the boiler cleaned/serviced. The furnace did run at the time of inspection, however, what would have been checked by any other home inspector was whether all of the circulation pumps were also running. This wasn't done and on the day after closing we discovered that 3 circulation pumps were bad (one had no guts in it). Cost for repair: $890.
4. During past home inspections we've had, in addition to the exterior of the chimney being evaluated, the interior of the chimney was at least looked at with a mirror. During this inspection that was not done - his report stated that the chimney linings were "not seen or evaluated." Had it been done for the flue used by the wood furnace, the inspector would have noticed that the flue was completely blocked with creosote. Had we known this, we would have had a certified chimney inspection done before we completed the purchase. We have since had that done. The verdict is broken flue tiles, which now require a costly ($4,000-$6,000) repair for which we are still obtaining estimates.
I can continue to go on, but I've noted enough here. The more I write the more frustrated I get.
