I wish I never met this company
In May of 2019 Mr. Escarda was referred to us by a realtor to perform a home inspection on a foreclosed house I was under contract to purchase. We liked and trusted our realtor and had no reason to distrust any recommendation he made. Mr. Escarda seemed professional and articulate, so we decided to hire him. He performed the home inspection and noticed there appeared to have been mold in the house which was obviously of material importance to us as young homebuyers. He said he also owned a mold inspection company and would perform the mold inspection himself. He charged us for those inspection services as a home inspector and mold inspector under different companies. It was critical for us to have his inspection results immediately so we could decide if the repairs would be more than we could afford he initially promised us results the following day, it took him 3 days. We told him we could not understand the technical language in the mold report and asked him to break it down to us in layman's terms he told us in writing that the worst-case scenario would be $2,000. At that point it was our last day in the inspection period and decided to proceed. He referred a friend of his to remediate the mold issue. As we started to make further repairs on the home, we noticed apparent mold in other areas that he took pictures of but didn't test, it turns out that areas where he said there was no moisture but a previous leak also had mold. All of it was under one pipe in the attic which apparently dripped all across that line and caused mold across one whole side of the house. We had to gut the ceiling and walls of everything that ran under that pipe costing us over $10,000 more than he had estimated would be the total cost to remediate any mold issue. When I asked him about it he said when he took pictures of that leak he was doing it as a home inspector and not a mold inspector. He initially seemed to recognize his error and said he would do what he could to help but when we described the amount of money it was costing us he lawyered up and stopped speaking with us. How are we to know when he's speaking as a home inspector and not a mold inspector if he's one individual? How is it legal or ethical to hide behind that excuse to say he has no responsibility for failing to test or underestimating the cost of repairs? He started hiding behind technicalities saying the air sample would've always tested positive for mold but did acknowledge that a surface sample would've identified the issue and either we would've presented it to the seller to reduce the purchase price or not purchase the home since it put us well over budget and in debt. He refused to turn over his insurance certificate which is a statutory requirement for a mold inspector in the state of Florida. For a young family, this amount of money was considerable he caused a lot of personal damage to me. I could not more negatively review this individual and the tactics he employed after recognizing his error especially after showing him his own text messages telling us interpreting his own mold test. read more