Trade Secrets Inspections Podcast and Video Library

Hey, Sergio here Max business profits. I’m here again with Rick Kooyman. From trade secrets inspections. As you’ve heard me say in the past, Rick is probably one of the best well qualified, thorough home inspectors I’ve ever met. And coming from a guy who flips houses or used to flip houses on on a regular basis, I can’t tell you how important it is to have a good spectrum in your pocket. In our last episode, Rick was talking about the difference between being in one organization or another being qualified to these organizations as a home inspector. And Rick actually belongs to an association Fabi, which FA BI is actually less than 3% of the home inspectors here in Florida. So it’s a higher bar, it’s a higher requirement and a more thorough inspection, I would assume. So going from there, we’re going to talk about the properties themselves. And a lot to say about that, because Florida is not an older state, when it comes to development and housing and building, it’s a newer state. Most stuff here is less than 40 years all which By comparison, the rest of the country, it’s pretty young. So Rick, why don’t you get right into talking about properties? By age? You know, tell us what the deal is. I mean, old, new, pre pre 2003. I know there’s some code stuff you want to talk about and get into. Go ahead and take over.

Awesome. Great to be with you again, Sergio? Yeah, let’s let’s delve into this issue and properties? And what is the difference between new old and what is new versus old? And, you know, how is it different here in Florida than what is more commonly known? And, you know, we see a lot of people coming down here from all over the country, and they bring their presumed what they’ve lived with for the last 30 years. And, you know, that’s what they know. And, and, you know, it’s a different the biggest thing I can say to everybody out there in regards to house age, and what’s the biggest deal? And the question is, on everybody’s mind, as soon as you own properties, how much does my insurance cost? And yeah, that’s, you know, this is basically what it is to be a Florida property owner is, you know, it’s expensive nowadays, and it’s basically only going to get worse as weather changes. And these claims keep coming. And, you know, as the insurance companies are being made to write these checks, they’re going to keep making it harder and harder on getting the policies. So it all goes hand in hand. But you know, we see people come down here all the time. And they’re looking at, you know, 1985, or 1991. And there’s an assumption that it’s still, it’s been taken care of, it should still be older, but you know, I don’t mind the way the old stuff looks. And as long as it works, it’ll be fine, right. And to some extent, that is true. But to a greater extent, things age a lot differently down here, for one, a big part of that is our water, and the water does to the materials. And a nother big part of it is related to water, but it’s really humidity and temperature. And those two things together will basically dissolve everything in between

each state. When you say the water like are you talking about like a water that’s in the city water system,

or both? Out? Yeah, whether you’re getting it out of the ground through a well, or you’re getting it from the city that’s been treated. It’s all still pretty hard water. It’s all got a lot of contaminant. And it’s all very rough on the materials that are filled the faucets and pipes. And these things don’t hold up like they used to, you know, so probably, yeah, well, yeah, a big part by design and by, you know, cost of materials to produce. But there’s this this concept that this stuff used to last 20 years and now it only lasts five and that’s really the truth. It does. It doesn’t vary. There are quite a few products out there nowadays that are five to eight year products and they’re big dollar things or hot water tanks. It’s not a 25 year unit anymore. But more importantly what I want to talk about is how relative age on the market and what people are looking at can be thought of as your shopping. And you know you can do this from your desk at home and Kentucky wherever you are, I don’t know. But if you don’t know why It matters, then you just look at everything the same. And here in Florida, there’s been some stuff happen that have made things change that didn’t occur in the rest of the world or the rest of our country. And mostly, it’s due to storms. It started in early 90s. We had Hurricane Andrew came through and change the way that South Florida saw what mother nature could do. Men started it in Miami Dade counties. And they said, you know, we got destroyed, we can’t let things go back to how they were, we have to do something better. And they determined that they needed to separate themselves from the rest of the residential building code with which everybody uses and create something better. You know that that was that was acceptable. But we need more than that. So it’s not that there’s less it’s we’re meeting that and then a whole bunch more. So it’s the Florida building code. And back in the 90s, it was actually the South Florida building in the state of Florida didn’t adopt it. They didn’t actually adopt it till 2001. Politics cost of things. It’s basically just the insurance industry leveraging things. And they weren’t making payouts at that point. They were there was huge growth going on. So there was this big building boom happening. So there was there was revenue coming in, I grew up and pay for everything. Yeah. And that was the that was the good times. But when it went to the bad times, then things changed. And they changed their attitude about that. So in the early 2000s, like I said, in 2001, Florida, as a state said, Hey, this thing that Miami did, seems to be working out for them. And it seems to make sense. So how about we take that South Florida building code and make it the Florida bill. And they did. But they didn’t enact it till 2002. To just make things more complicated, I think but so here’s the bottom line, if you’re looking at a property in Florida, and it was built, prior to 94, it has no Florida building code to it at all, because it didn’t exist. It’s just built, like everything else was in some of them were built good. They knew they were on the coast, and they were, you know, well built homes. And that’s great. But those are few and far between for the most part, they were just building stick houses, like they build them everywhere else. And that didn’t make it. So in 97, it got a little better. But it was mostly down in Miami Dade and Broward counties that had improved. So really the cutoff line that people should reference is 2002. Right? So if you’re looking at property in Florida, and it’s built before 2002, it is very much built differently.

So I mean, when a lot of that be just based on local jurisdictional rules and stuff like that, like, I mean, my house is built in 92, I didn’t build my house. You know, I’m fairly secure and feeling that my house is well built. Now, of course, it’s black home, which is a completely different breed of animal than the stick home down here. But you know, it weren’t jurisdictional local jurisdictional building rules, kind of pretty good back then. I mean, good enough, let’s say, I mean, we can

code. The code was fine. But it wasn’t specific to wind resistance and uplift loads and stuff like that. They ended up products that were used, weren’t manufactured with those things in mind. So you’re built well, and they knew enough to put straps on the trusses. But did they put the straps appropriately on him? Did they use the right fasteners? You know, because at the time that was just going above and beyond and just doing stuff that made sense. Right? Right. Right. And that was great on those small build, you know, one off homes but the the the inner city track stuff that didn’t occur so much. And those houses have been retrofitted. And that’s why we have this my Florida Safe Home Program, the wind mitigation programs. These are all retrofit programs to upgrade these older homes to meet some of these requirements to resist these storms to meet the wind resistance in the windows and the roof stay on

and in quite honestly up until Hurricane Andrew I mean, even here on the west coast where we are in Naples, we hadn’t seen a hurricane, what, two decades at least, it was a very long time. Well, last time anybody talked about a real hurricane Danny was Hurricane Donna, and that was in the 60s. Yeah,

I mean, and that’s what’s that’s really what’s changed is it was a once in a decade event, if that, you know, it was a lot. And now it’s more like in every other year, we’re gonna see heavy tropical storms, you can count on it every year, I would expect it. Yeah, well, things are shifting. And you know, every year now, they make it even better. So every three months, the city is updating the codes. And the newer stuff is far superior than the older stuff, it just simply is I mean, and it goes back to the manufacturing side of things where they, they now have protocols, they now have testing standards they have, they’ve been through it enough, they’ve written the checks enough times to say, Hey, this is what we need to pay attention to, let’s make sure we build these products that actually can resist this stuff. You know, so when you’re looking at those early 2000 homes, when they were just implementing these techniques in the early 2000, building, boom, was pretty big down here. It was pretty kind of shotgun style building. And, and a lot of the stuff was done poorly. And it doesn’t meet the requirement. It’s there. But it wasn’t done correctly. And it does the requirements. In and

this point, you and I both agree at this point. I mean, the codes have changed, but we’re, you know, we’re seeing a lot of shabby workmanship anyway, I think for sure. It’s human nature to curse and do whatnot. I mean, that’s all great. Yeah, the roof will stay, the trusses will stay on the blocks. But everything else going on in between the walls sometimes are just not. You know, that’s, that’s just a function of being human. So okay, so you’ve got your pre 2003 code, you got your pre 1992, COVID, you know, beyond what 2003 To 2007 type of thing.

Where, yeah, in 2007, there was substantial changes made again, because it’s in to between 2005 and 2007, Florida got hit several times by storms. And they said, wow, we really need to get the industry on board of this meeting this code, and they really improve the product quality, you know, so 2007, things actually started to get better. Right? So when we’re looking at houses, if it’s, you know, pre 2010, in my mind, when I go out there, I’m looking for specific things to make sure that those codes were done. And those specific things were met, because they weren’t thought of as much at that point. Yeah.

And that brings up a great point that I want everybody to understand, you know, you’ve got home inspectors down here, cuz I know a bunch of them. They’ve been inspected, and I’m struggling a couple of years, they do not know what it’s supposed to look like or what to look for, for some of the stuff that isn’t up to code beyond. You know, when you’re, you’re going further back. So I’m in you

know, this is a great compliment, it brings up something that just occurred today, it was really interesting. And this is the perspective thing again, like the I was out to do an inspection. And the customer wanted to have a roofing contractor come out and check the roof. Because they had big concerns about the roof. And that’s fine with me, I’m perfectly okay with you do what makes you comfortable. I’m perfectly qualified to do it for you, that’s fine. But what I’m getting at is when the roofer got done, telling him about how he viewed the roof, which didn’t know was how, what he does as an industry is seen by the insurance industry. Because after they don’t deal with that side of it, they’re gone. It’s after the fact that these insurance documents get filled out. And they don’t know it until they themselves get the letter for their house, about their roof and they’re like, What are you talking about all this and everything. But it’s this is the point is the industry people aren’t being exposed to what is relevant to the homeowner in regard to their specific industry. Right?

Right. It’s one thing to say yeah, your roof is pretty good. But it’s another thing to say. Okay, according to the insurance company, here’s what it’s lacking or here’s what it what it needs, right exactly not affects the pricing insurance. In any case, whether or not they pay out right.

There you go. Exactly. So you have that. You have that coming from Have the so called expert, the certified license holder in that industry is lacking that knowledge. So you think the average inspector knows it? I can promise you that those guys that are just getting started that don’t, they don’t

know for sure. For sure way, way. Interesting stuff there. So okay, you brought up roofs. So we’re going to talk about, like, the useful expected life span or cycle of some of these products. Let’s start at the top I mean roofs. I mean, I go through the state like with my roof, I mean, I buy a 30 year shingle. Am I getting 30 years now? She’ll probably not Because Florida is like Mars, right? But the Insurance insurance companies saying, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, here’s how we’re going to do this. We were just talking about this in the network group today. If I referred you to a bunch of people in there, because they’re like, Well, you know, I’m not really sure why. Why is my insurance company telling me I only have three years left to life, on my 20 year shingle roof I only bought five years ago. So right now, you need to talk to as down pat. Yeah.

That’s what I call Florida math.

Florida math.

It’s definitely related to the Oh, my God, this, this gets really deep into the weeds. Because, you know, when we were asked to predict life expectancies for the insurance industry, like they want to know, when you go out and look at this roof, do you expect it to be here in five years, 10 years? You know, they want to know these things. But you know, it’s very hard for us, you know? How am I supposed to see into tomorrow and know that, right? So there’s, there’s reference charts. Because you know, that makes everything easier, right? Like actuary tables, right? But now we have different places to get reference charts from and they have different numbers on it. So you get different answers from different people, depending on what chart they’re going to use. But when it comes back to is the underwriter and the underwriter is always going to pick the lowest number, right? They’re always gonna pick a smaller note. If I say the roof has five to 10 years on it, they don’t hear a 10 day or five, direct, right? And if they hear five, from their perspective of risk, they’re only going to want to bet on that roof for one more year.

One more year, not five, oh,

no,

this is what I’m trying to explain.

Right. So this is where you got a 30 year roof product. Right? The chart says it’s only going to live for 25 years, because it’s in southwest Florida. And it’s pretty harsh environment. And that’s reasonable to say that things age quicker. And then someone else has to predict a life expectancy. So your your you pick a window, right? It’s going to be, you know, in this realm, well, the realm doesn’t exist, the only the little number exists in the insurance person’s eyes. They don’t they don’t live in the realm they live in the risk. So yeah, the roof age matters. But here’s where it gets complicated. Because you can go out here and you can buy a product, you can buy a metal roof product, a clay tile roof is an 80 year roof product, right everywhere else in the world. You know, they’re like, What do you mean, this is stone? It’ll last for 150 years? It’s you know, slate roof. Right? No, because the roof that we’re talking about, isn’t that one, we’re talking about the one that’s just under that one, which everyone refers to as the underlayment that in Florida is your primary roof covering that material is only going to live 20 to 25 years. Right.

So it doesn’t matter what the Yeah, right. So that’s great. But the the media this is where

the argument gets really weedy because now I believe a good 35 year old metal roof that’s got no issues, except for the age. And the insurance industry in the past used to say, well, we have this great roof certification program, we’re going to send out a qualified person to come out and evaluate the roof and give us an expected useful life on based on their professional opinion of that. Well, not really anymore. No, because they’re just going to look at the chart and the chart stops at 2530 years. And at that point the conversation is over.

So in essence what you’re saying is if we were going to insure somebody for their shoes, we wouldn’t be looking at their shoes. We’d be looking at their socks. The socks will tell us how Well, the feet are gonna hold up because I mean, look, I mean, go in the slate and doesn’t stop the water. We know that right? That’s not what it’s for. It’s for decorative purposes and maybe hail and stuff like that. It’s what’s underneath that. That’s

right. That’s right. And that’s because of the storms. Right? And that’s the question. People from up north always say, Well, what are you talking about? I’ve been a roofer all my life up north, of course, the shingle roof, it’s a waterproof layer. If you put it together correctly. Of course it is. Well, that’s true, until it gets 140 Miles blown on it. And then it’s not in the same configuration anymore. So it’s not waterproof. The waterproof layer needs to be the one that’s underneath that. And what happens when that covering fails due to that exposure? We’re trying to minimize that water intrusion. Because we expect that to occur. So this is where it’s different down here. Right? If you do things differently, plain and simple.

Yeah, yeah. Let’s imagine there’s something to be said there about Windows as well.

Oh, absolutely. Oh, my gosh, not only is it about the glazing is, but I mean, it’s it’s everything. It’s not just the glass that is approved and tested. It’s the frame. So there’s approvals for frames, there’s approval for glazings. And then there’s approval for the fasteners. Right. And oftentimes, the attachments are so involved, that the average crew out there, they’re not even paying attention to such things, right? Because what was what was in the what we call the Ta s, or the testing standard, rank, the testing application standard, because there had to be a program to assess things by they said, Well, we bolted this thing in with six inch screws that went five inch into a substrate, and we put them on 12 inch centers. Did you do that?

More or less? Yeah. Know, more or less, more or less? Yeah, well, we use here.

Yeah, but I mean, nowadays, these things are getting done much better nowadays. But these are the things that in the past, weren’t on that way. We never used a six inch screws putting windows and we always use the three inch Tapcon. Right. That’s not that doesn’t meet that. That does not meet the testing standard.

I was reading something not that long ago, where somebody had said it to me. And I can’t remember the exact percentage it was somewhere like 90, where they were saying 90% of most of the water intrusion in a home is going to be around the windows after a storm. I don’t know how accurate that was. It depends

on the windows and how it’s done. But yeah, again, and they’re getting better at this because they’re absolutely right. For the longest time we build a masonary wall. Right. And then we shoved a window in the hole. We put sealants all around it right. But the masonry was still masonry, it was still porous, right? And yeah, there’s always elevated moisture, we call it around windows because of that. So now the newer thing is if you look around and you drive around, you’ll notice that around all the windows, they’re sealed. They’re painting. There’s a sealant put on the masonry. It’s a waterproof, then you have right, so right, so these are the things that get changed. These are the updates that happened because Yeah, absolutely. The windows, the older Windows that don’t seal Well, for one. Yeah, I think about 100 mile an hour when separating the seals between the two windows. And yeah, of course, water is gonna go right through it. And

that’s what you know, people don’t realize too in the store, I mean, I’ve been down here enough to see enough of them. The water doesn’t come straight up and down. It’s like, it’s I never said ways. You know, just picture a firehose against the wind.

That’s what you got to think about when you’re actually assessing. How do you think this is going to handle it? Seriously, think about how it’s going to sit there and take a tremendous amount of water, like a fire hose for a few minutes. Because, yeah, it’s abusive. It’s a big deal. Yeah. You

know, not to mention, you know, you’re talking about the same firehose, blowing up the shingles and, you know, and whatnot, I don’t care what you say you’re gonna have here. Here’s what water’s gonna find a way to get in

which which you need to understand in a high wind situation, when the wind is gusting over your roofline. You have a lower pressure inside than you do outside. So the house is literally like a balloon trying to expand because of the lower pressure. So not only only is it expanding but to lower pressures our vacuum, it’s a lower pulling those things in as well as the wind, penetrating and pushing it in, because it is truly in a lower pressure situation. So you’re literally sucking the roof off the house is what happens in hurricane. Okay,

well, we can’t really wrap up. But one more question before that because I was just thinking about this. I see a lot of these roofs they have these cap fins on the top of their ridges. So I can’t imagine that’s a good thing as far as when you’re talking about a storm.

Yeah, ridgeline vents, very particular to wind driven rain intrusion. And it goes all the way across the house, like right in the middle across from one wall to the other. It makes a water intrusion waterfall. And yeah, is sometimes it’s really bad on metal roofs if the cap off incorrectly, you got a slick metal surface, that water is just being rushed up that surface and it goes right up into the attic. And we see it quite often. And it’s devastating. For sure. So

and being you know, being the Inspector, I know you are I mean, that’s kind of probably one of the things you’re looking for up in those rooms. And whereas another inspector might go, yeah, it looks good to me. I mean, there Look, I’ve I’ve we had enough houses to know what I’m looking for when I get it.

Yeah, it’s not enough for me to go up and say that it’s vented great. But we’re baffles. Right? What are you talking about? I’m like, well, they’re optional. But they shouldn’t be.

You, representative. Okay, we’re going to wrap up this session. I’m Rick, let’s tell everybody how they can get a hold of you. And again, Rick is available for home inspections, whether you’re buying, if you’re selling, you may want a home inspection, I firmly believe before selling, because especially in this market, this market may be changing. You don’t want to get hit with a surprise. You know, prior to closing, if you’re trying to sell your house, you kind of want to know what’s wrong with it, you know, because these are going to be points of negotiation on the contract. So

if you want to older home, if nothing else, think about getting a four point done ahead of being asked for it. So that you know, before you have a 10 day deadline to get all the stuff done that makes it insurable thing done. Because, yeah, people have seen this all

the time, I’m seeing people scrambling for sure. You know, and then getting hit with a 678 $9,000 bill, because they didn’t have the foresight to take a look at the stuff prior.

Now, we’d love to help homeowners, we help homeowners as much as we help buyers. So everybody out there can benefit from a great inspection to help. Warranty everything so you get covered for having spent the money on it. So you can’t lose. Yeah, but yeah, you can get a hold of me anytime.

I tell everybody what a PowerPoint is real quick, because we use the term some people. Yeah,

absolutely. The four point is what the insurance industry calls an inspection involves your electric, your plumbing, your air conditioning system and your roof. Those are the four primary things that they pay money to. They want to know what is the condition of those things. And there’s specifics they want to know about. And it’s not an inspection that makes a lot of sense to a homeowner. But it’s a it makes it makes all the difference in the world to what that rate is. Absolutely.

Rick, tell me your website. It’s a great website. I’ve been to a many times

trade secrets inspections.com And you can give me at 239-537-1186.

Enter your email is Rick at trade secret.com You got it. Very good. Excellent. Okay, until our next episode, and next episode, we’re going to talk a little bit more about insurance inspections if that’s okay, Rick, sounds great. Once we’re talking about the wind, man, we’re probably gonna get a little bit into the four point inspections, and why all this stuff really matters to everyone now that

people are getting caught off guard by this left and right because it’s affects every homeowner in Florida at this point. If you haven’t gotten if you haven’t been woken up with the insurance letter yet. You’re you’re going to your time or time doesn’t matter.

Okay, Rick, thanks a lot, and we’ll catch you on the next one.

Awesome. Thank you

Welcome to the trade secrets inspections podcast because you need to know, here’s your host, Rick Kooyman. Welcome back, awesome listeners. And viewers, Charlie McDermott, co host producer of the show here, as always with Rick Kooyman and Rick, how you doing?

I am excellent and awesomely happy to be with you again.

And, and, you know, I think we’re all doing excellent because so far so good. It was a close call with a recent hurricane. And I hate to even say it after last year, but so far, it’s

just got to be prepared and expected I think Florida is a wet place

the good certainly outweighs the bad. And speaking of the bad, the big bad mold thing. I mean, it gets a lot of play during the hurricane season and right after Hurricane, you know, certainly leaks and all that. But you know, it’s just, it’s just always out there. Right?

Yeah, it really is. And, you know, the big part of the topic or what I wanted to talk about it again today is it really affects us health wise. And it’s awesomely around us all the time in our homes, and we don’t even realize it. And because it’s you know, just part of our daily exposures. We don’t realize that it’s the thing that’s causing the irritations respiratory distress and headaches. Everything from hair loss to depression.

Dang hair loss too Holy moly. Yeah, you know, our our environment plays along it being cheese, the recent wildfires fires, I guess they’re still going on. But you know, we were not we down here in Florida. But folks up in northern part of the country were told to stay indoors. Right. Yeah. And because of the air situation problem, unhealthy. Right, right. But we could be in a home in southwest Florida, not even knowing that it’s possibly worse than what folks are dealing with. Up north and they knew about it see the unknown, right?

Yeah, you know, people don’t even think about it, we we really live in our homes down here close up most of the year. I mean, everybody comes down here for the wonderful environment. But you know, ultimately, it’s hot and humid. And really, you don’t want to keep your interior your home in those conditions. So ultimately, it’s closed up most of the time. And that’s the, that’s where we spend the majority of our time, especially sleeping, we don’t realize a large percentage of our life is spent just resting in an ambient environment that’s a player and how we feel throughout the day. Yeah, it’s a big deal.

So what do you recommend, you know, whether you’re a homeowner or or condo or whatever, you know, because my daughter is in a condo, her and her husband, and they just went through a situation where the roofing company kind of messed up. And they’re three, three storey building, they’re on the second floor, and they had water issues, and mold was a big question mark, and no one really seemed to find it. Interesting. Yeah. And, you know,

it becomes a dirty word literally. And honestly, that’s, that’s a big deal. Because, you know, our exposure over a very short period of time becomes its own issue. You know, most of the items in our homes, the stuff that we build our, our residences with, we basically say that they come prepackaged with the mold pre installed, it’s just because it’s basically around us everywhere. I mean, unless you’re in you know, a sterile environment, which is basically a hospital kind of condition. It is around us it is there, it’s just waiting for the conditions to come together for you know, to become the life form that it wants to be but basically, you know, you start with, you know, even not even a roof leak, but a clean water leak, you know, you can have, you know, your your source of water from your sink, that you drink, you know, become an issue in your cabinet or on your floor or you know, your your refrigerator, icemaker line leaks. And, you know, legitimately after 24 hours of that water being on your surfaces, it’s no longer clean situation. It’s considered a category two water or you know, like a grey water beginning of the sewage stage of things. So, yeah, within within a day, you’re looking at a possible problem begins so it often doesn’t get realized that quickly. And, you know, it’s it’s weeks or months later, and people are like, Oh, is it a problem, it was a problem a long time ago. So it’s a, it’s a latent issue that it just sits there dormant, and then it gets kind of triggered, and people don’t quite pick up on it right away. Especially in our human environment here, I would say, one thing to pay attention to is your air conditioning system, I mean, take a look at your, at the grilles on your ceiling ducts on your supply side. And the return, you know, when you’re changing your air filter, stick your head up under there and look at the condition of that heat exchanger that coil in there. It’s not shiny and clean. It’s, that’s what you’re breathing. Right? That is you that is your air source coming through there. That’s past the filter. So after that, it’s kinda like what we say about water, you don’t filter it, you are.

Interesting. Interesting. So, recommendations. Yeah, I think it’s semi obvious, but I don’t think extremely obvious, you know, if we’ve had water in the home or in the residence, sometimes we cleaned it up and go, well, we should be good, you know, put a fan on it and, you know, looks dry now. You know, is this in situations, like you said, homes come you know, prepackaged with all the you know, it’s like, just that water, and maybe it’s water, we don’t see, this is something we shouldn’t be doing on an annual basis. I mean, just just as part of like everything else, you know, we go to the dentist on a regular basis to keep our teeth in our mouth and, and all that.

And not only just in the mold area, but interested in your indoor air quality, you know, and adding radon to the conversation. Another podcast here we can dive into what Radon is. Yeah, this stuff changes, you know, year after year, and the conditions of, you know, everything from the water table to the air. You know, what is, you know, ultimately hot and dry year or cool and wet year? You know, those things all affect what’s going on in our interior source or interior environment. So, yeah, I mean, you go in for a yearly physical, I would say that every, you know, at least every couple of years, you should have your interior evaluated. Even if you don’t have radon, you could have radon develop over a couple year period and the conditions change.

And I’ve heard stories of and here we go talking about radon now, but the was it the marble cabinetry or the sleet and rain? That can be a

source of radar? Yeah, radon comes from uranium and uranium is basically a stone. Right? So any of your earthly stone products, you know, whether they’re processed or granite polished, the other potentially radioactive

stuff for sure. Not funny, but holy moly, yeah, you

just don’t realize it, but we live with it, you know, and it’s kind of like why we moved out of caves, ultimately wasn’t a healthy place. So

what do you do? I mean, if you find, I mean, one, is that something that you should test before you invest it? It just goes out, you know, a stone top? It’s not cheap. I mean,

all right. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it’s it. It’s incorporated in the new construction to some extent, and the builders won’t let you test for it until you own it. But yeah, absolutely. It’s your home, it’s your interior source, your space, and you should absolutely know what you’re living, for sure. If you have water issues in your home, and it’s been there for a while, and all you did was put a fan on it, or you know, put a dehumidifier in there and dry things up. You most likely have a hidden or latent mold issue in there, that is probably have some bit of an irritant or you know, an allergen is a better word to put it as people kind of respond better to saying, Oh, it’s kinda like an allergic reaction. Yeah, it is. And you know, some people are more sensitive than others to it. But basically, that’s what’s going on. It’s a response to what’s in the air.

And then we see that black area, and probably the knee jerk reaction is grab a bottle of bleach and

you know, tonics is a wonderful product. It’s basically a dilute bleach, which is a great cleaner and is effective. The problem is, is that it doesn’t get rid of what is going on that you don’t see. So it’s kinda like, you know, cutting the flowers off instead of pulling the weeds right So you got rid of the black stuff on top. But the fungus, which is what mold is, is a fungus, it has a root system, that that root system was probably developed into the material. If it’s any kind of a semi porous or a porous material, it’s very difficult to get the most out of it. It’s a hard surface a tile, a metal product, a porcelain, you know, a non porous, that bleach product is a perfect item to remove it, get it off, and it should absolutely do the job for you. The problem is, is that we mostly have semi porous materials, which includes the grout, and there in lies, you know, the mold in our showers or the car, it’s, you know, it’s in there, and you’re not going to get it out, or you’re not going to treat it to make it go away. And that’s kind of one of the big problems that goes on down here in Florida with the houses that the damage is they get dried out, and they get chemically treated. And now they’re actually toxic from what is pesticide applied to the surfaces, right, because you put on an antifungal instead of actually a bleach. And that’s a pesticide product. And now, you’ve ever contaminated surface, chemically, you know, so there, there’s a, there’s a lot of missteps to be had in the way that mold is dealt with. And people don’t understand why it’s such a big issue to get rid of it. And really, if you have it, the only way to deal with it is to get rid of it. So most of the time those things, those items are best removed and replaced. And you disturb it, you’ll spread it around. And if you spread it around, it goes to the places it wasn’t, and you made it worse. So their incomes remediations and all the protocols and the importance of how you do it, and why we have this industry and why I have this special license to go in and do these assessments and these testings, and to be the independent voice, that’s not actually out there telling you, hey, you got to get rid of this. And that because it’s, you know, beneficial to me financially to have you have me do that for you. I’m not doing that. I’m just telling you, this is what you got going on. This is how it happened. This is what needs to be done to correct it. You know, have whoever you want. Do that. And when they get done, have someone else come and make sure that it was done properly. Don’t have the person that did it tell you that they did it perfectly. And then move on because all you did was spend money and you just push the can down the road. Yeah.

So that’s, that’s really great advice. So the and I don’t know how mold companies work, I’m assuming that maybe they could do an inspection don’t know. But to get an independent company, individually,

for no other reason, do what we call the final clearance test. Third party. Ideally, you want to separate it from beginning to end so that you have some oversight in what’s going on. But typically, no the remediators come in, and it’s not wrong for them to come in and find the source of where the water is and remove the damaged areas. Florida law says that there’s required to be a final third party test. But there’s a loophole in the law that says you know, you as the customer can say that you’re satisfied with the outcome of the project. And if that contractor can convince you that hey, are you happy with what we did? And we took the samples and our test came back good. And they go yes, it’s great. We trust you. We believe you. But you don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t know that? They didn’t include a whole portion of the job that just wasn’t included. And if you don’t do it all, then why do anyone?

Wow. Wow. Good, good advice. Speaking of which, anything else that we should know when it comes to, to mold

are we basically say, to give it a little bit more respect than most people are generally willing to understand that it’s present in all of our environments. It’s just to what extent it is. And it’s not that it’s the cleanliness of your house necessarily, but sometimes it is, but you know, independent third party, just come in there and tell you what’s going on. You know, it’s kinda like that physical things you go to yearly just to have someone say, Hey, you should think about this.

Love it, love it. So once a year, add it to your list folks. Get the mold situation. I get peace of mind. I mean, if nothing else, and more importantly, it’s those invisible invaders And she’s you think about I mean we eat three times a day but we breathe every so many seconds you know? So yeah. All right. I

love the line of no filter be a filter.

Yeah wreck for those who want to talk to you more about mold maybe getting you over to to do one of those tests what’s the best way for folks to get in touch?

Oh simply give us a call 239-537-1186 You can tax me you can email me at Rick at trade secrets inspections.com I’m pretty easy to get a hold of. Awesome.

Well, thanks again, Rick for your knowledge and sharing really important. Yeah, really important topic. And we go get out there and get them. I mean, keep keep homeowners from being a filter, and condo dwellers and everyone else and we’ll talk to you soon see, right.

All right, you too. Thank you, Charlie.

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections go to www.tradesecretsinspections.com or call 239-537-1186

Charlie  

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast because you need to know, here’s your host, Rick Kooyman.
 Hey, Charlie McDermitt here back in the studio with Rick Kooyman. And Rick, how you doing today?

Rick

I’m doing excellent and great to be here again, Charlie.

Charlie  

Yeah, you kind of tease me on a bit here. And I can never get enough of this topic more. So from a knowledge standpoint, not necessarily do the you want this four letter word. So let’s get into it. Right what do you have in store?

Rick 

Yeah, we’re gonna revisit mold and living with the fungus in Florida, you know, we’ve got all this hot, humid, and all this plant life around us. So it’s something that we got to live with and know about. It’s all it’s among us, whether we like it or not, as a business, we’ve expanded a little bit and are starting to specialize in in the field of mold and bring a little bit of information to the public here. Let everyone know what’s going on and what they can do, what’s available for them and what to look out for.

Charlie  

It’s awesome. And congratulations. I know, just as our listeners know, from your previous episodes, you you don’t stop. I mean, you’re always learning and growing and finding the best way to help your clients. So well. Yeah. Congratulations. So fill us in. Let’s talk about mold.

Rick 

Yeah, that’s okay. So in the state of Florida, as we all know, here, mold is definitely an issue for us. As far as the state goes and dealing with it. They’re very specific on who and what and when can deal with it. Specifically, like you said, the four letter word are as a home inspector, I’m literally not allowed to use the word mold unless it comes from a laboratory test result. So really, yeah, it’s that litigious have a topic of that. If I say the word mold, I need hard evidence that that’s actually a mold, right?

Charlie  

I had no .. I just assumed that was part of the process. Wow.

Rick 

Yeah, really, it’s really that touchy. So we wanted to get into that a little bit more as a business. And we went ahead and got what is called the Florida State Licensed Mold Assessor, so that we can actually use that four letter word now. So when I see that stuff, I can say, hey, you’ve got a mold problem, let’s talk about it. And let’s talk about why it’s here and what we need to do about it in that world. There’s all these terms, then. And then now we have all these different companies that get involved, and they’re going to come to the confusion right away. So right from the beginning, everybody asks, as a home inspector, don’t you look for mold? Or don’t you test for mold? Or isn’t that involved are included in the general home inspection? And as a general answer Yeah, absolutely, we do always include whatever we visually can identify, in all inspection reports, that inspection is a more generalized inspection that covers a vast number of areas and topics and, you know, systems. So it’s not very specific on any one thing, but it’s a broad overlook of the whole entire structure. If we find a moisture problem, that’s our typical big clue there, in the world of mold, what we are actually looking for is water, if you can generally get an idea of where water might be in Florida, you might understand why there’s so much mold, all this is around us, it’s everywhere, it’s you know, it’s friends with the forest, you know, trees, mold go together. There’s symbiotic nature they live together. It’s just part of the world. And it’s all the way it’s always around us. 

What’s the difference here is when we start to have an issue in the house, and, and then we want to deal with that. So when we notice we have a moisture problem, or we notice we have a dark staining or you know, some kind of evidence of something out of the norm growing on, on really anything, mold will grow on basically any surface, it can find a food. So if there’s dust on inorganic metal, it’ll have mold on you know, the mold is going to find its way the, mold and the food are generally always ready and there, it’s always just waiting for the right moisture, and then it’s going to grow. 

So again, we go back to the hunt for water in our environment in that which we live in to try to find where these moles might be. And that’s where the assessor comes in. So as an assessor, what we’re going to do is come in and we’re going to specifically look for any kind of temperature variations, condensation points, saturation levels of materials, we’re going to specifically focus on studying what is the moisture level of the different areas of the home and let that lead us to where there may or may not be a problem. air sample testing is great and identify stuff that’s growing and in off gassing and admitting spores. But that doesn’t identify everything that could be. It’s very common that you’ll have mold growing on a surface, and you won’t have spores in the air until you disturbed the mold growing surface, right. So there, there’s this is where we get into trouble in our homes, is it seems like oh, well, there’s mold on that wall, we’ll just go over there and tear that drywall down and throw it in the trash and get rid of it. The moment you start moving, whatever that is, that has the mold on it. It’s like baby powder, think of it, you know, like squeezing a bottle of baby powder that you can’t see. But those spores are just poof into the air. And now that’s going to travel all around, and it’s going to land basically everything like dust, right. So now, personal possessions, the interior of the other rooms of the house, the AC system, all these things can get inoculated with the spores now.

And then if you have a, if you have some kind of a leakage, say you have a plumbing problem, or a roof leak, you have basically 48 hours to get that water cleaned up, before the molds will come in and take over. I’d seen homes basically go into what we call bloom, which is where there’s a fuzz across every surface as you walk in on everything. Because there was a spore release, and there was high enough humidity in the home, that everywhere it landed, it grew.

So you literally have mold on 100% of surfaces, it gets out of hand really fast. So when that happens, that’s where we have these difference of professions and separation of licensing. The re-mediators, obviously are the people that come in are going to do the isolation methods, and remove the contaminated materials without exposing the other parts of the environment to that contamination factor. So it’s a bunch of different specialty fans and pressure isolations and isolation methods. And it’s a very specified method of removing things. And then cleaning up what was after the contaminated materials get removed. And people love bleach, right, they just put bleach on the mold. This is always a point of confusion for everyone. Bleach will kill mold.

Let’s let’s start there. But that doesn’t remove the mold. Dead mold is still an allergenic, it will still have the same effects on you biologically as the living mold. It’s just at the moment not reproducing and growing in size. But it’s still present and you actually haven’t killed the spores. So when you walk away, and if that moisture level is still present, or it comes back, that mold will come back. You’ve done it temporary visual improvement, let’s call it when bleach on it, the remediation process, we tend to try not to use a lot of chemicals. Our basic best friend for cleaning mold is the soap the sufectant, a good a good detergent, and a HEPA vacuum. What does it mean, it means you’ve got to remove the mold, it’s the only way to get rid of it. And you got to do it in a way that doesn’t allow it to spread as you’re doing it. So it’s a it’s a scrubbing and vacuuming of all the surfaces and high speed dry out. And then we let them sit and then we come back in after we think it’s all cleaned out. And we need to retest it and make sure that that area is done clean and sanitized prior to opening it back up to the rest of the environment. You know, obviously we’re trying to keep a small problem from becoming a big problem. But it might have already become a big problem. And and really it’s about coming up with what we call the protocols for how to deal with the situation.

So that involves two things. One, what is the problem? What is the extent of that problem? And more importantly, number two, what is the rejuvenating factor for it? You know, how do we prevent it from reoccurring? Which again comes back to where does the water come from? It becomes a basic forensic investigation and trying to figure out what’s going on with the structure and how it needs to be fixed. So that’s where the assessments come in, we come in, and we specialize in finding, identifying and coming up with the methods for the re-mediators, to use to resolve the problem. And then when they’re done, we come back and clarify, or verify that the project is clean and ready to be reopened, so that you don’t just go around in this constant circle, thinking you’re clean, re exposing, and it grows back and you just end up in a cycle of, you know, the dirty shower. Yeah, yeah.

Charlie  

Wow. Wow, that really explains a lot. .

Rick 

Okay, so, in not so many words, let’s just say, if you have a mold problem in your home, if it’s less than what we say is nine square feet, you know, three foot by three foot, and that’s a total area. So if it’s behind the baseboard, let’s say that that amounts to 27 feet of baseboard. So on long living room wall, you pull off a baseboard, and you find that it’s black behind that baseboard, is a very typical thing in Florida. That is putting you at the line of where you need to get involved with the professionals, okay, it’s very easy with that amount or more, to really cause yourself a great deal of trouble. That’s where you want to reach out, find yourself a competent, licensed assessor, that you know, is associated with a good remediation cleanup company, or vice versa, we work hand in hand together. So oftentimes people will call the you know, the biggest deal is one, get the water cleaned up right away. First move you got to make is to the dry out company, get the water cleaned up, get it out of there. And then we got to figure out, did the mold become a problem and start the assessment process?

Charlie  

Good stuff good stuff. Now, I if you know, because obviously you work a lot with with new homeowners and you know, you do the inspection. I remember back in Pennsylvania where you had basements and you would go into a home or basement and just smelled moldy. You know? Is that a sign down here? Like if you walk into?

Rick 

Yeah, and yeah, those are what’s called volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. That’s literally the the off gassing of the, of the growth of the plant, you know. So yeah, that musty odor, that is the smell of mold, it for sure is telling you. So there’s so many different kinds of molds out there that you can, you can’t say what it is until you really send it off. And then even when you send it to the lab, it’s a matter of how much information do you need to know, you know, as per how much money you’re going to spend on testing at the lab, you only need to know enough to get rid of it properly. If you really want to specifically get into exactly what it is they’re gonna have to put it in a petri dish and grow it. It gets pretty expensive at that point, but it’s not necessary. But you know, what’s, what is necessary is getting in front of it, and not letting it get out of hand. And if you do and you live in it, you’re going to notice health effects. That’s the biggest thing we’re always not aware of is it does definitely affect your health, everything from your respiratory system to your emotional state. And the Depression is an is an associated effect with living in a moldy environment, you know, as much as lung irritation and sinus infections. And, you know, these we always tell people, when we get their lab reports back from the lab reports that we do for mold to take up reports directly to their family physician and go this is what toxins are living on our environment, and how could that relate to what health conditions we have? It really changes the way you know, people are being treated because that I’m seeing unknown complication in our lives.

Charlie  

Wow. Wow, man, I’m so glad you covered this certainly an important topic and, you know, again, opened my eyes to certain situations I’ve seen or heard of and taking some of the mystery out of mold, because I know that’s a scary kind of touchy subject for a lot of people and to know that. Yeah, there’s an answer. But the biggest answer is you want to do it right. Or you don’t want to make a small issue into a major issue. So

Rick 

exactly, you know, My biggest advice to people is just don’t ignore a problem. The best thing to do is reach out and ask questions, make a call, give us a call. We answer questions all day long. We’re here to help.

Charlie  

Awesome. Well on that note, I will look forward to your help and expertise in the next episode and then in the meantime and keep keep us homeowners and business owners. mold free out there,

Rick 

we will do our best.

Charlie  

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast to learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call 239-537-1186

Charlie 

Trade Secrets inspections podcast, because you need to know. Here’s your host, Rick Kooyman.

Hey there, Charlie McDermitt back in the Trade Secrets Inspections studio with none other than Rick Kooyman. And Rick, how are you?

 Rick

I’m excellent. Today, it’s great to be with you again, looking forward to another topic of discussion to help people with their purchasing.

Charlie

Without making that big mistake with this crazy, crazy market. There’s a lot of not only is the market crazy, but the actual decision to purchase without doing maybe maybe checking all the boxes that we normally would do in a market that hasn’t been as insane as this one. So love this topic today, Rick, and looking forward to you guiding us so that maybe we don’t regret or at least suffer from the “Oh, my gosh, what did I do” , that buyer’s remorse after you sign the dotted line, right?

Rick 

Yeah, exactly. You know, the, like you said, the market is really hot today, prices are skyrocketing. Demand is crazy high and supply levels are at like, all time lows,.It’s a calamity of impossibilities coming together to create this storm of buying that’s going on. So people are out there. There’s lots of people that want to buy. So you know, there’s lots of competition. And that brings on the rushed processes, essentially. So what used to be a 15 day offer period has now been cut back to, you know, as little as three days.

Charlie

I was gonna say 15 minutes?

 Rick 

Yeah, really, if that’s what you could get away with a with with that. You know, and to some extent, maybe we can help with that. So I wanted to talk about that a little bit today, and, you know, help people out with some of their options on how they can better make buying decisions, I guess, you know, yeah, yeah, that’s great, because it really is a product. So

Charlie 

a fine line, because I know a lot of folks have, have made many, many, many offers. And, you know, I probably each time you get more and more aggressive, but, you know, I there, I’m sure there are things that can be done to kind of help mitigate the risk, right?

Rick 

Yeah, for sure. You know, and like you said, you know, after you looked at 10 houses and, and put in offers on them all and lost them all the frustration level gets pretty high. And, you know, people are going way over asking prices, they’re doing, you know, escalation clauses in their offer. So, you know, that it’s a perpetual bidding war, I mean, it’s really kind of insane. You know, so if you’re gonna make those moves, and you’re gonna do it without an inspection, there’s, there’s a good bit of risk you’re taking there. And I got a couple examples of some things that I’ve seen happened to a few clients that were bout to go down that route. And then at the last minute, had a few minutes to get us in there in a day or two. And, you know, we found out some stuff about those properties, and they ultimately walked away. So you know, these things can affect you. And then, and then there’s some options for what we can do to kind of expedite things and maybe help people out a little bit. So, you know, just just a couple of examples of some things that I’ve seen, I went and did an inspection on a property that looked conditionally beautiful, it was clearly an older home that had been remodeled and all fixed up, and, you know, great showing beautiful house beautiful lot, lots of people making offers on it, you know, they were really, really excited to buy this house. And we went in and went through it. And ultimately, there wasn’t much wrong with it, except for there was not one building permit on it from its original construction back in 1986. You know, and it was like, wow, there’s only one permit on file for this home that’s been renovated, added two new roof, you know, pool, you name it. And it’s just, whoa, whoa, on here. Second, maybe you want to think about that again, you know, and they didn’t appreciate it at the time, but after they took some advice and made some calls and our, you know, couple of days later, they decided that that was, well, too much risk to take for what was a beautiful property, you know, so it was kind of like, an unseen issue, you know, really, really kind of closet issue, if you will, but not often pointed out until it’s too late. You know, maybe, maybe you get it in title. You know, your title agent might bring it up when they’re going through but I really don’t think they will either because they’re just looking to make sure there’s no black things, there’s nothing hanging open or unclear or stuff like that. So,

Charlie 

and even if they did, they may not explain the significance of

Rick 

yeah, they probably don’t even know themselves exam. So everybody involved was kinda in the blind about that, right? You know, until I said, Hey, guys, hold on, let’s talk about this for a minute.

Charlie  

Yeah, I mean, personally, I had no idea and and I didn’t learn about that until we started doing this podcast and I’m thinking, holy cow, I would have never, never asked never thought of it. It’s one of those things you’re buying a home permits why,

Rick 

right? And then ultimately, you know, insurance gets involved in you’re like, What do you mean, you don’t want to insure it, because I can’t prove anything’s age  or anything like that, or, you know, there’s just, there’s all kinds of problems that lie with that one. Another one we’ve seen was, you know, the same idea of, of a nice looking house, nothing to see. But when we did the air sample tests, you know, it came back with mold all over it, which is, you know, toxic mold. So, just because it was cleaned on, you know, and painted, painted, being now tomorrow there doesn’t mean that the problem was resolved. And again, you’re going to buy something that’s going to cost you a large amount of money as soon as you get into it and remediation costs. And, you know, a simple $250 test reveals, worlds have changed opinions on things. Let’s put it that way. Another good one down here we see often is insect damage, wood destroying organisms, you know, people are pretty wary about termites, and they are a big deal down here. But you know, there’s, there’s all kinds of stuff that can be invasive to a home other than a wood destroying organisms, you know, you can have invasion of ants, and roaches, and animals, raccoon, I mean, you name it, I’ve seen it in an attic. So, you know, necessarily want to buy those things, I don’t think. They can be cleaned up, I guess.

Charlie  

can you charge him rent? I mean, the raccoon, Are they alright?

Rick 

That’s good. So a couple of things we can do, you know, a simple, we can do an abbreviated inspection, you know, if we have a real short time window, and you just want to have a basic kind of breakdown of what’s important to insurance, we can do essentially a four point inspection for you, instead of the insurance company, which is going to tell you what it is insurance is going to think about that property. So that’s one of the primary important steps I think, is understanding the risk of how difficult it is to get insurance and keep insurance in Florida, as well as finding the property and getting the offer accepted. So there’s, there’s kind of another page to the purchasing process there. That, you know, we can point out those things in an abbreviated inspection or the four point inspection. One other option you have, that is not real. Well, honestly, it’s kind of a new thing in the industry. Because across the country, you know, the markets gone crazy in real estate. So the inspection industry’s been trying to adapt, and, and help out in whatever ways we can. And we came up with a means of doing what we can call a walkthrough inspection. So essentially, you can schedule with us to go on open house visits or on showings, and we’re going to go through with you and we’re not going to open anything, we’re just going to do a visual inspection. But it’s kinda like, Wouldn’t it be cool if you knew what your home inspector did when he was going in buying a house? How would he look at it, you know, just when he was going through it, so we can kind of do that for you. So we’re going to go through it, take a look at it through our eyes and just say, Hey, this is what I see here, there, you know, nothing written down. It’s not about saving you a bunch of money on inspections, costs, it’s just about getting the risk lowered in a timely manner. So, you know, maybe you can make the offer. After you know, we’ve gone through and discussed it. So yeah, you’re a little safer when you go ahead and say, well, we’ll do it. No contingencies, no inspections, , you know, there’s no guarantees in anything, but it definitely can be helpful. And yeah, you know, and if you think you’re out, and you’re looking for an advantage in the buyer side, you know, think about scheduling ahead of time for you know, when you’re going and looking and spending, you know, two 300 bucks on essentially renting our time for a couple hours and taking us out and seeing what we think about a couple of houses you’re interested in

Charlie  

Good idea.

Rick 

That’s those are options for you. One thing people need to know about when they’re buying, or they’re going into these contracts that are what people like to say, as is, you know, the house is as is, and we’re not going to do anything to it. Well, okay, that’s fine. You don’t have to. And we can agree that that’s the case. But you still want to have what what is in the legal world called the right to void. So before you go through closing, while you’re in escrow, you should still have the right to exit the contract without losing your deposit. So they might not agree to change anything. But you might come across things like no permits on file, and say, No, we changed our mind over the last 24 hours, you know, so big thing to keep in mind, if you are going to do an As-Is contract is make sure you do have the right to void, it is pretty well standard in most purchase agreements. But it can be excluded. And there are devious people out there who do try to tie people up as much as they can. So just want to point that out to people. So keep in mind, you can do those aggressive offers, you can plan for it, you can give us a call ahead of time, you know, and get some time on a schedule, and we’ll help you out or you know, even if you’re on a three day contract, offer, I’ve done many inspections next day, and you get your report that day. So if you’re on a 72 hour, contract, offer contract, you know, give us a call right away, and there’s a good chance we can get through it. And even if we got to squeeze in and just do an abbreviated four point inspection and get some information to you, then you know, by all means, I encourage you to do those things.

Charlie  

Awesome. Great, great ideas, suggestions. Way to adapt, Rick, love it.

Rick 

We’re here to help people. So you know, we just want to be here, let people know, you know, give us a call and let us let us help you out. Yeah,

Charlie  

yeah, you know, again, I go back to the for most folks, it’s the number one biggest investment and to be rushed into such an event and even if it’s a second home, I mean, still it ranks up there as one of your I mean,

Rick 

really, still a high percentage worth investment. So you know, it is one of the higher risk things and oftentimes people are really surprised by what’s hiding. What they didn’t know to think about.

Charlie  

Yep. Alright, thanks again. We look forward to doing this again in our next episode.

Rick 

Awesome. Great speaking with you again and can’t wait till next time.

 Charlie  

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call 239-537-1186.

Charlie  

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast, because “You need to know!”. Here’s your host, Rick Kooyman. 

And what a conversation we’re gonna have today I mean there’s some crazy things happening in the marketplace. And, you know, some Off mic conversations we had before we got hit the old record button here. And I don’t know, you know, one of the craziest, is this, rush into buying a home and not, you know, checking all the boxes of like, what could happen down the road? If you don’t do it right? So I’m setting you up here…

Rick

Absolutely, you know, there’s, there’s definitely a rush to move to Florida, it seems like right now. And I hear that the markets hot everywhere. But in general, in our areas, there’s a really high demand for new or for people wanting to become new residents of Florida. There’s a shortage of homes listed, and a huge supply of people willing to buy, and it’s creating some really crazy things happening in the market. And I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk to, you know, the realtors and the buyers out there that give a give you some ideas and some options on what you can do in this competitive market and some of the risks you might be taking that you may not be aware of. So yeah, a few minutes. You know, recently and I, when I say recently, I mean, in the last year, 18 months or so, the market prices have increased by more than 50% in some cases 100% House values have gone skyrocket, you know, properties are selling 10, sometimes hundreds of 1000s over appraisal value, you, people are willing to take, they want, they want to be here bad enough that they’re willing to spend that kind of money, and that’s fine. But there’s so much competition that the sellers are being put in this power position, where they get to say, well, you know, I have so many people offering me to take this right now, I can make some demands that otherwise wouldn’t generally happen. We’re getting offer periods, you know, people calling in with three to five day inspection periods. And, and that’s in the cases that they’re not waiving the inspection completely. And that’s what’s really concerning, you know, people from other parts of the country moving down to Florida, in particular, not familiar with, you know, the environment and what we live with down here and how it’s different. And then just stepping into a high risk, huge investment like that, when you have some options. And, and I’ve seen a few inspections just recently that I wanted to speak of, just to let people know of some of the risks they’re going through.

So, you know, let’s just talk first about what we can do for you, in the short offer periods. If you don’t have the time necessarily, or you’re not in a position to do the full due diligence inspections, there are possibilities you can call in. And there are this thing called and an informational only inspection or a walkthrough of inspection. Essentially, we go with you, if you will, on, when you’re when you’re doing your initial, you know, walkthrough of the open houses or whatever it is like that. And instead of doing an actual written inspection, we’re just walking through it with you. And going well, this is kind of what I see here. And you know, we got 10 minutes to go through this, let’s talk about it for a few minutes and give you sites but it’s not gonna save you a lot of money. This isn’t something to, you know, think you’re going to get out of spending money on buying an inspection report, it’s essentially going to cost you the same thing. We’re just getting something done for you in a quicker timeframe, or in a window where you otherwise wouldn’t be given the permission to do the inspection.

One of the other options we have, or we tell people is, you know, put in your offer. If you’re going to offer what is generally more than asking, put in a bonus offer for allowing the inspection, you know, if you let us do the inspection, we’ll put an extra 2500 bucks on top of the offer. Well, let me tell you, that’s a great, do too many inspections, that the report doesn’t come back with at least $2,500 worth of findings. So even if you’re not going to get that money credited to you, or accounted for you in the offer, you just need to know what it is you’re purchasing. So, you know, a few dollars today could save you 50 grand tomorrow and not, and just knowledge. So, you know, we have options, we can do short inspections. We’ll talk about that here shortly where we just do, essentially, what is the insurance requirements, you know, you’re gonna buy a property, if you’re looking to insure it, you’re going to probably be asked for these documents anyways, they’re documents meant for the insurance companies, and they’re hard to interpret for the layman. But we can do those documents and, and do it as sort of an informal inspection and say, Well, based on the what the insurance is looking at, these are your risks that they see, you know, it’s not going to cover the, the little stuff, but it’s going to cover the primary things.

In your offer, you can, you should have a right to void regardless of whether the customer is saying they’re selling the property as is I hear that all the time now? Well, they’re selling it as is, Well, honestly, everything is being sold as is it’s all just a negotiation.

That’s fine, they all they’re saying to you is is is their firm on their price, and they’re not willing to do anything, they just want it to be, here’s that house, and this is what we want for it. But you still have the right and the need to know what is in that package you’re buying, you know, it can be a mystery box, like a game show.

So we want to we want to put the word out there, you know, just give us a call. And let us know what the situation is. Even if you’re not in it yet. And you’re looking at, hey, we want to go look at houses and three, four days, we’re coming down next week, we’re looking to get in an advantage situation, you know, we can schedule with you early and do these, you know, pre emptive inspections, where you know, we’re not doing a written inspection. But we’re going out with you essentially and saying, you know, I advise against this property or not. And then to talk about that a little bit, the insurance stuff, you know, it basically is the four fundamentals again, you know, your your HVAC, your roof, your electric and your plumbing. These things collectively accumulate into hundreds of 1000s of ballots, roofs in particular in Florida, or they were difficult a year ago, two years ago. And they’re harder today than they were six months ago to get insurance for. You know, it honestly, people don’t quite understand that it’s not that the roof has a problem. It’s that nobody wants to take the risk to cover it or insure it. It’s brand new. Yeah, I mean, if you got a roof that’s a century older than let’s say 15 years right now. Yeah, it’s almost not. There’s almost nobody out there willing to offer you a coverage policy on it. They’ll give you insurance on the house, but the limit the coverages more coverage, water intrusion, or they won’t cover the roof, or, you know, in some cases, most of these are cash buyers right now. So the mortgage requirements aren’t necessarily coming into play.

Charlie

Yeah,

Rick

You’re still you’re still out there. $100,000 on a roof. And in today’s market are these tile roofs. So, you know, that’s, that’s not a small thing for most people.

Charlie

Wow.

Rick 

Right. So, a couple. Okay. So there’s a couple of examples. I went on an inspection a couple of weeks ago. They didn’t think they were going to do the inspection. They talked to me they decided, well, let’s let’s get you in because I could get in there quickly. They were convinced brand new, you know, great. New, newly remodeled home looks beautiful. There can’t be anything wrong with it. You know, we go in there. And honestly, the workmanship is fine, you know, the places in Okay condition is small repairs here and there, whatever. There’s only one problem. There are no permits on file.

Charlie

Oh, geez.

Rick 

Right. And at the last minute, you know, they’re like, well, is that a problem? I’m like, it’s probably going to be a huge problem. But really, what I want you to do is invest some time in finding out exactly what it is you’re stepping into. Before you proceed any further. And they did, they did. And after a couple of days, they walked away from that property, you know, and wisely so, but my point is, is, you know, three days before that happened, they were willing to hand over, you know, a half million dollars blindly.

Charlie

And, Rick just so for those who don’t understand what happens if they had moved forward with that sale, you might just going through through though,

Rick 

oh sure if you in that case situation, you know, where the city really does get involved in these big, you know, construction projects that weren’t done correctly, or legally, let’s say with permits, basically, what the city does is they say, Okay, well, you need to buy all the permits, and we’re going to charge you triple. And here’s the real hardship, we have to do all the inspections, which often means you have to take everything back apart, because they want to do the rough-in inspections, and you’ve buried all that stuff. So essentially, you’ve got to remodel that house again.

I mean, that’s a big deal. Okay, here’s another one, I went to a beautiful big home, you know, 5000 square foot home, pest control went through, and everybody said it was great. They didn’t, you know, it was fine. And I needed inspected, I talked to man to let me go through it. The back wall of the house was completely infested. And, and what was called big headed ants. But they essentially needed to take out what in the game room, the whole back wall, which was all cabinetry and big windows and it all to be stripped out because it was all full of these, these ants that were living in, what was a wood decay situation in the wall from a window leak, and nobody had picked up on it. But I went in there, and you know, I do what I do, and I look in places most people don’t. And I was like, Oh, my look at this.

And again, we’re looking at, you know, well, here’s 25 to 50 grand, before you move in, and stuff you’re gonna want to do to this house, you’re not even gonna want to come in here until all this insect stuff is dealt with. And they didn’t even know the owners had no idea.

So again, it’s just, it’s not always what you think you’re looking for. It’s actually there. So the risk is high. It’s often the case in new construction, I hear this all the time, it’s brand new, it’s got to be what could be wrong. In today’s world of these that the supply demand, the slow edge on weird things that are coming in and making it incredibly hard on the builders to get things done. Let her get the same people that started it to finish it. I mean, the complications that arise, and the things that get overlooked, because ultimately one person goes, well, I didn’t do that I’m going to do what I came here to do. And things just get compiled down. And then, you know, it’s all shiny on the outside until you start to live with it. And you’re like, well, this doesn’t work very well. And this has fallen apart. You know, it’s brand new. Do you really want to move into a brand new home and deal with a bunch of headaches? Or do you want it to be right when you move in?

That’s the kind of I mean, I’m not saying anything bad about the builders, everybody’s human out there. And it’s not really the builders or the supers or the trades. It’s the compilation of everybody’s experiences coming together. And what it takes to complete that that structure, and sometimes the challenges are huge. And you know, unless someone third party is looking out for your particular interest.

Charlie

Yeah, you Yep.Yeah, you know that.

Rick

That’s that’s the message I’m saying.

Charlie

that that peace of mind they did really provide or, you know, any home inspector worth their salt provides the homeowner or the potential homeowner, you know, it’s like you said, you buy this new house and then all of a sudden, weird things start happening. And you just you’re going Oh, my goodness, you know, is this just crazy? The beginning of you know, a nightmare.

Rick 

Here, let me add one more thing. Here’s the other thing in the hot market. People want to find like the they’re like, oh, I want to cash out of my house now. Right? So the homeowner improvements. This is what I just saw. So an attic was reinsulated blown in insulation look beautiful. The only thing problem was the trusses were completely annihilated by termites, but they were covered by insulation. So ….

Charlie 

oh, man,

Rick Kooyman

you know, and it was just like, is that shady? I’m not gonna point fingers. But it’s a problem. You know, I’m not saying that someone was trying to sell off a problem, but, you know, if you don’t know what you’re getting into, yeah, find yourself in a world of hurt. And we’re here to help. Give us a call.

Charlie

this has been great, Rick. I mean, I, again, continue to learn from your episodes and I just I never even thought nor heard of. Yeah, you know, in a market like this. Bring the inspector with you when you’re looking at homes and protect yourself, my lord. Great stuff.

Charlie  

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call 239-537-1186.

Charlie  

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast, because “You need to know!”. Here’s your host, Rick. 

Hey, welcome back to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. I’m back Charlie McDermott here with Rick. Rick, how you doing?

Rick 

Excellent. Great to be with you again, Charlie, looking forward to a new lively conversation.

Charlie

As always, as always said today, we’re gonna delve into the new construction market. At least you teased me a little bit. And I’ve heard some interesting things. I mean, the whole just building experience has completely changed, I guess, because of the, you know, whether it’s inflation or shortage of products, and you know, we just start building a home today, and God knows what it really costs months down the road here. So yeah, there’s a lot happening. Yeah, yeah. So take it away, Rick, fill us in! 

Rick

Yeah, well, let’s just start with kind of what’s going on today. I mean, like, as there’s, as we see that, you know, there’s lots of people in town, it’s that time of year. But generally, in the real estate market today, What’s odd is that there’s a serious shortage of houses for sale. Essentially, there’s, there’s just not that many listings out there. There’s far more people coming in looking to buy than there is anywhere near the availability for them to buy, which is driving prices up, obviously. But just a statistics from the real estate market is the number of listings this year compared to last year are down, we’re at 1/10. Of what was generally on the market. There is virtually nothing to buy, essentially, I mean, it’s crazy. And what that’s doing is pushing people towards the new construction market. So I wanted to talk about that a little bit today. 

But you know, before we get to that,…

…you know, just think about these numbers a little bit. Collier county, we have just about 400,000 people in Collier County as of 2020. And Lee county, we have over 800,000 people in Lee County. So just between Lee and Collier, we’re over a million people. Right. And that’s growing every year, of course, and it actually is growing fairly steadily. I mean, it’s not like there’s this huge spike of people, all of a sudden coming down here. I mean, if you look at the numbers, they’re pretty consistent growth numbers. In our county, we see about 7000 new residents a year. As far as permits go, the county permitting office is doing about 5000 permits a month right now,

Charlie

For new construction?

Rick

…for new construction or remodel. So yeah, residential building purposes on an average month in Collier County, but you know, it’s half the size of Lee County, they’re doing on average 5000 permits a month now, there’s, you know, less than 50 inspectors that work there. So you get this really matter where the time goes, but just you know, 

to bring it to the construction side of things, 

you know, the, the builders side of it is also a struggle, like you mentioned on on various things, supply lines, one of the bigger problems we’re actually having is, is skilled trades. Yeah, actual people to do the work when we can get the materials. There’s just not enough skilled labor out there. There, there are people willing to work, but they don’t have the skill level yet. Or there’s not the same pride in workmanship anymore. So there’s various reasons why third party inspections can help you in new construction. Obviously, I’m here to tell you how we can service that new market.

But you know, a typical new new home build is going to it six to nine months is what the builders average is looking to be. Like he said right now it’s kind of random. It’s more like nine to 12 months. I talked to some of my contacts last week. We’re currently about eight weeks behind on block delivery, and about 16 weeks behind on doors and windows, you know, so and then you add the scheduling changes to the shortage of trades that you can get scheduled and change the scheduling around with that short supply. And you can just see how it all just kind of falls apart. I mean, one can’t match the other one at the same rate and you end up with a whole bunch of people being upset and the the trade workers is forced, you know, to do whatever they can do to get the job done, essentially, or meet their obligation.

So unfortunately, you’re getting a lot of people sent out there to do work that they may not be trained yet to do. I’ve been sent some crazy pictures of stuff that, you know, the builders have come in and seen that, you know, has been installed. And just like, You can’t be serious, you know, that’s, and fortunately, some of those things were caught by the county. But you know, the county is so overwhelmed that you can’t count on them to police, the industry like that, that’s just not what they’re there for. Builders gonna keep up with the process as much as they can, but to the same extent that they’re under the gun of the contract, and they’re under pressure from the customer. To finish the product, they’re going to let things slide to whether it’s knowingly or unknowingly, which is more the case than the former, you know, it’s generally it happens unknowingly, and gets overlooked and covered up and then down the road, you’re in the home. Hopefully, within the first year, you notice it, well, you have your warranty, and you can get it corrected.

But oftentimes, it’s not the case, you know, it’s three, four or five years down the road, when an inspector comes along, like myself for whatever reason, insurance or whatnot. And something fundamental gets pointed out to him at that point. And now, now, it’s a very difficult situation. So we just want to get the word out there to all those people that are coming down here hoping to buy a home, and are finding that there isn’t a home to buy right now. But there’s certainly builders out there willing to sell them, a new property that doesn’t exist yet. is very much in their interest to have someone other than the county look out for them. And in that regard, we offer what’s called phase inspections, we offer several different construction inspections. So depending on what kind of oversight you want, we can do anything from a final inspection only to a full phase one, two and three inspection. So we’ll come out and see the site prep and the slab pour will come out and see the shell when the house is dried in as we call it. So you have the exterior, the roof and the doors and windows and, and you’re not going to the interiors yet to be done. So you know, we come and check and make sure that we’re all on the same page, and everything’s coming along. And we’re not getting those oversights occurring.

Often what I tell people, by their, you know, what they really, really need to have done. And unfortunately, many of the builders try to get us out of the mix, because they’re trying to just move on to the next thing. Basically, they don’t want to come back or have someone point out all the problems right away, and timeline. But you know, I say to people listen, before you sign that final COC contract, when you do your walkthrough, you want to do what you want that walkthrough to have a final inspection with it. So ideally, you should be doing your walkthrough with an inspection report in your hand. And then those things can all get addressed. And at the final signing, we can do a final inspection and make sure that everything is correct. And then you move into a home that you’re confident in. And then you still have your 12 month warranty to you know, test drive everything, make sure everything’s working.

And on that topic of the 12 month, 

which is your average builder’s warranty, you know, they’re going to give you a 12 month warranty on a home at 11 months, please call an inspection company to know, in and out that what you bought is what you want, and it’s all functioning properly, before your warranty period is up. And even if it doesn’t get corrected before that period is up. If we can get it documented that it existed under the warranty period, then then we’re okay and you can if it takes over the next year to get it fixed. That’s what it takes. But it’s still covered under the warranty period. You see, if you find out 13, 14 months after you moved in. It’s your problem now. Yeah. So spending $500 to find out that you have you know a $10,000 problem.

Charlie  

Yeah, that’s it’s a it’s huge. And like you said, peace of mind you You know, oh, my goodness, you know, as you’re going through all that brought back memories of our first home that we had built. And I remember going out to the site, and this is back in the early 90s. Before, I mean, Home Inspection really wasn’t a thing back then. And, you know, looking at the foundation that was poured and putting the basement in the framing, but I had no clue. They could have been using toothpicks instead of two by fours. I’m not sure I would have figured that out, you know? My goodness, you know, it, there are so many little things that can happen, you know, before the drywall was put up, and, you know, whatever. Why wouldn’t you bring someone in with that kind of expertise and experience?

You know, the other challenge, I ran into the guy that built my home back then, I went to high school with, and so there’s that kind of icky and, and so, so this is the crazy part. I mean, you talk about a punch list and stuff, and, and I just felt bad, you know, hey, the house is done. I don’t want to call him over. I mean, Rick, literally, we had, like a section of our ceiling in two different parts of the house that that just had the primer paint, they never put the finish coat on. And I’m like, oh, you know, I’ll take care of what, whether you have relationship with the builder or not, it takes it removes all that awkwardness, It’s like,  I’m not a professional, I hired Rick to to make sure that we’re all protected.

Rick

Absolutely  And that’s okay, you can blame me, I don’t mind. I’m here to be that guy for you. I’m here to you know, be the guy that comes out and looks at it and all those different stages and knows what I’m looking at. So, yeah, it’s absolutely true. I mean, it’s an intricate process. And when you come out there as the lay person, you’re gonna be overwhelmed with what you’re looking at. And you can be told everything is great. And even if you think it’s wrong, you just don’t know enough to stand up for yourself, essentially. So yeah, we’re here to help.

 Charlie

Yeah. And I think the worst case scenario is is time to sell 10, 15 20 years down the road. And yeah, that inspector finds an issue that was never uncovered, right?

Charlie  

Surprise!

Rick 

Often in that situation

Yeah, they’re like, but how did this ever happen? And well, this is how it happens. It’s it’s one little step on top of another that doesn’t get looked after. And then here we are.

Oh, very insightful record. Really appreciate you. You’re covering that topic. And yeah, we’ll reconvene.

Awesome. You too. It’s great talking with you again, Charlie.

Charlie  

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call 239-537-1186.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Episode #9 Empowering Through Knowledge


Charlie  

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast, because “You need to know!”. Here’s your host, Rick. 

Hey, welcome back to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. I’m back Charlie McDermott here with Rick. Rick, how you doing?

Rick 

I’m doing well, Charlie, it’s very good to be with you, again, always enjoyed doing these podcasts with you.

Charlie

Now I, I’m the one that really benefits and our listeners again, I always, gosh, with your knowledge and your research and your continual passion to learn more and more and stay up to date with all the codes. So I know today, you’re going to get into another important topic. So once again, I’m going to turn the microphone over to you what do you have in store for us today? Right?

Rick 

Today, what I want to share with people is about how to empower yourself and finding out some information that’s publicly available. I’m often asked a question about contractors and how to find someone, or how to to discover what’s going on with somebody, or better yet to file a complaint, you know, and what can people do, if they’re in a situation where, you know, they’re not happy with how things are going? So we’re just gonna dive into what’s available in the wonderful world of online searching, which is, you know, a wonderful tool we now have available to us, it makes things much easier, but

 Charlie 

it can also be overwhelming, right?

 Rick

Yeah, right, you can also definitely lose yourself. Overwhelmed in that, you know, so just to start off with in the state of Florida, if you just search Florida public records, there’s, there’s a state of florida.com public records page that you can go to, and it has everything under the sun in public records that you would want to ever find. So if you’re ever just looking for a starting point, I would always suggest to just start with Florida public records, and go through the list there and see if there’s something that looks for the you know, the topic of what you’re trying to find. What I want to focus on today is mostly about contractors and how to, to reference what’s going on with a contractor or their licensing. This is something that most people may not know about. 

There’s a department in Florida…

…that deals with the licensing of contractors and other professionals, it’s generally referred to as DBPR, or the Department of Business and Professional Regulations. So that is a very good place to go to if you go to Florida DBPR. Or it’s actually http://www.myfloridalicense.com/dbpr/, is what the website is. But if you do Florida DBPR in the search, it’ll take you to my Florida license, comm essentially. And on that page, you can search for contractors, you can search for them by the contractor type, by their personal name, by you know, where the city or their license number. And it’s a powerful tool, because you can look up and see you know, just exactly what’s going on. So just for an example, I’ll search myself. So just as a general info, I go in and I do a name search, and I’m just going to put my last name in there.

Charlie

And is this something that you would recommend before you hire someone?

Rick

Yeah, it is a good way to get an idea of who you’re going to hire. You know, a lot of people do like some shopping around and like to do some research on stuff if they’re not getting a good referral from someone. So you know, it’s just a tool that’s out there. And if you have as a name, you can start there. I just put in my last name, and you know, there’s several Kooyman’s in the area and different things, but I come up under Home Inspector and you can click on my name and it’ll tell you all about, you know, where my business is what our addresses, you know, what my license status is. And at the bottom of the page is this wonderful tool where it says View related license information and view license complaints.

Charlie 

Hmm.

Rick

Which is also which is which is a question I get asked commonly for people that are you know, they contact me oftentimes because something’s not going right. And they want to know what kind of recourse they have or you know, where they can be be heard essentially. And you can do this you can go to, you know, the Department of Business and Public Relations and file a complaint on a contractor and and have the the enforcement agents look into what’s going on with that contractor. And it also stays on their record so that if someone wants to go in search, they’ll find out about it. 

This kind of practice is also true for properties. 

You know, when we’re looking at buying a house, oftentimes, what’s going on with that property as far as the neighbors is an important thing to look up. There are code complaints that you can look up, if you do a public record search for permits by your county, depending on which county you’re in. So here in Collier County, you just go to the https://www.colliercountyfl.gov/ site, and there’s options for doing property search, code enforcement’s Contractor Licensing search again, if you’re buying a property, this is a good place to go to see the history of the property and what what the previous owners have, who they have been, what they’ve done with the property, what the tax department has done with the property. And also, you know, again, what kind of complaints have the neighbors been making about, you know, what’s been going on at that property? It’s kind of entertaining, actually. Because when you look him up, they put him in there verbatim to the complaint. So you can call code enforcement and make a complaint over the phone, or you can do it online. But when you when you look them up, if you look up a specific property address, and you see code enforcement, and you look up the stuff in there, it will say exactly what the person said, when they were making the complaint. So it’s, it’s comical. Often.

Charlie  

I had no idea!

Rick  

Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. So I wanted to bring this up as a topic today, because these, these tools are out here for us to you know, make use of in this new online world we live in, but you know, we often don’t know, they’re there.

Permit tracking is also a big thing, you know, to make sure that when you’re buying a property, open permits can be an issue when you transfer a property. Because if you take ownership of a property that has an open permit on it, now you own that problem. So you probably want to address that before you buy it to make sure that you’re not responsible for someone else’s trouble.

Charlie  

Wow.

Rick  

Wow. Right.

Charlie  

Right, that would be an unpleasant surprise.

Rick  

Yeah, wow. I particularly like the DBPR contractor stuff, because you know, I can I can, you can see what their training histories are, you know, like, you can look up my, my ces or continuing education requirements and see how active your contractor is, in staying current on you know, updated stuff. It will show you exactly what their activities are in accordance with their license, you know, pretty well to date. So it’s a good tool to make use of, yeah.

Charlie  

Love it.

Rick  

Yeah, short and simple this this month, but, you know, it says it’s a good place to start. Yeah,

Charlie  

yeah. Short and simple. But you know, when you get into it, you could you could spend the day just just looking at it.

Rick  

You’ll get lost in it.

Charlie  

Wow, if only houses could talk, oh, they can just go there

Rick  

how about that.

Charlie  

Well, terrific. All right. Once again, another eye opening episode. Really appreciate you spending time with us. Now go out there and help those homeowners or homeowners-to-be by the right home with a peace of mind knowing they made the right choice.

Rick  

Yep. Yeah. Just the the two words to keep you know, state of Florida public records, and Department of Business and professional relations. DBPR those, those are very powerful places to go to look for records. Terrific.

Charlie  

Rick, well, we’ll end here and get you back in here in the near future for your next episode.

Rick  

Yeah, absolutely. Look forward to it. It’s a pleasure talking to you again, Charlie. I’ll do it again soon.

Charlie  

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