How do I choose a home inspector?
A home inspector's designation comes from a professional association rather than from the province, so it is voluntary and there is no provincial register to check it against. Ask for a sample report, confirm you can attend, and confirm they carry errors and omissions plus liability insurance.
Because the designation is association-issued rather than provincial, the range in quality is enormous and the price tells you almost nothing. Nobody here has established whether Ontario licenses inspection work at all, so treat any designation as a claim to confirm with the association that issued it. Screen on four things.
A sample report. A good one is thirty pages with photographs and estimated remaining service life for each system. A two page checklist is worthless.
Attendance. You should be walking the house with them for two to three hours, asking what each finding costs. An inspector who discourages you from attending is selling paperwork.
Insurance. Errors and omissions plus commercial general liability, verified rather than claimed.
Independence. Do not use whoever your agent hands you without checking them yourself. The incentives are not identical to yours.
Do not hire the cheapest. The difference between a good inspection and a bad one is one missed structural or water issue, which is not measured in hundreds of dollars.
Answer it with your own numbers
You will need: municipality.
Find inspectors, with the insurance each record listsNext questions
Is a home inspection worth it?
Yes, on any property you have not had inspected. It costs several hundred dollars against a purchase in the high six figures, and its job is to price the next ten years of the building rather than to find a reason to walk away.
Ontario
Can I renegotiate the price after a bad inspection?
You can ask, if you have a live inspection condition. Your leverage is the ability to walk away, so bring a written contractor quote for the specific defect rather than a page from the inspection report.
Ontario