ASHI Legislation on HUD Home Inspection Counseling Reaches the President

Status of the legislation.

The Senate has sent the financial overhaul bill to President Obama’s desk. In addition to many other provisions, the bill includes a section that will add home inspection to the HUD housing counseling program in a big way.

HUD will be enlisted to do the following:

•     Actively advise homebuyers across the country to obtain home inspections as a key element of buying a house
•      Tell buyers that obtaining a home inspection is a decision they need to  make, and should make
•       Tell buyers what professional characteristics to look for in a home inspector, and where and how to find one
•       Ensure that homebuyers reached by the HUD counseling programs consider obtaining a home inspection as early as possible in the process  -- when home inspections have the greatest utility to homebuyers.
•       Develop new documents and training materials both for training HUD counselors and for distribution to the buyers they counsel
•       Make all of these messages available to all homebuyers regardless of whether they finance using government-backed programs or private sector lending.
•       This national de facto marketing effort will occur at no cost to ASHI members, and will be conducted under the authority, funding and staffing resources of HUD.  

With completion of this legislative phase of the project, ASHI will shift to the next phase – administrative implementation. We have set the stage for ASHI to meet with the key HUD staff, who will implement the new home inspection counseling provisions. We fully anticipate that ASHI will have important input into the implementation phase. In fact, ASHI has already helped HUD draft some of the key documents that will be used by HUD staff – the “For Your Protection, Get a Home Inspection” document, as well as the “Ten Questions to Ask Your Home Inspector” document, that prompts homebuyers to consider the quality, professionalism, ethics, experience issues that strongly favor ASHI home inspectors.

Further, we note that there may be training opportunities in which the ASHI office might participate as a grantee. We will discuss possible funding opportunities for ASHI to engage in such a role and perhaps generate a new revenue opportunity. 

Purpose of the legislation

Previous research conducted by GAO (also requested by ASHI) demonstrated conclusively that there are numerous reasons why homebuyers do not obtain home inspections, and many of those reasons are unrelated to cost.  Many of those reasons relate to con

7/21/2010