Carrying the Torch
Iron Man Award recipient Sean Troxell is happy to help.


Sean Troxell’s positive energy is infectious. You can almost see him answering the phone with a smile. Troxell recently won ASHI’s Ironman Award—an annual accolade given to an ASHI Member who has given time, energy, talent, and determination to ASHI over a long period and with little recognition.
“It was a complete surprise. I was planning on jumping on the Virtual Summit later that day, and
I got all of these text messages like, ‘Congratulations!’ I was like, wait a minute, what is happening?” he laughed.
Troxell stays very busy, to say the least. He’s heavily involved in the home inspection industry and in protecting consumers as well. He’s been on countless ASHI committees, chairs the Commission of Home Inspectors in Maryland, and works with the Montgomery County Police to investigate criminal activity in which contractors try to take advantage of older adults, selling them $300,000 worth of unneeded insulation, for example.
“I’ve got my hands on everything home inspection,” Troxell said. “And I’m big on the consumer protection stuff.” He also spends a lot of time with his two daughters in the Scouts—himself an Eagle Scout. He joked that his wife was waiting for the day when
he doesn’t have a million meetings.
Today Troxell is the principal inspector at JD Grewell & Associates in Silver Spring, Maryland, working alongside his mother-in-law, Christine Grewell.
What I like most about being a home inspector is the consumer protection aspect of it. The information we deliver most people don’t know, and we often take that for granted.
How He Got Here
Troxell has been doing this work for almost 15 years. He credits his inspection career to his father-in-law, the late JD Grewell, himself a former Ironman Award winner who devoted much of his career to ASHI. “I married his daughter and he was like, ‘What are you doing with your life?” Troxell was in school at the time, having gone back to study engineering after a bad construction accident. Grewell convinced him to take a home inspector course and go on some home inspecting ride-alongs with him. The rest, as they say, is history.
“Little did I know JD was the godfather of home inspection, and everybody knew him across the country. We’d go to these national conferences and everybody would be like, ‘Oh, JD, I saw this crazy thing’ or ‘What do you think about the legislation in this state?’ It was pretty crazy. I realized I was being trained by the best home inspector in the business.”
He said Grewell didn’t talk a lot compared to, he joked, his own tendency to be verbose, but every word Grewell said mattered. “Every time he opened his mouth, people would stop and listen. His words meant something.”
Troxell ultimately rode along on something like 1,000 inspections. It was quite the training. When Grewell passed in 2017 Troxell took over as principal inspector with the company.

State of the Industry
Times have been turbulent for many home inspectors since the pandemic. “We have to diversify a lot when times get tough and inspections are slow,” Troxell said. “2023 was probably the worst year we’ve had to date. I’ve supplemented that with volunteer work. Some of this I get compensated for, but it’s volunteer work largely.”
Troxell and colleagues also do a lot of consultation work, which can provide supplementary income, but mostly he just likes to help people out. “What I like most about being a home inspector is the consumer protection aspect of it. The information we deliver most people don’t know, and we often take that for granted,” he said. “We’re like, ‘Obviously if your pipe is leaking you should fix it,’ but some people need to hear that. We have to walk them through it. We’re not doctors, but I like contributing, and I like helping people.”
At the end of the day, much of the work is around communication, and inspectors must also understand that many issues are a matter of opinion, he said. “There aren’t really hard and fast rules about many defects,” Troxell said, noting that while he may share his recommendation about an issue, another inspector could see it differently. It’s hard work sharing your expertise to the best of your ability, respectfully and professionally, while communicating sometimes difficult to understand codes in layperson’s terms. “It really is our opinion that we’re giving these people.”
But Troxell also doesn’t want to be the bearer of bad news all the time. He wants to celebrate the work and the houses and the big life moments, too. “I think it’s important to talk about some of the good stuff, too, as a home inspector. People get overwhelmed easily, and they may fall in love with a house, and it can be a tough thing to navigate emotions and the actual house.”
Troxell said continuing to evolve is crucial to this line of work. JD Grewell & Associates has been around since 1972, and many in the industry have been doing this work for decades. That said, both problems and their solutions can change, and it’s important to stay knowledgeable about new technologies, home features, and even defects. “Even the purpose of the home inspection is evolving every year,” he said. “I get a lot of people who hire me because they’re just really curious about their house.”
Writing the inspection report, too, is changing. “It takes me forever to write these reports nowadays,” he laughed. “You have to figure out how to write these reports with this new technology and make sure you’re still delivering the same quality you were. We have to make it all work, and it’s challenging because it changes.”
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Handling Complaints
Building Strong Foundations
Understanding Condensate
Postcards from the Field
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