Congressman Requests GAO Study on Home Inspection

(Washington, D.C.)  –– In a landmark development for home inspection advocates, a senior Member of the U.S. House of Representatives has formally requested a General Accounting Office (GAO) study to quantify the costs and benefits of mandatory home inspections in federal home loan programs. 

Cong. Douglas Bereuter (R-NE), a key Member of the Financial Services Committee and the Subcommittee on Housing, issued the request in a letter to Comptroller General David Walker. 
“ASHI has been urging policy makers in Washington, D.C. to examine the risks that uninformed home buying decisions pose for consumers and federal home loan programs,” said ASHI executive director Rob Paterkiewicz, “and we applaud a focused study carrying the prestige of GAO.”

The GAO study reflects gnawing concerns about the inherent vulnerability of homebuyers and the lack of effective federal policies to alleviate those concerns using independent professional home inspections. 

“Some in Congress are increasingly troubled that FHA programs are devoid of requirements that homebuyers know the technical details of their purchases, representing a gaping hole in America’s consumer protection safety net,” said Randall Pence of Capitol Hill Advocates, Inc., ASHI’s government relations representative. 

In anticipation of possible policy debates on this problem, Cong. Bereuter’s request seeks information never before obtained to help Congress make fully and fairly informed policy judgments on initiatives to encourage greater use of home inspections.
Cong. Bereuter identifies several key areas for investigation, including the following: 

• The extent to which increased use of independent home inspections could protect the financial interests of consumers; the extent to which the cost of home inspections would influence home buying decisions; and how cost issues could be mitigated through FHA financing changes.

• The extent to which mandatory home inspections could protect consumers in vulnerable populations such as the elderly, parents with young children, under-educated individuals, economically disadvantaged individuals, and the disabled.

• The extent to which the lack of home inspections place taxpayer-funded loan programs at increased financial risk.