Bill's Blog

It was one of my first Do It Yourself projects years ago and I thought I replaced the old food disposer perfectly. I turned it on and it ran well. Every thing was just fine until the next morning when my wife turned on the dishwasher and soon afterward screamed from the kitchen that there's a big...

When I was a kid about 10 years old, I loved to climb trees, much to the worriment of my mom. I even built a tree house for some friends and me in the back yard...but that's a story for another time. Recently I have begun to call on those old climbing skills as I inspect attics. Where the constru...

My selling agent and I were not very suprised when we found the water shut off at the street. After months of foreclosure inspections I have begun to expect the unexpected.I urged my client to have me come back to inspect the plumbing when the water was turned on and we agreed that since we were ...

Kudos to the agent. He sensed, based on what his client had told him, that the house he had listed for them needed to be checked out by a professional. The middle aged couple who had lived in the 35 year old house for 25 years were not concerned about the aluminum wiring since there had been no p...

I almost missed it! Lots of people had missed it. The owner, who had the house built 20 years ago and had lived in it all these years. The builder. The county inspectors. The roofer. The second roofer who installed a new roof one year ago. Yet there it was. In plain sight! I saw it because I was ...

Selling an older home today can be alot like getting back in the dating game after many years of married life. Lots of updating to do. In today's real estate market, update you must, or more than likely, the house sits, and sits, and sits....like a wall flower at the dance. This is especially tru...

If you like television series CSI, you'll enjoy this. This inspection was of an 11 year old single family house that showed well...no, better than that, it was spectacular!  Tremendous upgrades, granite, ceramic tile, hardwood floors, the works.  It was also almost vacant, but tastefully staged, ...

"Would you buy this house?" My client asked me this quite sincerely. Evidently I had gained her trust and she wanted my opinion. The inspection results so far were not helping her make up her mind. The house she had fallen in love with a few days before when she first saw it with her realtor had ...

A recent inspection of a vacant foreclosure house confirmed my childhood fears that there is Green Monster lurking in the basement. (Sorry Red Sox fans, this isn't about the fabled Fenway wall). It was late September and with the outside temperatures still in the 80's the air conditioner was runn...

Cold weather is coming fast and it is time for winterizing the house. This letter has more significance this year than ever before because of the thousands of listed houses that are vacant!In fact, nearly all the houses I have been inspecting lately have been vacant...a sign of a frustrating real...