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hello everyone my name is ben gramico i'm from internachi that's the international association of certified home inspectors and we do free live interactive online webinars open to everyone and we're doing a webinar today about pictures inspection pictures and photographs and how many should you take and how relevant are the pictures and can you get in trouble with too many pictures or none enough pictures so we're going to talk about inspection photos and a bunch of other things with my buddy derek palmerville from high tech home inspection training hi derek are you there i am here it's good to see you good um hey derek how long have you been in business tell us a little bit about yourself okay i've been a home inspector since 1994. and yeah just a little while there uh and i never thought i'd be doing anything that long but you know here we are nearly 30 years later i've been teaching home inspection certification courses since um 2003 so about 19 years now that i've been teaching so and i love doing it love doing home inspections i love doing uh teaching you know because it's so rewarding to see what students can do with the stuff you give them absolutely so thank you so much you're one of our training partners and uh we really appreciate it coming on uh internachi webinars and teaching us a little bit more about a few things why don't you start to share your slide and we'll get right into the information i want to remind folks that um you should be able to see us uh you can't we can't see you you should be able to hear us we can't hear you so if you wanted to ask a question to derek feel free i'd love it if you use the q a feature there's a chat feature but there's a q a feature and if you if you have a really good question we'll get to it at the end of the presentation unless it's critically important i'll interrupt derek but you can also up vote uh really good questions if you'd like so feel free to ask questions during the presentation with derek and i and it'll be about 45 minutes or so we'll go no more than an hour so that you guys can do home inspections and make money uh so derek i see your slide is up inspection photos protection or apparel please take it away well thanks really appreciate it and uh you know a couple of things you know that i want to start off with uh when we get into this is that uh i want to start just quickly with a brief overview of what we're going to be covering today um so basically we're going to talk about how are home inspectors you know taking photos and what are they using them for then we'll get into the various perceptions that a lot of people have about photographs and everybody sees things differently and we're going to talk about that we're also going to talk about perceptions that really matter and i don't mean that you know nobody's perception matters i mean there are some that matter a little bit more than others depending on what stage of that process you're in with the client uh we'll talk about pros and cons we'll talk about how photos can help our business and how photographs can hurt our business and then i'm gonna make some pretty from some pretty strong recommendations at the end okay and uh the thing is they're just recommendations i'm not here to criticize anybody or the way anybody does business because for years i've been taking photographs the way i take them because i was taught a certain way to do it and through the years i've learned through that whole trial and error process and constant discussion with my agents how photographs are useful for everyone but like many other areas of my business there are home inspectors out there doing things differently to me uh and especially when it comes to the number of photographs taken in their reports so i'm like i said i'm not here to criticize anybody uh for their opinion or their personal history because i know that as home inspectors we have pretty strong opinions and and that's perfectly okay but there's a lot of opinions out there about how intelligent taking hundreds of photos on every inspection is and there's not much information out there talking about anything else so when i say that i mean i'm talking about internet i'm talking about websites we're talking about videos seems like everyone's promoting take hundreds and hundreds of photos so we'll be discussing what i found to be the three basic opinions for how many pictures should be taken on a home inspection then we'll talk about how others see uh those pictures after we've released the report to the client and from there we'll be able to talk about the perceptions that really matter when the waste collides with the rotary oscillator you know attorneys and judges what are their perceptions and this is where i'll present to you ben and the international members that are watching today a very compelling case for how we can probably streamline our services a little bit provide some top-notch services best practices to the clients and yet still protect ourselves from those frivolous claims and lawsuits that we hear so much about does that sound good awesome sounds real good derek thanks all right cool let's get started then so the history i know i don't have to go into too much detail about this because when home inspectors get together we compare notes all the time yeah and i think it's safe to say that we can basically put most home inspectors into one of three basic categories when it comes to taking photos in the report and we're not talking about how we use the photos just yet just how many we take and it's been my experience when talking to other home inspectors that some folks are out there taking more than 400 photos in every inspection and some guys use every photo some of them don't and then there's kind of that middle of the road group where you know i've read reports students bring me reports on their own personal home inspections all the time i've read thousands of them over the years um and i've talked to home inspectors who say they average that 100 to 150 photographs uh per inspection my brother-in-law he's one of those guys veteran inspection professionals in phoenix arizona i didn't teach him to do that years ago but he takes about 150 photos per report and then finally there's inspectors who like me they only take about 10 or 15 photographs per inspection okay so understanding why we even take photos at all that's easy and that's because we're living in a digital digital and a very very visual society these days we place a great deal of value on what we can see with our own two eyes you know many of us don't uh i mean how many of us i should say don't stream youtube netflix hulu you know i logged into tiktok once uh oh my gosh i click through a few of those videos next thing i know is two o'clock in the morning you know uh and i have to get up at six o'clock for an inspection so you know i just said forget it and i deleted the app i can't look at it that's how powerful those visual images can be especially when you make it easy just to swipe go back and forth and they're just they're quick hits like that and we're drawn to the visual aspects of society because society bombards us with them okay it's not just tick tock and hulu ing to brendan kane in his book hook point in 1970 i'm dating myself but you know this is 1970 when i was a little kid the average american was exposed to and saw about 500 ads per day okay whether it was billboard or magazine or tv or whatever radio it was about 500 ads per day today we're hit with as many as 10 000 advertisements in one day and most of them 85 90 are visual so there's two reasons for this i mean one they can't because the internet is just gives us that amazing reach and two because it's effective you know the best way to make an impression on someone for a product a service or for entertainment value is to show them that visual representation so as home inspectors we tend to place a lot of emphasis on taking photos because we're working so hard uh to provide people information who are unlikely to understand those technical details or long-term implications we take those photos put them in the report and we kind of bridge that gap with them and that's a wonderful use for photographs other justifications for taking photos will be things like agents want them you know we've all heard it right more pictures more pictures you know and of course everybody's favorite i don't want to get sued so i take more pictures okay so the burning question that i've been wanting to find the answer to for a long time you know especially because since i became an educator is do all these photos really help and i know my agents love them right and i know my agents and con they give them the contractors and i like i get fewer phone calls from contractors but in 28 years as an inspector 19 is an instructor i've actually never been sued i mean my ex-wives sued me but let's not go there okay so what i set out to discover last year was to get answers to these questions one why are home inspectors being sued two how many photos do they take how many go into the report how many don't go in the report three have there ever been any cases actually won based on photographic evidence and then the last one is have there ever been any cases lost because of that photographic evidence i wanted to know and what we learned may surprise a lot of home inspectors out there i'm likely to stir up some powerful convictions here uh and i'm ready to take the heat you know because we've researched this extensively i'm not saying perfectly but we did a pretty extensive job researching this using legitimate resources from the legal profession okay i've interviewed home inspectors from all over the country throughout my career as an inspector and an educator i've also had the benefit of working with real estate agents now for nearly 30 years constantly asking for feedback and ideas and not only that when an agent tells me more pictures more pictures i always ask how does that look you know how do you and your client benefit from more pictures so as you may guess i've managed to form a few opinions of my own and the thing is though as an educator i know i can't educate people in our industry with opinions so home inspectors we deal in the visual observations the points of fact so over the last several months what my wife and i have been doing is researching this topic looking for answers to these questions so that we could find a platform to share them with home inspectors give some real food for thought and uh knowing what works with the photographs all begins with gaining that understanding of how everyone involved looks at the photos okay because everyone has a different perception brad paisley uh country western singer he said it so well in one of his songs where he said you see a priceless french painting i see a drunk naked girl okay everyone's got a different perception you know of what they're going to see so anyone who's looking at the photo from the home inspector's report they're almost guaranteed to have a different perception of not only what the photograph is but what it means okay and all too often when interviewing or even just having a casual conversation with other home inspectors i learn how they're heavily focused on taking and revealing photos to the homeless uh to the that to the home inspectors are perfect for the client they're perfect for the agent the seller the contractor and it's their best cya tool and unfortunately there's little room in a lot of opinions not everybody but a lot of these opinions these guys a lot of room little room for possibility that there's something else that others might have a different perception and again i'm not trying to be critical as much as i'm trying to show how most of us are really really good at putting good quality photographs in the report for the buyers for the agents for the sellers to use but do we really understand all the perspectives do we really understand how insurance companies look at it do you understand how attorneys judges or even juries are going to interpret those photos our research actually said no we don't so let's quickly run through what we know about the various perceptions others have and then we can get onto the results of the research when we review our reports from the home inspector's perspective you know before we click that magical send button in the email the home inspectors of the world we see a thing of beauty you know we see the hard work that we did to navigate to explore to research uncover everything we possibly could about the house the pictures in our eyes at least you know are an obvious representation of what we're trying to say in the narrative and that photo of the withered widget with the circles and the arrows that's solid proof that the condition exists and it's obvious how it needs to be fixed now this is the perception of the home inspector uh we think tend to think in the absolute and believe in our heart of hearts that no one can argue with such a work of art um and i'm guilty of that every single day you know i look at my reports and i'm just so proud of them because they're so beautiful but what does the client see when we place that picture of the main panel or a water pressure gauge in the report well surprise surprise they don't always see the same thing why because they paid us to translate what we know into something they can understand so for example you're likely ben and everybody watching uh to know what this is a picture of is a typical client's gonna know what the ho what improper flashing is on a roof any guesses as to what it is i think i had that for breakfast [Laughter] god i hope not because that's a human spleen and [Laughter] and not only is it a spleen it's a cancerous spleen yeah i know it's kind of gross but i'm trying to draw some contrast here you know uh not only is it a human spleen but yes that's cancer on the top uh that bubbly looking stuff and none of us expect anyone here to know what this is uh and that's not the point of showing today i wanted everyone to see from another perspective how others can see something entirely different than what we intended you know and more evidence to this in a little bit so what about the agent you know we all know how the agents look at it right we've learned this one through experience agents look at that picture or they grab the report they find the summary then they complete the request for repairs uh to submit to the seller the next job get bids for the work and all they want to do most of the time is grab that photograph show it to the contractor and say how much you know the agent like the client is not a subject matter expert when it comes to home inspections we all know agents don't want to be subject matter experts uh photos make their lives easier even though they never even look at them you know but that's not the point they don't want to learn anything from it they don't want to read the report they just want to say here mr contractor how much is this going to be and what about insurance companies what are they going to see well plain and simple insurance companies see an opportunity to save money okay i spent several years as an executive vice president of operations for an insurance company property and casualty insurance company i have a pretty deep understanding of how insurance processes work and insurance companies they're on your side they have to be it's written in the policy and it's state law and when there's a claim they'll handle it ing to the terms of the policy you know a lot of us tend to have that perception insurance companies are out to get us they're really not i mean they are on our side but they are about saving money because insurance companies just like us they're in business to make money so uh once we turn it over to them they can handle it any way they want okay and they don't have to involve us you know uh and that's why i love a lot of the services offered by a lot of uh home inspectors errors and mission insurance companies like the pre-claims assistance you know where they can help defuse a lot of these complaints before they become a lawsuit before they become a big claim those are great services um to have at our fingertips but once they have it as an official claim there's little consideration for who's right or wrong okay and it becomes more about how cheaply they can resolve the issue litigation in the courts is always the last option because it's the most expensive often times when it's when it's clear that someone has a legitimate chance at winning a lawsuit right or wrong the insurance company might just pay it because it's so much cheaper than it is to fight it okay and but when they have a stack of photographs and they can use them to apply a technique known as intimidation and i don't mean that in a negative context i mean you know it's intimidation you give enough photos they can go back to the client on your behalf and they're going to show dozens of images proving the home inspector to make a mistake and that there's no way they could win a lawsuit therefore no money mr and mrs buyer well the insurance companies you know that's the cost of an administrative person on the phone for a couple of hours tops that's a lot less than twenty thirty forty fifty thousand dollars for a claim um and it works the reason it works is because of that societal perceived value of how a picture paints a thousand words the question is what words so what about people going to court okay and this is where you know we really get in the meat and potatoes of what we research how do the people in the legal world see our photos i mean surely whoops there's got to be enough people didn't mean to do that surely there's got to be enough intelligent people in the legal world to be able to look at our photos and they're capable of seeing what we want to see right not necessarily see in the legal profession it's the attorney's job to interpret the photos and then do something with them and once they open up your report they may as well be looking at a report full of cancerous spleen pictures you know because they have they have neither the desire nor the time to become subject matter experts on home inspections just like real estate agents and furthermore they know a judge and a jury are likely to see the same gooey looking anatomy you know when they walk into court and they start putting pictures into a giant monitor in the courtroom so the judge wants to know why a cancerous spleen is bad okay that's all he wants to know he doesn't want to see all these pictures just tell me why a cancerous spleen is bad okay so the home inspector's attorney is going to look for the most single most relevant photo that they can use to tell their story and then that's the one they're going to use to win the case okay for the other side well they want that one picture that shows that a cancerous spleen is bad it's making a person sick and it's your fault okay in other words attorneys want that one picture that will either exonerate you or bury you based on which attorney is looking at the pictures and what i believe to be true for the last 20 years or so that you know i've been putting pictures in my reports is how photos rarely ever see the light of day in the courtroom and that's based on my insurance experience okay and when they do they just won't help that much but again that was based solely on personal insights and experience in the insurance world uh observing legal cases you know my job as an executive but we have to remember how our profession is still very new to the rest of the world okay so maybe photos are more likely to make it into court because um i mean you look at uh the legal world they've been around for thousands of years that industry has literally been evolving since man could write okay uh home inspection we've only been around for about 100 years so as smart capable intelligent as we are home inspectors may not be able to outsmart the legal industry and it seems like some of us are trying to do that by taking hundreds of photos okay we take them believing they'll provide the evidence everyone needs uh so they won't even even file a lawsuit okay so after having seen the perspective of judges and attorneys which is it okay now that we know how everybody sees the pictures will dozens if not hundreds of photos make the difference or are and are we really covering our collective and individual backsides with all of the photos well as much as i value my opinion i'm going to share with you some facts okay i'm going to talk to you a little bit about how we did the research my lovely and talented wife becky she recently graduated from northwestern university with honors and she got her juris doctorate so she has her degree in law and with her knowledge of the law and access to the research we're actually able to use resources commonly reserved only for attorneys and paralegals we went through the lane county uh law library in eugene oregon and we were able to use the service called westlaw that accesses all of those databases called the lexus nexus databases i'm not sure where they got that name but it's pretty fancy and it's basically a combination of over 40 000 databases of legal cases from around the country both state and federal for over the last 200 plus years we search for cases involving home inspectors photos pictures or photographs and what we found might surprise some of you of course it might affirm some others too uh when we started the research the last thing we expected was to encounter a lack of legal cases involving home inspectors and photographs but that's exactly what happened when we searched for cases with home inspectors and photos and only one case came back well we had the word photograph then we had a picture and then we tried all three in the plural form and amazingly enough there's no while there's no shortage of legal cases involving home inspectors there just weren't that many to find were a case relied on photographs and none we could find where court actually decided the case based on photographic evidence or even where the photos weighed heavily in the decision and that was a real surprise so as i'm sure you're already guessing you know or you've already guessed i'm sorry that you know we ask ourselves why why is that you know why are these photographs not carrying all that weight uh well the answer is why in three basic foundational principles and rules in the world of litigation and law okay it's relevance interpretation and the federal rules of evidence and they're used in every court across the united states okay relevance is the first thing an attorney is going to question regarding any evidence including the pictures provided by the home inspectors so it's usually a simple argument too because unless the evidence is relevant to the exact thing being argued it will likely be dismissed and never seen or considered by a judge or jury when a photo is less than perfect when it isn't clear and not a perfect exact representation of the condition noted picture leaking hose bib from 15 feet away for example then that tiny little water droplet on the end of the hose bed from 15 feet away may as well be a picture of a cancer spleen it's not relevant it's not going to be considered it could actually get dismissed now the picture doesn't even have to be a bad picture to be dismissed is not relevant if the judge or jurors can't be made to see the drop of water at the end of the hose bib as proof of a leak well then the photo's not relevant it's going to get dismissed and somehow you'll have to prove that photo is evidence enough to support your position that the hose bib is leaking and that's kind of hard to do in a static photograph so when we interviewed attorneys regarding hypothetical arguments they shared with us a couple of other arguments that i had to put in here and share with you that they either have used or they say they would use in court regarding photographic evidence so for example if a home inspector would take dozens of photographs of wood rot around the outside of the house and only two pictures on the roof because there's not a whole lot wrong with the roof an attorney says well let's just ask the inspector right in front of the judge and the jury why weren't they as thorough on the roof as they were at the exterior siding and trim okay now all of us well that's an unfair question i get it but and it's a simple argument for us because there may not have been as many defects on the roof to talk about but in litigation it's not about how many defects on the roof versus the siding it's about relevance and if they can damage your credibility then your photos may still be relevant but they won't be trusted they'll be trusted a lot less and they can actually hurt you so when home inspectors take a plethora of photos and only put some of them in the report that's a big one you know i know a lot of home inspectors do that they say i just take a lot of extra photos and i don't put them in the report unless i need them later on down the road we do it thinking that you know we might need it as proof at a later date because we've had that angry phone call in the past you know i've been able to do that i look at something oh my gosh i've seen that before when that happens oh my gosh it turns into a big mess so you take a picture and you just say well i'm not going to use it but i'll hang on to it attorneys they tell us that can be a bad strategy because they make it they can make it look like the home inspector had something to hide because he held on to pictures of the property without sharing him at the time of the inspection and again that damages the credibility inspector by applying an intent to hide something from the client and the photos won't be trusted nearly as much so let's take a look at a couple of rules of evidence too now these rules of evidence always apply uh and can be used uh uh towards you know uh submitting evidence or you know getting it dismissed uh one of them is uh federal rule of evidence 401 make the existence of fact more or less probable than without the evidence so basically uh what we're saying is that um you know a poorly dressed person for example in need of a bath walking down the street is not enough evidence to prove they're in fact homeless okay um they could just be having a really bad day okay so that's federal rule of evidence 401 um and uh in the case of uh de leon versus gallagher uh first of all i want to say is we should remember these were the only cases we could find we found literally less than 10 where photographs had anything to do with the outcome uh now it's not that there's a shortage of lawsuits they're out there just the photographs don't weigh very heavily so uh most of photos referenced actually in these cases came from the plaintiffs you know the clients suing the home inspector in de leon versus gallagher the home inspector sued for misrepresentation for missing some significant deficiencies to the structure in the crawl space so basically there was an addition that was built on the house improperly garage beneath livable space above and a structural engineer was brought out later and found the roof and the floor structure to be inadequate in other words that addition was built improperly and the client showed their photos to the court of a sagging ridgeline to prove the the point that the structural engineers said there should have been color ties and a bigger beam underneath so it should have been color ties up bigger beamed down here's the photographs and the client also and i found this one to be pretty interesting too that they were able to prove how the home inspector after the fact after the home inspection inserted a disclaimer of liability into the contract and forged her signature to reduce his liability on this one i would never recommend that practice i couldn't believe when i read it okay so home inspector i mean that for to a lot of us okay that guy's got something to hide you know maybe he knows he missed it but the court looked at the client's photos and they basically said i don't know what you're talking about i don't see a sagging ridge line and i don't know what that means that's what they they did with that photograph they refused to consider the forged signature in the outcome why because a poorly dressed person eating a bath isn't necessarily homeless he forged the signature but that's got nothing to do with missing the deficiency underneath in the crawlspace because he had written the limitations in his report that there was vaulted ceilings upstairs and that the beam was enclosed in sheetrock in the crawlspace okay um so there's um federal rule of evidence 803 industry standards are relevant evidence of what reasonable conduct is okay so that means in the legal world our standards of practice especially when they're a matter of state law but they don't have to be state law to be relevant because they're recognized industry standards and courts use this a lot so in the case of de leon versus gallagher the home inspector he brought in an expert to testify here's what the standards practice are here's how i met him and the court said that's great evidence and even though the photographs were introduced the courts found for the home inspector because he adequately inspected the home and he adequately documented the limitations about being in the crawl space so even though the home inspector did some pretty shady stuff he still got off the hook okay federal rule of evidence 901 someone must testify the photo's an accurate depiction of the scene where the issue lies that that means basically photos require authentication photos do not stand on their own merit you got to bring somebody else in to verify that it's a real photo of the exact problem for that house it has to be very precise this case it was uh called uh milner versus big uh biggs home inspector's access to the crawl space really severely limited due to fallen insulation and duct work uh in the crawl space he the home inspector noted in the report that he couldn't get very far into the crawl space he documented the crawl space appear to be dry at the time of the inspection and uh so the buyers asked the sellers to fix the ductwork and the insulation the attic the seller agreed weeks later they're moving in new homeowners they found a soft spot in the floor so that prompts the husband to go down on the crawl space take a look where he discovered rotted floor structure joists and beams i believe in subflooring structure so since the house was now vacant they were able to see a lot of wall surfaces too and guess what oh there's mold you know there's mold on the walls where moving boxes and furniture had all been stacked up against the wall prior to moving out the buyers sued the home inspector for missing the rotted floor structure the mold and the water damage in the attic they also found water damage up in the attic okay clients had photos of a rusty staple in a piece of plywood in the crawl space and at the beam and the judge gave him very little credence because he had no idea what he was looking at there was no way to know that that picture was taken actually in the crawl space although it was a great picture of the deficiency it there was no proof there was no verification that it was from that crawl space and then it meant anything bad so photos showing deteriorating beams in the crawl space but judge still admonished the plaintiffs it's actually on record he admonished the plaintiff's council on how the better practice would have been to authenticate those photos so basically they came to court with a picture of a cancerous spleen and said here's a problem with the electrical panel okay and again courts ruled in favor of the home inspector so witness testimony this is a big one it's even more compelling than a photograph in kelly versus benedict and this happened in texas i think this one was 2019. all of these were all in the last 10 years by the way the home inspector was sued for missing termite damage at the floor structure in the crawl space uh within months of the client moving in they found uh dry wood termite frass in a couple of places inside the house uh so the sellers the agents terminal inspector the home inspectors were all named in the lawsuit because they had people come out and say oh yeah your home inspector is a he should have caught that you know so they sued um and they introduced the seller's photos uh to prove that there was termite damage in crawl space they took the photos though two years after the home inspection the home inspector took no photos he made no mention of any damage to the floor structure in the report and this is the big one okay because we look at this and go yeah that's why i take pictures to prove there was no problem okay the home inspector testified how he didn't remember seeing any damage he testified that had there been damage he would have noted it in the report and both the home inspector the termite inspector testified how frass looks a lot like sawdust and dirt it's kind of hard to recognize when you're crawling around the dirt florida crawl space the judge ruled that the clients failed to prove with their photos how the evidence existed period and uh it was in existence present and visible at the time of the home inspection he said there's no way that i can tell that from your photographs they took their pictures two years after the home inspection and the court allowed it because there was an expert to authenticate it but it didn't help why because of the testimony of the home inspector and the termite inspector so the testament the witness testimony beat the photograph the client's photographs that and the fact that photographs were two years old so if the pictures aren't really going to help us in court okay can they help us in everyday business operations well i think most of us already know the answer that one because you can't be a home inspector very long before a client calls you up and says yeah i didn't reach a report until just now and in the case of milner versus biggs uh the case where the home inspector couldn't access the crawl space the buyers admitted in court they didn't read the report before closing okay so we know that to be true you know and people come to us after the fact would photos in that report have prevented them from suing probably not so even if the home inspector had taken a bunch of photographs he's still been sued okay because they eventually did read the report report and they didn't care they didn't care what they saw and after reading the entire case i got the feeling the milners were unreasonable you know they weren't about to listen to anything short of a promise of a victory in court you know and i realized here too that it just may not be possible to take enough photos to satisfy that unreasonable client and when dealing with reasonable people sure a photograph very likely to make them think uh twice about you know calling you to complain uh when there's something there's upset about you know because it's that societal perception of the photograph as long as people are willing to spend money to sue someone else they'll always be an attorney willing to take their money and go for it now i'm not saying that attorneys are crux that's not what i'm saying okay and i know it can easily be translated i'm saying if somebody's got 450 bucks and they've got a building that's a foundation four walls and a roof with some electrical plumbing and mechanical in it i'm there man you know i don't care what they're going to do with it if they want to pay my fee i'll give them the report and i'll do the best job i can possibly do you know and i don't think attorneys are any different they're in business to make money just like we are so uh as long as people are willing to pay for it they'll always be fine be willing to they'll find an attorney willing to take the case so looking at that milner versus bigs the buyers clearly had very little to go on justifying suing anyone but they wanted to try they found an attorney willing to take the case it starts with a letter always goes from there what happens anybody's guess but if you had photos you're still going to get the letter from the attorney and you could still very easily end up in court okay so yes they're a great deterrent okay i totally agree with that but is it going to work in court the answer that's probably not okay um there's also the benefits of courtesy you know i learned a long time ago um you know that uh i get fewer phone calls from asian sellers and contractors and i have the right kind of pictures in there there's the safety you know and this is where i take pictures i tell clients don't follow me at the ladder to the addict uh into the uh onto the roof in the crawl space uh into the electrical pin on the furnace that's where my pictures come from you know because those are areas so i don't want the customer to go and they can't see the deficiencies for themselves and when agents started telling me years ago i mean from the very first time i handed a report over with pictures in it agents have been telling me more pictures right but because i have you know a corporate background i learned a long time ago in corporate america you don't just take anything literally you ask more qualifying questions so i asked how does that look how do you incline your clients benefit from more pictures and as it turns out they wanted more pictures so they could talk less to contractors and home inspectors so when i that's when i started adding images to my reports showing right next to the defect the right way to do things and i used images like the ones that are available on internachi's website you know to show you all the proper ways to do things you put that right next to the defect that's a lot fewer phone calls and realtors and agents are very happy you know because that way the realtor can go out to the contractor say home inspectors say this bad home inspectors say that good you make good how much and they're done you know that's what they want insurance companies their jobs easier and cheaper when they were cheaper when they've got those pictures to intimidate with right um they can do it over the phone they can send them a few emails with the pictures and they'll say we have documented evidence proof right here in our offices and they pay out fewer claims and they save money okay that's how pictures benefit so when your insurance company is asking for more pictures it helps to understand why they want them helps you make a better more informed decision as to why you're taking those pictures okay how can pictures hurt the business okay well an easy argument attorneys make uh against photos for relevance deficiencies in the picture that wasn't stated in the report we saw that quite a bit too uh in some of these cases uh they never actually made it to court um the insurance company settled it you know because we researched some of these claims um my photo looks better than your photo you know uh now you got that he said she said if they can argue enough to say that mine's better than yours and the other people say no mine's better they'll just toss them both out rather than argue about it um so if your photo's not clear if it's blurry if it's too close it's too far away that's how they can hurt you know my brother-in-law um he owns veteran inspection professionals in phoenix arizona he's been doing home inspections for 20 years and a couple of years ago he did a home inspection for an agent on a house that she was buying it's standard practice for him to take a picture of the electrical panel with the dead front off and they just put that in the report and say here's your panel um and i used to ask him why do you do that he said well it looks good in the report okay well last year uh he says you're never going to believe this he says my guy barry he went out and did a home inspection today and it was for that home that uh for a home that the agent bought a year ago and i did the inspection barry found double tapping in the panel took a picture of him put in the report realtor calls me and says you missed it a year ago shame on you you got to pay to fix it apparently there's a couple thousand dollars worth of electrical issues that need to be repaired that were uncovered once somebody dug in the panel a little bit further we all know that story right so mark just went back to the original reports from a year before showed a picture of the electrical panel and said gee put the two pictures side by side no double tapping here double tapping there the realtor swore up and down she never had anybody work on the panel that nobody went in that panel in those 12 months somebody had to and he had the photographic evidence and that helped okay so i can see that but how many of us i mean he's been taking pictures for 20 years right and he always puts a picture of the electrical panel that's the only time that's ever come in handy okay so you kind of have that how much effort am i putting out there for something that you know is clearly not my problem you know and i didn't do it and screw it up so from this story in reaching all these or researching all these cases it appears that some of what i've been doing over the years is a great idea some of what i've been doing isn't necessarily as good as i thought and some of it might only help once in a while it may not be worth the effort okay so there's two key takeaways actually three um that we want to take away from all this and we're probably already profoundly aware of them but it helps to think about this in terms of photos okay because sometimes we forget of what these key takeaways are and we try to enhance our report through the use of photos enhancing the cya tools if you will um and maybe we're not enhancing them all so the first one the first key takeaway here uh is going to be own up to your mistakes okay now you see that all over internachi's website you see that all over a lot of other home inspectors websites you make a mistake no amount of documentation or photos are going to save you from having to own up to it okay and that's what the standards of practice are for standards of practice protect us and the consumer okay um and they level that playing field so that we're less likely to get unreasonable claims and when we do we've got something to back us up and that's what the standards of practice for but if you make a mistake because we have standards of practice you can't hide it you know doesn't mean you win doesn't mean you lose and i see here in the q a we got a question from lawrence he's asking about thermal images and i think thermal images we can apply the same rules to and i'll talk about that in just a second so i promise to get to that and uh forgive me if lawrence isn't your name and you're you know using your sister's computer or something and her name is lawrence that's the only name i've got to work with there so um so you make a mistake it's gonna be readily apparent two plus two is not five but you can see the person wrote it down that way pretty tough to argue with that one when it's written down right second key takeaway from this the burden of proof it's another reason why photos haven't had much impact on the cases that we found from the last 15 years or so okay even with so many home inspectors taking pictures of limitations in the report and this is where i want to talk about it's silly to take pictures of limitations okay now just stay with me here we take photos to prove everything or we take photos to prove nothing okay and what i mean by that is we take pictures of every deficiency so we can prove every deficiency that we found some of us take photos of every limitation so we can prove we couldn't see or access something so essentially from a legal perspective we're taking pictures of nothing okay keep that in mind as we go through this taking pictures of limitations to prove why you didn't do something isn't really necessary because you don't have to prove that to anyone when something is not in the report it's because there was nothing to say okay and otherwise it would have been in the report kind of like what we talked about in the earlier case where the home inspector said there was nothing in the report because there was nothing to say right the courts are not going to require you and i to prove our innocence in a civil court any more than they do in a civil uh criminal court okay so the burden of proof is on the person suing you uh and they have to prove that you did something wrong okay they have to prove you missed it okay we don't have to prove our innocence the other party must prove our guilt so remember that when you're taking pictures you know am i doing this for burden of proof well the burden isn't on you so maybe you don't need to take that picture okay so what about pictures of deficiencies you know we should take pictures of every single one right without photos client can't see the deficiency uh they can't possibly know that it exists well some home inspectors we've seen placing you know how-to videos on youtube stuff like that you know they say uh some of them even say they take pictures in place of the narrative because they don't write well so they just take pictures stuff well i'm here to tell you that without all the documentation and without authentication to back them up those photos don't mean anything okay and they will be dismissed if you ever get to court because they're not relevant remember the cancer spleen photo right so remember what i said how the legal profession's been around in evolving over the last few thousand years well since the written word was invented man's been putting contracts in writing because it's the best way to prove what was agreed to later on down the road the written word is so powerful men have been hanged for just having signed a document let's take that declaration of independence right uh for example the uh document in its most basic form you know you could look at it's just nothing more than a piece of parchment paper with ink that was uh you know they used a bird feather to write it down okay pretty primitive by modern standards wouldn't you say but it wasn't the fact that it was parchment paper and ink okay uh our founding fathers put it in writing to show the king they're resolved to have freedom from a tyrannical government all 56 members of that continental congress lost all of their wealth because they signed it five were captured and tortured to get copies of it um i forget how many i think it was like six others it got hanged why because for thousands of years and to this day the written word is considered sacred truth until someone can prove otherwise taking photos to compensate for a lack of ability to get your point across in writing could turn out to be a disaster always back up your photos with documentation and in every single one of the cases we study the home inspector won or lost based on documentation every single one of them okay in nearly every case the written report was referenced multiple times uh in nearly every case the written report was compared to the standards of practice either whether they were state law or organizational standards practice what was written in the report carried more weight it weighed more heavily in the course decisions than the photos every single time so in that case of milner versus biggs the court compared the unauthenticated pictures from the plaintiffs uh to the documentation of the home inspector and the standards practice they ruled in favor of that home inspector in both the inspector's report and the standards practice documentation is what justified the inspector's lack of ability to inspect the crawl space because of the hanging insulation and ductwork um so i guess this means that the folks who wrote the standards of practice including organizations like internachi kind of knew what they were doing when they wrote them um and the states that have adopted them into law they kind of understand and recognize the importance of them because they're referenced more than any photos we could find mentioned in any of the legal cases it always came down to documentation so that's what we've all been doing for decades you know and so far nothing's proven to be better than our written report paired with a good standard of care like the internachi standards of practice okay um and we have to remember it's kind of a new a new thing you know relatively speaking 15 20 years digital photos and the reports so what are we recommending okay this is where we kind of put it all together i'm not an attorney i can't give you legal advice all i can do uh is uh research all i can do is study everything i can get my hands on okay and share it with you so nothing i'm saying here is a substitute for legal advice from an attorney especially when you have a complaint a claim or a lawsuit okay and of course your insurance company uh you know programs like joe ferries service or they're wonderful services they take the burden off of dealing with these issues you know they take on that burden they write the letters they respond and they can really help you out with stuff like this and i like those services okay and you know even joe ferry says you know the documentation standards of practice you know and then he talks about photographs on his website and as far as recommendations go i'll tell you what i've learned tell you how i'm going to move forward you know after having done all this research because i came into this whole research thing with some preconceived notions well i'm still going to do about 10 to 15 inspection photos okay um i'm still going to just take pictures of deficiencies in area where the customers can't go okay um i don't want the client to go on the roof the attic the crawl space etc um and those pictures are useful because the client can't readily see them for themselves but i'm not going to take pictures of trip hazards in woodrot that they can walk up to and see themselves it's not relevant because i'm going to document in the report i don't think i'll be taking any pictures that i don't intend to put in the report you know because that seems to get more people in trouble and i do this because and i do all of this because i do on-site reports and to take 450 photographs i'll never be able to do an on-site report and if i do it'll take me all day you know so i like being able to do three inspections a day so that's one of the reasons why i limit the photographs that i take now when i get the occasional complaint i believe the compliance of the client i'm sorry is unreasonable i'll turn it over to the insurance company i mean that's what we're obligated to do ing to our insurance contract but not till i've reminded them how everything is clearly documented in the report and suggests that they read it thoroughly okay since documentation prevails every time i'm going to focus on continually evaluating improving my writing methods and my skills to you know improve what's actually written in the report so it can't be misinterpreted misunderstood or twisted after the fact i'm going to use photos basically as a courtesy illustration so i'll be documenting everything to the best of my ability use the photos as a courtesy illustration and maybe not try to use it so much as a proactive legal tool so i'll keep the photos relevant and i'll keep asking those qualifying questions why do you want more how do you think they should look you know uh how would a photo have helped um and i'll keep that in mind when i'm out there doing the home inspections now how does your client benefit from them that's always a big one that asks realtors and when we know more about why they need the photos well then we can make the the photos more useful more relevant and be less likely to have them dismissed if we ever go to court so thank you very much that's all i've got and i hope i didn't go too fast or too slow for everybody that was awesome derek thank you very much thank you that was really good information and uh it gives us a chance to think about what we're actually doing and you're right pictures and the words pictures and videos are not in the standards of practice right so they are um up to the inspector to provide them and uh out of courtesy is a really good uh idea uh a good term when you do something just for courtesy and uh they're just supplementary um because what is the most important what's most relevant um is what you say and what you write and document um so there's probably one thing i just wanted to make sure everybody knows neither derek or i are attorneys but we do have um an attorney available to internachi members at nachi.org insurance that's joe dentaler and he handles dispute resolutions and i would say visit that page and ask ben garrison and joe dentaler [Music] do pictures and video help you resolve disputes before they get too far into uh being a formal complaint so wayne you asked about internachi's experience with photos in support of its inspectors and the buyback guarantee i would reach out to um ben garrison and joe dentaler and that's at i'll put it in the chat that's at nachi.org insurance um katrina asks opinion on videos um well i always do videos of my inspections what do you think derek you know i think videos are really cool and again if uh and i want to go back also to lawrence's question about thermal images uh because i still need to address that one um i think videos can be a really cool thing i think they can be very helpful i'm not so sure yet if there's enough evidence out there that they could help us you know if we ever do end up in court and again i'd get an attorney's opinion on it personally i don't do videos um and again maybe you can call me old school but i'm going 30 years back too long before you know when i first started uh digital cameras were like eighteen hundred dollars and they were cost prohibitive you know so i didn't do photo you could do polaroids you remember those but they were a buck a piece you know and they were lousy photos so i'm not so sure i think videos are still kind of a new technology and uh lawrence all i can tell you about the thermal images is what i tell my students use it like you use your moisture meter if you suspect a problem get it out and use it either that or you're going to do an entire energy on it and do every you know surface area of the home with that thermal imaging camera i think they're a great tool i think they can give us a lot of insights into the home uh i'm not so sure that i would use it as a cya tool um but there's a lot of good uses for it yes you know many of which we don't have time to get in here so you know use it selectively yep uh and sometimes a home inspector is hired just to document with only pictures and video of the condition of the home the condition of a roof uh a bank phase inspection what phase is the construction in and also pre-drywall to see the insulation it's hard to write uh what you see especially when there's a uh an insulation in the wall uh installation problem exactly lee asks do you take more photos if you have an absentee client uh i do and then i do video and then i show the client um the uh the inspection summary essentially and with pictures and video what do you think about that and and i think that's a great idea again i'm not using video at least not yet um when the um when the client can't be there i do take more pictures you know i'm not going to take for example a picture of every occurrence of wood rot i'll say here's an example of wood rot and it's in several places around the house read the report you know but uh i'm not going to you know just give them 10 or 15 photos either if they can't be there they deserve to have more photos yep um ryan asks our thoughts about whether or not software companies inspection report software companies are built around pictures uh whether that's a liability or not i think uh you have to decide what your report inspection report looks like essentially you're going to be ultimately judged upon the report that's what they're buying um a little bit about the experience a little bit about what you say during the inspection but no one's going to remember any of that they're only going to look at the text and the words that you use and so you could reach out to your inspection software provider and have that conversation with them about what do they think should be in the report but your local business attorney i always recommend this have one available um hire them they're expensive per hour but they can go over everything that you hand over to our clients including the inspection agreements any resources that you reference like the standards of practice that derek has been talking about and also your inspection reports have your local business attorney read over your inspection reports because uh if you do get into a um uh uh dispute um i have that's the one thing that your attorney is going to ask what did you actually say in the report and you're both going to read the report eventually so you might as well um read the report together with your attorney and most most of the time your narratives your sentences are already written they're pre-written and you're just selecting them so it's a good idea to look at your entire narrative library with your local business attorney what do you think derek you know i i i can't uh i agree with everything you just said and i don't want to say anything to that because he did such a good job of answering it the only thing i'll add is that uh it's kind of like you know why do people corrugated flexible uh drain pipes underneath the sink if they're illegal it's because home depot will sell them you know so it's kind of like the software right if home inspectors want more pictures software developers will build their software around that you know and i think when you're reaching out to these software developers find out are they a home inspector you know have they done home inspections and how much feedback have they gotten from home inspectors and have they have it reviewed by an attorney for the way they incorporate the pictures in there i think those are all really good questions yes well uh derek looks like you have a student mark uh he thanks you uh you were instructor of his in 2019 in washington and he enjoyed the class back then and and and i remember you mark thank you very much i'm glad to see that you attended it's awesome to see you derek thank you very much high tech home inspection training i appreciate it uh thanks for taking the time out in your busy schedule um to uh to teach us during this live webinar something we should all be thinking about about our inspection pictures and our inspection processes gives us food for thought i really appreciate it thank you ben it was great to be here i hope i get to do it again sometime all right everybody see you next time on an international webinar stay safe and healthy bye bye