Home Inspection Services

Home Insight offers home inspection services, including resale, new home, builder warranty, presale, and senior home safety inspections.

Home InSight's American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI) Certified Member home inspectors perform a variety of home inspection services in California's San Francisco East Bay area, including eastern Contra Costa County.  We proudly serve the cities of Antioch, Brentwood, Oakley, Pittsburg, and surrounding communities.

While providing resale, new home, builder warranty, presale, and senior home safety home inspection services, we offer additional services in-house and through our affiliates.

Home InSight's Home Inspection Services

Resale Home Inspections

New Home Inspections

Builder Warranty Home Inspections

Presale Home Inspections

Senior Home Safety Network Home Inspections

For all but the presale home inspection, each home inspection service is described in the following format: facts & considerations, inspection purpose, reasons to inspect, home inspection focus, report content, pricing variables, availability, and on-site inspection time.

Home Inspection Facts

There are underlying conditions driving the need for each type of home inspection service.  For example, full disclosure is rare for a resale home inspection.  It's more like, buyer beware.

Home Inspection Purpose

The primary purpose of any full home inspection is to determine the overall condition of the house, as of the time of the inspection. 

Home InSight usually goes on to begin looking at generally excluded items, such as moisture control, indoor air quality, and energy control: home performance.

Home Inspection Reasons

There are a variety of reasons for performing a home inspection, depending on whether the client is buyer, seller, homeowner, investor, family member, or caregiver.  As such, Home InSight offers a range of home inspection service levels.

Home Inspection Focus

The focus of a home inspection changes slightly depending on the type of home inspection performed.  Our home inspectors collect similar, but slightly different information for each type.  For example, a new house inspection is a code-base home inspection.  This kind of data is unwanted or unnecessary for other types of home inspections.

All of our complete home inspection services focus on at least these things:

-Visible health & safety concerns
- Operation & installation of equipment
- Structural integrity
- Utility installation: plumbing, electrical, fuel gas
- Storm water drainage

Home Inspection Report Content

Electronic Delivery. All of our reports are delivered electronically from a secure server hosted by HomeGauge.  Report delivery is fast and easily distributed to all interested parties.

Print Responsibly. Our full inspection reports are huge.  Take all the pictures out, and they'd be about the same size as most other home inspection companies.

Home InSight is green-building services company, providing much more than the home inspection services described here.  Electronically delivery avoids unnecessary paper printing, to preserve trees.  It also saves ink.  Electronic delivery minimizes some of the impact on the environment.  Please print what you need!

Report On-Line Availability. The inspection report is available on-line for 5 years.  It can also be copied to your computer.

Paper Copies. Paper copies of the report are available free to customers without computer access.  Additional printed reports are available for nominal fee.

Report Format.  Our reports generally follow this format.  Some items are added or excluded, based on the type of home inspection ordered.

- Full inspection report w/ pictures
- 3 summary reports

Notes:
1. All reports are delivered electronically. Printed reports are optional
2. Summary reports are directly derived from the full report
3. Free roof inspection applies to houses in Alameda, Contra Costa, and Solano counties only
4. Recall Chek is an optional service

Home Inspection Pricing Variables

Helping home buyers and home owners understand their house, is our mission and passion.  We'd do them for free, but our families and creditors might have a thing or two to say about that. 

Pricing Structure. Our pricing structure generally uses the following variables to provide a quote.

- Heated living area: square feet
- Foundation type: slab, basement, or crawlspace
- Building age: Year built
- House condition: Average, foreclosed, handyman special
- Location: ZIP code
- Additional services: Recall Chek, mold samples, etc.

However, for buyers, we attempt to make the inspection virtually free by offering coupons at local building supply stories that can be worth more than the total price of the inspection!

Home Inspection Availability

Minimum Daylight. To evaluate a house, we need at least 1 hour of daylight to investigate the exterior.  We like to start our home inspections around 9 AM and finish them no later than 5-6 PM.  This period of time gives us ample daylight while allowing us to have a life in the evening.

House Access. In San Francisco's East Bay, Realtors have to provide entry because the local MLS here has made the requirements and annual costs prohibitive to carry a real estate lockbox key.  To cope, we like to try to show up about 1 hour before the agent does to begin investigating the outside.

Client Participation. We encourage every client to participate with us for the full period of the home inspection.  However, this is impractical for most people, due to work schedules, child care, and other life activities.  At a minimum, join us about 1 hour from when we're expected to finish.  Many clients choose to come just before we begin the interior inspection.

Appointment Confirmation. In most cases, there is enough time to schedule on-line and get inspection confirmation.  The expected time period for the home inspection is documented in the confirmation email.  When you get it, please take time to read and electronically sign the inspection contracts to save time on-site.

Home Inspection On-Site Time

On-Site Inspection Time. Generally, our on-site inspection time is the better part of a half day, usually 1 hour / 1000 sqft + 1 hour.  More time is needed for testing or additional services.  Experience shows us that it takes us about 2.5 hours to inspect a 2000 sqft house and we spend at least 1 hour discussing the house.

Satisfaction Guaranteed. At the end of the inspection, we will ask you if you're satisfied with the inspection as performed.  We will stay with you at the house until you are completely satisfied! 

Building Consultant for Life. As your building consultant for life, we will answer your questions for as long as you own the house.