Why good narratives are important in the home inspection report.

A properly prepared home inspection report serves the client by providing accurate, clear, useful information about the condition of a property. A good home inspection report also benefits the home inspector by providing a superior service to his/her clients.

Writing up a home inspection report has been made easier by using one of the many home inspection software package available to inspectors. Many of these programs come with pre- populated narratives for each section, usually just enough to get by. But is that enough?

The typical inspector will spend years tweaking and developing their own narratives to best suit what they want to include into their reports. The benefit of having a robust narrative library will significantly cut down the report writing time for each inspection, as well as describe the defect while keeping your liability safe. As you know, there are many common defects that are found on each inspection. Having that narrative ready to go helps move the inspection along quickly.

Fortunately, there is some help. The InterNACHI Inspection Narrative Library is probably the biggest collection of narratives for multiple software programs being used today. Written by industry veteran Kenton Sheppard, this offers more than 7,500 unique narratives so you don’t have to write them. These narratives are written with safety and inspector liability in mind.

A newcomer, Inspection Narratives, offers thousands of home inspection report narratives updated weekly for a low monthly subscription fee. Written by Certified master Inspectors, you will spend less time writing and more time knowing your clients are satisfied.

If you are a Spectora software user, look at Inspector Template. Created by veteran inspector KC Bartley, this will give you a new template as well as 5000 inspection narratives to work with, so you will not have to create your own.

You can find links to these narrative libraries in the software section at Homeinspectology. A little investment can go a long way for time back, and peace of mind.

If you are looking for tips on report writing, have a look at this article written by Alan Carson, from Carson Dunlop. It’s a good summary and much is still very relevant to your job.