Buyers used to carry all of the risk
For most of the history of private property, a buyer who wanted to know the condition of a house had to work it out alone. If the furnace died or the roof leaked at the next rain, that was the buyer’s problem. The Romans had a phrase for the arrangement: caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. The home inspection industry as we know it is barely half a century old, and it was built mostly in courtrooms.
Three cases that built the home inspection industry
Consult counsel before relying on any of this in a transaction. The summaries below are context, not legal advice.
Lingsch v. Savage
A California appellate court held in 1963 that selling a property “as is” does not release a real estate agent from the duty to disclose known defects. The property in that dispute had been placed under condemnation. The buyers had been led to believe it was in legally tenantable condition.
Easton v. Strassburger
In 1984, a California appellate decision went further. A homeowner sued her broker after earth movement destroyed part of her driveway and damaged her foundation. The court found that a broker has a duty to conduct a reasonably competent and diligent inspection of residential property and to disclose what that inspection reveals. The holding was later codified in California Civil Code 2079, and courts in other states looked to it.
Wilson v. Century 21 GWR
After a 1987 purchase revealed serious foundation problems, the buyers sued the listing brokerage for fraud. The brokerage argued it had retained professionals to inspect. The appellate court held that where an agent uses a professional for disclosure purposes, the information that professional produces must satisfy the statutory standard, and the agent remains exposed for anything neither party inspected or disclosed. Civil Code 1102.4 followed, and the use of home inspectors expanded quickly after it.
Caveat inspector
Those decisions moved the risk. A home inspector can now be held responsible for errors and omissions in a report, which is why the working rule became refer and defer.
Home inspectors are generalists by design. Civil Code 1102.4 provides that an expert is not responsible for items of information other than those expressly set forth in the statement, so a careful inspector writes exactly what was observed and nothing beyond it. A structure standing at the time of inspection is reported as standing. A roof that is not leaking today is reported as not leaking today. Anything requiring a specialist gets referred to one.
That rule protects the inspector. It also leaves a real gap on the roof, which is where a general inspection has the least reach and a property has the most water exposure.
How roof inspection separated from home inspection
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, few home inspectors were working in the United States, and agents who wanted a thorough look at a property called general contractors. One of them, Les Watrous, specialized in roofs and roofing structures.
He noticed two patterns. Inspectors were arriving without ladders long enough for a two-story building and referring the roof out rather than climbing it. And the roofing contractors receiving those referrals were handing buyers an estimate on the back of a business card instead of a report on the condition of the roof.
In 1993 he formed a company that performed roof inspections and nothing else. No free estimates. He examined the interior of the house, the attic where accessible, the exterior perimeter and the rooftop, photographed what he found, and wrote it down in enough detail that a buyer, a seller and an agent could each read the same document and reach the same conclusion. Then he added a certification, so a buyer had something in hand recording the condition of the roof on the day it was examined.
How NRCIA started
By 1995, Watrous could see that reports coming from other contractors still varied widely in detail and quality. He registered the National Roof Certification Association that year to publish a standard for roof inspection comparable to what home inspection associations had done for their own trade. In 2000 the name changed to the National Roof Certification and Inspection Association, to avoid confusion with the National Roofing Contractors Association. In 2001 he built reporting software that fixed what a roof inspection report should contain.
NRCIA does not inspect roofs or issue certifications. It sets the standard, trains and accredits members, administers the LeakFREE® certification system, and maintains the member directory. Members do the work.
What accreditation adds for a home inspector
Referring the roof out is still the right call. Referring it to an accredited professional working a published standard is what makes the referral defensible.
Members trained through the RoofGUARD™ program perform the LeakFREE® Check, a five-zone inspection covering the interior, the attic, the exterior, the perimeter and the rooftop, and issue the LeakFREE® Roof Inspection Report. Where the roof meets the published criteria, the accredited individual who performed the inspection can issue a LeakFREE® Roof Certification through InspectionPLUS®. The term is set by the findings, the slope, the materials and the condition, to a maximum of ten years, and the expiration is printed as a date.
LeakFREE® is our federally registered trademark. Only NRCIA members can issue a LeakFREE® certification. The certification records that a specific roof, at a specific address, on a specific date, met the published criteria. It is not insurance, it is not a service contract, and it does not promise that a roof will never leak.
For a home inspector, adding roof inspection as a service or a referral relationship extends what you can document without moving outside the refer and defer discipline that keeps the rest of your report safe.
Join NRCIA and start accreditation: /join-nrcia/
LeakFREE®, Forensic ROOF®, Mr. RoofCheck®, InspectionPLUS®, Today’s Inspection… Tomorrow’s Protection®, and Got Leaks?® are registered trademarks of Field Gate FLP, used by permission. RoofGUARD™, ForensicGUARD™, DisasterGUARD™, E3GUARD™, and Think Like a Raindrop™ are trademarks of Field Gate FLP.
