As a home inspector your job is most often the investigation of a soon to the purchased home, which in most people's lives may be the single largest purchase they make. When an individual embarks on this journey there is a lot of emotion and also many expectations. As you perform your duties as a home inspector there are inherently many potential perils. These perils can mainly be classified into two main categories or classifications; physical damage to people or property and mistakes or misses in your inspection or reporting.
Protection for these two types of hazards comes from two different types of insurance coverage. These two main classifications are typically defined as General Liability, and Professional Liability or Errors and Omissions insurance.
General liability hazards would be specifically defined as bodily injury and property damage to a 3rd party. What this really means is that if you, as an inspector caused damage to a third parties property or person while you were in the course of doing your job, you might incur a General Liability claim. A few examples might help round out the picture.
Example 1: Let's say you are inspecting a crawl space under a house that is accessed through the floor in the hallway. While inspecting the crawl space you leave the cover off the access in the floor. During the time you are in the crawl space the potential owner of the home is walking through the house admiring the beautiful crown molding and falls through the open access hole into the crawl space, breaking their leg. The injuries that were sustained as a result of the fall would be a General Liability claim.
Example 2: An inspector is inspecting a condo for a new owner. The inspector enters the attic space to inspect the underside of the roof for leaks and other issues. While walking through the attic the inspector steps on a fire suppression sprinkler head and snap the fire suppression pipe. All of the damage caused to the structure and the contents will be a general liability claim. While general liability claims can occur to home inspectors Professional Liability claims occur with greater frequency and severity.
A professional liability claim is defined as follows, "insurance coverage that protects and defends professional advice and service-providing individuals and companies from a negligence claim, and damages awarded in such a civil lawsuit." The easiest way to explain errors and omission insurance is coverage for an inspector in the event the inspector failed to notice a defect during the inspection or the inspector notices the defect but fails to report it. Either way the inspector has made an error or omitted something from the inspection.
Since both types of hazards exist it is prudent for inspectors to obtain both types of insurance. When looking for a policy make sure you secure coverage that provides you with coverage for both types of hazards listed above.
If you have questions about the type of insurance you need for your business or would like a quote for both errors and omission and general liability coverage, give the InspectorPro Insurance Program a call.
Ryan Osborne is the National Director of the InspectorPro Insurance Program, http://www.inspectorproinsurance.com/. The InspectorPro team have created a comprehensive home inspector insurance policy that addresses the main hazards confronted by home inspectors in the course of inspecting. Ryan is a nationally recognized speaker and writer on a variety of topics, including risk management practices for home inspectors, business building techniques and strategies, and many others.
Comments
Post a Comment