Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)
Bengaluru, Jan 8: In India, owning gold is the primary ambition of even the poorest household, but owning a home/apartment is a lifetime dream of most Indians. In the absence of any simple, objective means to measure the quality, people investing in these properties feel that they are taken for a ride by the real estate developers / builders who extract a hefty price but provide at the end a property, construction quality of which is substandard.
Moreover, these dreams are fulfilled normally out of money borrowed from financial institutions/mortgage houses and one of the requirement from these financial institutions is availability of inspection report before the loan amount is approved. What is being followed now is a manual and visual process mainly focussing on things like valuation of the property, adherence to the approved plan, actual dimension and so on instead of verifying the quality the home/apartment; there is definitely a need for home inspection service.
What is Home Inspection? - According to Wikipedia, it is a limited, non-invasive examination of the condition of a home/apartment, often in connection with the sale/renting of that property. Home inspections are usually conducted by a home inspector who has the know-how to perform such inspections. The inspector prepares and delivers to the client a written report of findings. The client then uses the knowledge so gained to make informed decisions about their pending real estate transactions. The home inspector describes the condition of the home/apartment at the time of inspection but does not guarantee future condition, efficiency, or life expectancy of systems or components.
In layman terms this basically means a qualified/certified expert aka Home Inspector performs an inspection of your home/apartment (checks the electricals, plumbing, structures and woodwork at a minimum),
using a checklist and a process (so that they do not miss anything), aided by tools (eg: fluke meters, moisture meter, IR cameras to detect faults), supported by software (eg: Mobile app for inspection, pdf reports, scheduling). The Home Inspector delivers a report that reflects the current state of the home/apartment. The Home Inspector always remains neutral and does not propose the next steps or recommend the vendors that should/could perform corrective measures.
There are many benefits of such a process being done on a new or existing home/apartment:
Get objective and comprehensive data to decide next steps
Get a professional opinion about the home/apartment
Find obvious and hidden defects with the home/apartment
Save future repair and maintenance costs
Detect unsafe areas of the home/apartment
Create a quality baseline of the home/apartment
Prevent future inconveniences
In the western world, Home Inspection is assumed to be a worldwide practice but unfortunately, it is not the case. What is a common practice in the rest of the world is not so in India, even though the real estate market is booming in India (growing @CAGR 11.2%), prices of apartments, houses are skyrocketing, and
input (tiles, cement, paint) and labour (painters, masons, carpenters) costs are rising year on year.
Off late, there are players like HomeInspektor (powered by appZui Technologies) who are working in this space and building a marketplace to deliver easy, objective, trusted and comprehensive home inspections leveraging the power of mobile, analytics and cloud technologies together with tools and robust process checklist.
HomeInspektor is based in Bengaluru, and is headed by its CEO Sudhi. It operates as a marketplace used by home buyers, home sellers, home inspectors, realtors, financial institutions and other players associated with the home inspection business. The company aims to enable customers to invest in properties with confidence and peace of mind, by providing unbiased, objective feedback about the quality of the property.
For more information, log on to www.homeinspektor.com or email info@homeinspektor.com.