We like to bring a lot of different people here on the show and expose them to you because we know you are either a potential or you are a real estate investor. On today’s show I am going to be bringing on in the first segment I’ve got Brent Meyer with Sherlock Home Inspections. He is with us here for the first segment, going to be talking a little bit about what they do. In fact, one of the guys he works with, Chris Hurley, was the one who inspected my property and did a fantastic job. We had Chris Hurley on awhile back. Today we brought in Brent Meyer. He works with Chris and is going to be on the program in the first segment.
Later on we’re going to talk with Jacob Goldstein with Houston Grime Busters. That’s right. They bust some grime. Get that grime off your house. We’ll find out exactly what they do. Both of these are our vendors as well. And Valerie Gothard with Cornerstone Mortgage should be calling in here a little later on in the program as well. We’ll talk a little bit about some of the things going on in the mortgage industry. As you know, it changes by the minute. So we want to make sure we keep you up-to-date on that.
CHRIS X: In the first segment we are talking with Brent Meyers from Sherlock Home Inspections. Brent, thanks so much for being here.
BRENT: Oh, you are welcome. Thank you for having me.
CHRIS X: I’m glad to have you on the program. By the way, if you’ve got a question and want to join us here — if you’ve got a question about maybe an inspection or having something done, Brent is here to answer those questions for the next 15, 20 minutes.
BRENT: Yes.
CHRIS X: We are going to talk a little bit about Sherlock Home Inspections. Tell me a little bit about Sherlock Home Inspections. I obviously know something, but a lot of our listeners don’t. What exactly do you guys do?
BRENT: Well, we are home inspectors that really our reports are more geared towards investors. We do people that are moving into a house for themselves. We will inspect their house as well, but we have a lot of experience with investors. So we really are preferred in that venue. We inspect houses. We inspect the mechanical aspects, the roof, the foundation, interior walls, exterior, the drainage. It goes on and on. And in Houston the drainage is actually very important as well as the roof because of all the sun and rain that we get.
CHRIS X: Oh, yeah. And we know the different states obviously have different things they deal with. Here in Houston we’ve gotta deal with humidity. We’ve gotta deal with the heat. Oh, man, I can’t imagine your job. You have had to have been very hot the last 10, 15 days.
BRENT: Well, I lose some weight during the summer.
CHRIS X: Can’t even imagine. When Chris came over and expected my place, you climb up in the attic—
BRENT: Oh, yeah.
CHRIS X: — you check everything.
BRENT: We are in there.
CHRIS X: And it’s something you’ve got to have done if you’re going to purchase a property especially for an investment property—or even if it’s your primary home like what I did, you’ve got to have that thing inspected. You don’t want any little secrets hiding in that place.
BRENT: Absolutely. A good inspector will not stop at the ladder. He’ll get all the way in there. He’ll walk back there. I want to see every nook and cranny of that house. No surprises.
CHRIS X: Absolutely. Once again, we are going here for another 20 minutes with Brent talking about Sherlock Home Inspections. You guys are on our vendor list at Lifestyles Unlimited dot com. How long has Sherlock Homes been around?
BRENT: Well, Sherlock Home Inspections have been around for ten years, and we have worked with Lifestyles for almost that entire time, ever since they were pretty much working out of a parking lot.
CHRIS X: Wow.
BRENT: So we have been around for a long haul. People really love us around here. We definitely—we make our reports so that people understand them and investors enjoy our reports. They are almost an itemized list that you can pretty much hand to contractors which people really enjoy.
CHRIS X: Oh, yeah. The detail was fantastic and obviously you take care of all the things that need to be done during an inspection. But also I remember when Chris did it, he emailed me the breakdown and everything. It was fantastic. I mean, I couldn’t have—I remember years ago when I first bought my other property which is now one of my rental properties the inspector was great, he did a fine job, but he didn’t do anything like what Chris did and what you guys do. I can’t speak highly enough about Sherlock Home Inspections. How long have you yourself been an inspector, Brent?
BRENT: Two to three years.
CHRIS X: Okay. I guess you have to get certified. What do you have to do to become an inspector?
BRENT: Well, to become a professional inspector you have to get licensed by the state which takes about a year of classes and tests. Once you finished all those tests then you have to get insurance. So I am insured up to about a hundred thousand dollars in case I, you know, blow up your house.
CHRIS X: You haven’t blown up any houses yet, have you?
BRENT: Well, no comment. But then after that you have to take community credits—every year you have to keep taking these classes ‘cause codes change every single year.
CHRIS X: I guess you stay up with the continuing education and all?
BRENT: Absolutely.
CHRIS X: Good. And as far as we know, on the record, no houses blown up yet?
BRENT: No houses blown up, no. Not yet. Give me time.
CHRIS X: Okay. You are doing good. You have got plenty of time. It’s still early. So you guys have been—Sherlock Homes has been around and the company it has been what, ten years?
BRENT: Ten years.
CHRIS X: Wow. Obviously you’re doing something right. You’ve made it at least ten years, and I have a feeling you are going to be around for a lot longer. You yourself say you have been doing it for couple years, you are insured, you do the continuing education. How many houses do you think in the last few years since you have been doing this you have probably inspected?
BRENT: Well, I would say every year we do 400 to 600 inspections a year. I would say about 500’s our average. It’s quite a bit. It’s a heavier load than most inspectors that I’ve met. I don’t want to speak for them, but there’s a lot of part-time inspectors out there that aren’t as experienced as we are. And really I feel like my workload speaks for itself. And because of that, I have a lot of experience and much more than many other inspectors.
CHRIS X: Man, I was going to say, if you’re doing between 4 and 600 houses a year—
BRENT: I’ve seen everything. Done every kind of AC unit and heater you could imagine. I have seen roofs, seen ‘em all.
CHRIS X: Wow. I can only imagine what you see. In fact, I am going to save this question for a little later during the interview, but I want to know what’s like the craziest or the worst thing that you have seen—but don’t answer that just yet.
BRENT: All right.
