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Status of the legislation.
The Senate has sent the financial overhaul bill to President Obama’s desk. In addition to many other provisions, the bill includes a section that will add home inspection to the HUD housing counseling program in a big way.
HUD will be enlisted to do the following:
Actively advise homebuyers across the country to obtain home inspections as a key element of buying a house
- Tell buyers that obtaining a home inspection is a decision they need to make, and should make
- Tell buyers what professional characteristics to look for in a home inspector, and where and how to find one
- Ensure that homebuyers reached by the HUD counseling programs consider obtaining a home inspection as early as possible in the process — when home inspections have the greatest utility to homebuyers
- Develop new documents and training materials both for training HUD counselors and for distribution to the buyers they counsel
- Make all of these messages available to all homebuyers regardless of whether they finance using government-backed programs or private sector lending.
- This national de facto marketing effort will occur at no cost to ASHI members, and will be conducted under the authority, funding and staffing resources of HUD.
With completion of this legislative phase of the project, ASHI will shift to the next phase – administrative implementation. We have set the stage for ASHI to meet with the key HUD staff, who will implement the new home inspection counseling provisions. We fully anticipate that ASHI will have important input into the implementation phase. In fact, ASHI has already helped HUD draft some of the key documents that will be used by HUD staff – the “For Your Protection, Get a Home Inspection” document, as well as the “Ten Questions to Ask Your Home Inspector” document, that prompts homebuyers to consider the quality, professionalism, ethics, experience issues that strongly favor ASHI home inspectors.
Further, we note that there may be training opportunities in which the ASHI office might participate as a grantee. We will discuss possible funding opportunities for ASHI to engage in such a role and perhaps generate a new revenue opportunity.
Purpose of the legislation
Previous research conducted by GAO (also requested by ASHI) demonstrated conclusively that there are numerous reasons why homebuyers do not obtain home inspections, and many of those reasons are unrelated to cost. Many of those reasons relate to confusion, lack of adequate information about the benefits of a home inspection, poor timing, simple lack of awareness and failure to attend to details, not knowing when a home inspection should be obtained, and more.
It is reasonable to assume this confusion costs ASHI members large numbers of prospective client opportunities and considerable revenue. Yet, nearly all ASHI members do not have the resources to, on their own, fund or staff a coordinated effort to redress this revenue-sapping confusion and misinformation.
However, the federal government does have the resources to address this problem.
ASHI developed a compelling comprehensive argument that it is in the national interest, and consumer interest, for the federal government to help. ASHI associated home inspection with consumer protection, a winning strategy in the current environment.
Further, ASHI devised an acceptable mechanism to implement such a national program by modifying existing programs – the HUD housing counseling programs (which are receiving increasing attention, priority and funding in the current environment).
Further, ASHI crafted a new legislative proposal to provide the legislative authority for HUD to apply resources specifically to home inspection counseling on a nationwide basis.
ASHI was successful in convincing key Members of Congress at the heart of housing legislation that the legislation was substantive and would help homebuyers make better homebuying decisions.
The effort culminated with passage of the ASHI language within the larger financial reform bill.
The Turnaround: History of ASHI legislative activity
1. Ten years ago, HUD was spending millions of tax dollars, with congressional approval, to tell homebuyers that they did not need a home inspection, that they only need a good appraisal (the “enhanced appraisal”).
Today, ASHI has turned Congress and HUD 180 degrees. Congress is passing ASHI legislation and HUD will soon use its funding and staff to deliver precisely the opposite message, a package of messages delivered by government and designed to drive homebuyers to hire home inspectors.
2. Within the home inspection community, only ASHI has this capability. ASHI has demonstrated that it can effectively represent the interests of its members before the federal government, that it can successfully prevail on the federal government to provide ASHI members what they cannot provide for themselves. ASHI is the voice of the home inspection profession in Washington DC.
3. Only ASHI may legitimately offer legislative and regulatory proposals that will be taken seriously and can be sent to the President of the United States to be signed into law.
ASHI has fully separated itself from other organizations in a way that is unique, pays dividends, achieves tangible results and is very difficult if not impossible for its competition to match.
4. ASHI has been able to accomplish this feat for a surprisingly meager amount of money. It has been able to do so using a highly targeted, exceptionally efficient advocacy model, identifying the key protagonists inside the Washington Beltway and convincing them to adopt ASHI thinking in ways that merge with the needs of the current environment. In addition, ASHI has invoked enhanced political support with highly targeted use of the modest but valuable InspectPAC, the political action committee for ASHI, again at minor cost to the association and its members.
These efforts to build the ASHI reputation, and to construct a relationship between home inspection and consumer protection, are creating derivative benefits in other directions. For example, your president David Tamny and executive director Jeff Arnold have been fully briefed on opportunities to work with the federal government to develop new specialty inspections that could be offered by ASHI members as new revenue opportunities that would not be tied to the home sales market.
The point is that your successes in advocacy in Washington DC are not limited to home inspection counseling, and will open doors for other opportunities that could drive new markets, new revenues and more to ASHI members.
Prepared by:
Randall G. Pence, Esq.
Capitol Hill Advocates, Inc.
ASHI’s advocate in Washington DC
7/21/2010
