Are some professional Oregon home inspectors getting kick backs from the sump pump installers? I do not have any evidence that they are.
But, curious is the degree to which many of our Oregon home inspectors are, from my experience watching them operate, in love with sump pump installations and the massive amount of money those installations generate, without stopping groundwater entry into basements and crawl spaces.
Just wasted money in almost all cases.
This is a story. Not fiction. A true story, about how your community works.
This is a story about how home inspectors and many home drainage contractors attempt to weigh in as home drainage professionals, during your most vulnerable time, as a home buyer under stress, with a time line to boot.
This is the story of why there are so many continued home drainage problems, everywhere in the world, but especially in lovely Portland, Oregon.
Read on and I will show you how everything operates to stream line you down the tubes as home buyers and sellers, and slammed into a sump pump installation, over and over again, with no chance of stopping the groundwater entry below grade.
Only the buzz of hearing that sump pump running more often than before.
If a lender and home inspector is involved in your home transaction, you need to read every word of this and take it to heart.
A true cycle of deception, lies, and ignorance, as sump pump installers backed up by home inspectors bilk homeowners around the world of billions of dollars in home drainage contracts that are absolutely scams, and worthless.
Most of these voo doo drainage projects, are so bad as to be laughable, unless it is your home, while additionally being detrimental to the overall health of the occupant family as well.
So, hear we go.
Many of the home inspectors I am familiar with in the Portland, Oregon area, that fit this modus operandi seem quite cavalier about openly attempting to influence the acceptance of one particular home drainage method over another. And this all comes down during a stressful time for sellers and buyers, during the last week of the real estate escrow closing at the title company.
The real estate transaction. So check this out folks.
Lights, camera, action.
In this case, the subject is always sump pumps. The need for which is always first spoken by a guy who admits he is not a drainage expert, and does not have an advanced, experienced, professional opinion to offer, yet does, over and over again.
To drive business to his buddies the sump pump referral fee types.
Even more curious to me, watching this scenario since around 1978 in Oregon myself, is the fact that, time after time home inspectors say that the prospective home buyers should contact a professional home drainage contractor, which they are professionally bound to do.
But they are doing this charade while still attempting to weigh in as a home drainage authority themselves, suggesting home drainage solutions in their inspection report language. Their buddies just happen to install sump pumps, and are licensed and bonded too. Wow. You should just be tickled, right? Hum.
Most Oregon home inspectors are not so stupid as to recommend solutions outright though, they are just the warm up band, and drop a name or two at the right time. Like in the beginning of the conversation with the homeowners, which then makes everyone else coming along the new theory in those homeowners for whom home drainage ignorance haunts and challenges.
The real entertainment has yet to arrive. That will come in the form of perhaps one or more sump pump installers most likely, from my experience buying and selling hundreds to thousands of homes for customers while in the real estate business, during a 25 year plus career prior to starting this home drainage business.
The home inspector simply smiles and does the dumb guy act after he gets the chance to talk first. He knows it is his game to lose now. All he has to do is shut up and get those homeowners his sump pump buddies card, and fat referral fee is guaranteed.
The common home inspector report with a groundwater issue will say something like,”the interior crawl space needs grading, and french drains, plus a sump pump installation, or just trenching along the inside of the crawl space walls
This is absurd stuff folks. Don’t buy into it.
Home inspectors seldom will shut up and quit talking after they admit they are not a professional home drainage contractor. And that should be your first tip off. You have no idea at this point how well this whole deal has been made part of every day business, from a homeowner perspective. Sump pumps, which are worthless at stopping groundwater entry below grade into crawl spaces and basements, often cause more problems than they attempt to solve.
Many Oregon home inspectors will continue to recommend and postulate, within their home inspection report, albeit unsolicited and without professional licensing or knowledge, about home drainage.
This charade is most always accompanied by a statement saying that the home inspector recommends this or that: or grading in the crawl space, or a sump pump.
This garbage is what follows the home inspectors recommendation to contact a home drainage contractor for an evaluation.
This is called “the last word on the subject”.
Note, they admit the home needs professional home drainage evaluation, and that they are just blowing smoke up everyones posterior. So why does anyone pay any attention to home inspectors trying to influence the drainage work bid anyway?
Because the recommendation comes during a crisis situation, where home buyers and sellers are both in crisis, emotionally stressed to the max, trying to close escrow on a property they need to own, in order to go on. And just days ago, only a week before closing they all got this drainage bomb laid on them at the last moment, always, in the rear perspective of the way the game is set up, which includes the lender, home inspector and the sump pump default industry inc.
Everyones judgement is clouded during these stressful times, and folks may be just flipping out too.
These types of home inspectors and sump pump guys know it. They are like the bears waiting for you, the ripe salmon to just swim by, so they can harvest you without much work and effort expended.
Many of you readers are nodding your heads right now and chuckling, because you know I have seen it, just like you have seen it just like that.
The combination of the sump pump contractor and the home inspector, both recommending the same thing, within 24 hours, usually will tilt the scale quickly in favor of the acceptance of the sump pump method over any other method, nearly every time. The first word is a powerful thing. Welcome to America folks.
That is why they do it. It is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to them over a lifetime of scamming sump pump installations.
Due to the homeowners buying into the typical sump pump installtion “guarantee”, many of these homeowners just throw good money after bad, sometimes over and over, installing more than one worthless sump pump system of some sort after another, like gambling addicts at a slot machine, yelling for more quarters.
Most of these guys basically cannot be sued for anything in the end either, unless you are really good, and have a better attorney.
They may be deceptive, but their contracts seldom say things that pin them down firmly without enough wiggle room to spin things around if needed.
Many will have a contract that is only specific to installing sump pumps, a good tip off too.
Every homeowner I ever have spoken to about their failed sump pump system, said that they got a ” sump pump installation guarantee”. When I ask them what it covered, and under what conditions, and with what limitations and exclusions, and other questions, they most often just say nothing more about it, and my perception of the mood change, means that I should stop asking about it, and that the homeowners would simply not like to talk about it anymore, but to say that they were not able to get any money back from the sump pump company, or get the Oregon contractor builders board to rule on their side in the end.
Nothing could be done in arbitration and mediation to bring the parties together to solve the dispute over the “guarantee”, and the lack of specific teeth in the supposed “guarantee”, made it the homeowners loss, for lack of their own due diligence I guess in the end. Sad but true, often.
Home inspectors and sump pump installers have shined a spot light on themselves, by virtue of their own decisions, actions, perceived motivations, and the way they treat the public in general. I may be the most vocal publicly but I am by no means the only one thinking it.
I have watched home inspectors and sump pump installers mix too well, over a 4 decade period in Oregon, on my watch alone, while serving as a professional real estate commercial-investment and residential broker and brokerage owner, as well as a licensed, bonded, and insured home drainage contractor in Oregon.
I have watched these pumped up, pun intended, characters, pulling off the same scam over and over, year after year.
“Sump pumps for everyone, whether they need them or not.” This seems to be the overall business plan between the home inspectors involved in this activity, and the sump pump installers. Nice work for them at thousands of dollars per pop. Sell. Sell.
These guys are messing with everyone, and no one is standing up to them with logic.
This is the dark ages of home drainage, going into a transition that does not bode well for homeowners around the world who have home drainage problems, and find themselves part of this scam.
If no one starts understanding and teaching this, when old farts like me are gone in the not too distant future, a new era of ignorance will descend upon home drainage land, like the home drainage “nothing”.
The void that just sucks your brain and money out, and still leaves you with a home drainage mess.
I know what homeowners tell me over and over about their experiences with groundwater following the sump pump guy and his “guarantee”. They are pissed off homeowners with anger that has been unable to be vindicated, validated or recognized, after extensive measures to do so.
What makes me believe these home inspectors, used in this example are dirty, from a professional standpoint, at the very least, comes directly from their own statements, albeit those statements being untimely, rude, and unsolicited.
My opinion of these types of home inspectors, not all of them, and sump pump installers, not all of them; the ones who own and built this game of deception.
In my business as a professional home drainage contractor in Oregon is see hundreds of failed systems per year. They are installed in just about every wrong way possible. It is amazing the collective stupidity in the existing sump pump installations existing all over town.
I remove these failed systems, at my suggestion, as well as the homeowners request, prior to the installation of hand excavated french drains to collect the groundwater on the outside of the foundation walls first. They are never going to run anyway. Sometimes they are just left there, but never work again, because no more water comes in to feed them after I install hand excavated exterior french drain groundwater removal systems around the homes foundation.
The pissed off homeowners that call me following this experience, as a result of this abuse, have been ripped off by sump pump installers more often than any other complaint I hear, probably at least 10 times over.
I hear 10 times more complaints about sump pumps than any other complaint having to do with home drainage. Year after year.
That is the reason for this article. They fool you guys. They don’t fool any professional home drainage contractors.
If you think this is not the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, go hire a sump pump contractor guy yourself, and disprove me. Happy trails.
Nothing will change, and the crawl space will just get pumped out partially, if it works at all, while the depth of the groundwater in the crawl space will drop a bit perhaps. If it works at all.
My original study of this home inspector, sump pump, sump pump contractor love triangle began years ago, while I was first cutting my teeth in the home drainage business, and still owned a commercial-investment real estate brokerage.
When I first started studying this accusation, I was buying and selling real estate as a commercial-investment as well as an Oregon residential real estate broker.
Little did I know at that buying a home was full of games and tricks to watch out for.
I never saw that the drainage industry was so intrenched as to be able to influence the acceptance of one method of home drainage over another, and could set home buyers and sellers up to give a distinct advantage to the inspector, lender and sump pump installer, while absolutely violating the spirit and intent of the earnest money that was written by the buyers agent to protect the buyers, if only they had found out the condition of the property, prior to literally the last minute.
It was discovered to be a far more serious than had been previously thought problem.
A problem of deception and greed, fleshed out by example over and over again. If I would have had a blog in those days I probably would have been talking about it in the 80s.
From early on, I have wanted to follow home inspectors and sump pump installers around with a camera and mic. 24-7, like a mouse in their pocket.
I still think this is a great topic for some bright investigative reporting writer, with tons of money and a huge staff, for some major tv show? Call me John Stossel.
There is an important story to be told here, ladies and gentlemen. It is not just an Oregon story. It is a world wide story of how slam dunking the home buyers works every time.
The numbers of home inspectors that are involved in this game would be anyones guess in Oregon alone. I believe the number to be at least hundreds of them in Oregon alone, and probably in the same percentages around the U.S. as well, per capita, given the remarks that come from homeowners from both coasts and the islands of the United States, and literally from all over the world as well.
I think it is part of a now little spoken tradition, made legal in the average home inspectors eyes probably.
Many home inspectors are just happy with the opportunity to rake in some more cash.
The gratuity referral system is quite normal and standard in everything from a to z in the sales world, everywhere. Except this is one example of how absolute power corrupts absolutely.
This referral ethic, and mutual admiration society, between the home inspectors and the sump pump installers, has proven so massively profitable to them that they now would fight to the death for it, I now suspect. And may have to, if homeowners play them like they are trying to play you.
The standard was probably established a very long time ago, and handed down from one inspector to the next new inspector, along with a connection to a sump pump guy, for over 50 years, as everyones memory of groundwater removal methods from the old country has been all but forgotten, and described as outdated ancient technology.
Everyone now says: what’s a french drain? I heard about a sump pump though, that must be the right choice. It’s only money.
Old world systems got disrespected, and were replaced, with the better, new type of system, run by power. OOOh Power.. I can just hear Homer Simpson saying that line, which seems appropriate in some ways given the sad sick humor in watching homeowners shoot themselves in the foot, installing sump pumps to prevent groundwater entry.
Instant validation at the price of hot air. Sweet. Or home inspectors are simply out of constructive input, and default to what they have heard everyone else writing in their home inspection reports. Stuff like “adjust the low point drain, install a sump pump”, blah blah.
Bingo, it’s the fact. It is the, just established, need for a sump pump or crawl space system to be installed.
This “fact”, now needs to be disproved by anyone coming behind it, instead of the remark being treated as an allegation, that additionally needs to be supported with evidence to become a valid charge, and additionally proven, before it becomes a fact.
My personal evidence, not here-say, that I have observed, watching home inspectors practice over approximately 40 years in Oregon, as they write words in home inspection reports that include sump pump referrals, directly by name, make my conclusions very true to me.
In over 25 years, previously as an Oregon licensed real estate broker in Oregon and brokerage owner; I started in my 20’s in Oregon, it never came to my attention that the additional language that home inspectors added about home drainage was there for a reason that paid off for the home inspector in dollars, as well as in mega bucks for the sump pump contractor.
That is, until I started losing jobs to this bull, as a home drainage contractor.
Oh sure, it costs me money. I am pissed too.
I’m sure you got that vibe right away when I started discussing it. But I wind up coming behind these clowns over and over, and have to deal with their emotionally damaged homeowner victims, who at that time resemble dogs that were beat too much.
They stare and shrink a bit, ever fearful that you really could be one of them too. Really.
You would be unhappy too my friends.
Too often this business borders on therapy and understanding more than crafting home drainage solutions.
Some of these folks just need a hug and someone to listen first. I usually pass on the hug part. Hugs from strangers, who are already in question may not be the best effort.
Just listening basically, and then trying to help if you can.
Real home drainage contractors laugh their butts off reading home inspection reports and goofing on home inspectors and the stuff they write. They are a real hoot.
Who knew home inspectors were actually self, and pump promoting devices, used to sway the minds of homeowners and buyers during a real estate transaction.
A home inspector in Oregon, that I know to be honest, tells me he is sad to say his industry, is in fact influenced by sump pump installers and their pitches.
He tells me many Oregon home inspectors just figure it is money on the side, and that homeowners want sump pumps anyway.
They have no problem with doing it at all.
A referral fee is not against the law that I know of. Even though in this case, it is a conflict of interest and a fraud, in my opinion, from a party that purports to be an independent source of unbiased home condition information, even though they disclaim their reports dozens of times, and their contract with the homeowner limit their liability to not greater than $175. which is probably less than you have spent on him. His opinion is literally worthless on home drainage in the first place.
Like many good old boy industries, this honest home inspector friend that I know, who made the above statements, would not go on record for this article, as his own organization, Oregon home inspectors, would surely have something unpleasant to say to him about his public attitude, and his diminished future respect with the association as a result of his published opinions about his fellow members, blah blah, or something else like that to get his attention.
In the end, if his Oregon home inspection peers wanted to spank him, they would.
Two home inspectors that I have met personally in Oregon exemplify the need for discussion of this problem. Other home drainage contractors tell me the same as well of many Oregon home inspectors that they have met and have become aware of, doing the same thing.
Home drainage information of quality is little to none in the public domain on the internet.
You can find videos on you tube with 40,000 views, and the film is garbage, with absolutely no professionalism what so ever. Their supposed french drain thing has to fail.
The home drainage information that is out there in the public domain on a local level is distorted, not factual, manipulated, and controled by the sump pump business and their agents.
These joint efforts are orchestrated underground, and behind closed doors, like a secret society, against home buyers and home sellers.
These home inspectors and drainage contractors, doing mainly sump pump installations, are referring work both ways, while postulating on the abilities and strengths of each other, and touting the other persons system or reputation.
The intention of both parties is to elevate the other party to a higher standard in the eyes of the home sellers and buyers that need to choose a home drainage contractor to solve their groundwater problems, and to be the first one to do it, making everyone else the new concept that needs to be defended.
Just good ol boy stuff that happens everywhere, at every level in the construction world, around the world, as well as in America specifically.
Kick backs are part of our lives, whether we like it or not.
From congress to the streets, they are common place.
The consistent, always present, burning theme and practice of many home inspectors in Oregon seems to be to share the word to the public about what they know about home drainage, while writing a home inspection report about just how cool and effective sump pumps really are.
They insinuate or actually say that sump pumps “may”, be needed at that property.
They spin stories of underground rivers and springs, as they additionally postulate on the source of the groundwater. They act like they know geology, but most of these players are looking to accomplish a very specific goal. Get the homeowners to call his friend the sump pump guy and collect a referral fee.
Perhaps a year ago now, one friday night about 8:30 pm. I was called by a home inspector person whom I had once met before through a realtor customer. This inspector, and former president of the Oregon home inspection association did not remember that meeting, when I reminded him. He just was calling to find out why I was recommending the particular system I had bid for a customer in Lake Oswego.
wanted me to discuss my business with him at 8:30pm on friday night, even though it was none of his damn business. So I thought, this is interesting, and went along with the dude.
He said he had his friend, a local doing very well sump pump waterproofing company guy speak at the Oregon home inspection convention in 2009, and how his methods were not consistent with what I was proposing for another customer in Lake Oswego. He wanted me to defend, weakly I guess if possible, why I was doing what, and where. In other words this dude was just fishing. He thought he had just landed another stupid drainage contractor that could easily be out talked and dis-credited.
In other words, this dude was totally a back set driver, bent on steering me into a conversation about a proposal I had written, that was competing with his sump pump buddies deal, the acceptance of which was apparently required in order for him to collect a fat referral fee.
I don’t really know why he would have weighed in on a transaction that was none of his business, unless he thought it was his business.
A good part of the 2009 Oregon home inspectors convention was a sump pump business info commercial, I am told by another licensed home inspector I know who attended.
I am told by the home inspector that was in attendance that day that it was just another sump pump stump speech, talking nonsense about home drainage, underground rivers and springs under homes with drainage problems, as well as stories about how dry wells don’t perk. What garbage.
Many home inspectors are totally up to speed with home drainage. Not like the dudes.
Many call me and refer me. I am confronting only those home inspectors and sump pump installers who are involved in this default scam.
Lots of home drainage professionals and real estate professionals are hip to the intentions of home inspectors and sump pump installers, and how they work together.
We are sad to see they fool homeowners. They do not fool many of us.
Statements from this particular sump pump installer I refer to here-in, working in the Portland area, were thrown out to the Oregon home inspector association crowd in 2009, as home drainage facts.
When in fact, the many home inspectors that knew the difference could easily see the room divide off between those that support the game, and those who do not operate that way.
He said it was a very interesting display of good old boy power.
Many home inspectors questioned this particular self professed waterproofing sump pump contractor guys statements about things like, “dry wells don’t work”, and other stupid statements.
He was unable to discuss specifics. Just hot air, I am told.
These guys have crossed the line of mis-information and decided to specialize in just being big fat liars, instead of just a bunch of punky scoundrels.
They come on to informed home drainage professionals as crooks that resemble a wild west preacher, perched on a stool in front of a room full of wealthy widows and orphans. Trying to get them to buy into the new proposed wealth builder project for their community or church. Perhaps that new railroad, coming in a few years down the line, or never, literally; that will need some advance cash now however, and some blue chip stock investors right now. Right?
This example, and other examples not shared with you at this time, all show me there is a money trail between many sump pump guys and the home inspectors. Their opinions should be taken with less than a grain of salt. They just work too hard for each other to be straight up.
The plot is so easy to discover with respect to the inspectors, once you suspect it exists, and watch for the signs I have shown you.
They don’t just refer work back and forth, they attempt to influence the placement of it with lies about drainage in their report.
Many home inspectors function actually as part of the sump pumpers business, in many respects, in my opinion, due to their actions and motivations, and perhaps beliefs, even if in ignorance. Many of them benefit from placing work monetarily with their sump pump buddies to the tune of thousands of dollars every year. Like having two jobs basically.
The home inspectors playing this unethical game earn their referral fees by providing the sump pump contractor with a copy of the inspection report that indicates, in the home inspectors opinion, which should not be in there at all, that the homes crawl space or basement may, perhaps, require the installation of a sump pump, or grading, or low point drain replacement, or low point drain adjustment; or any one of the many other b.s. attachments that could be added to it by his buddy.
The sump pump guy is always called out first, by the home inspector himself. That is the real hook up and the lynch pin.
That secures his referral fee too.
The home inspection report is usually handed to the sump pump friend from the inspector right away, so he is the first one out to the home to postulate the need for a sump pump installation, just like his friend the home inspector says in needed in his report.
You lie about it, and I’ll swear to it, all within a day if possible.
The evidence of a mutual admiration society in itself, like that which exists between home inspectors and sump pump installers, is not direct evidence of, or an indictment of anyone at all, even if these home inspectors practices, by themselves, or simply their intentions alone, could be determined by a blind man in a snow storm.
I have watched Oregon home inspectors inject themselves into a position of authority, during a real estate transaction, through their language and recommendations, written in their home inspection report, for over 35 years in Oregon alone.
I have observed this hundreds of times over the past 35 years, since I first started in professional real estate activity in Oregon in the 70’s.
The words in the home inspection report, such as, “adjust the low point drain”, “install a sump pump or crawl space drainage system”, “grade the crawl space”, come up on almost every one of the Oregon home inspection reports that indicates there is groundwater in the crawl space or basement, and also contains a recommendation to contact a home drainage professional as well.
Other articles on this site explain how home inspectors work with lenders to plan the late disclosure of home drainage problems, in order to further their buddies chances of a sump pump installation, as it pertains to the home inspector, and to control the buyers better, and prevent them from backing out of a transaction where drainage issues are found that the sellers will not pay to fix prior to closing of escrow.
The sump pump guy has always been to the home first when I get there. Not just occasionally. Every time.
That might tip even the not so drainage aware home buyer off right away, but in time, over and over again, duh. This is a fact among my friends and me.
The home owners have most often been told that their home inspector would be happy to send a professional home drainage contractor, his sump pump contractor buddy, which he does not tell them; by to look at the homes drainage problems. Would that be o.k? Would it be ok for the inspector to give this person a copy of the report so he can study it?
Like it’s not going to be o.k. Right? Slam dunk. First in, first out. The stealth hit. Everyone else to follow must be compared to it, as the already accepted default need, unless otherwise convinced.
First point in the match automatically goes to the sump pump guy and home inspector, as he is the one that can do what the inspector wants him to do as well, right out of the gate.
Wow. What luck. Hum. Install a sump pump. And he even knows someone who does it. Are we lucky, or what? “Sounds good huh? A guarantee is nice too, I think.” Right?
Ya, I’m down for that alright. lol
The home inspectors report always makes the recommendation for the home sellers and buyers to contact a home drainage professional, but it never stops there.
If the home inspector can arrange for his sump pump contractor to be marched through the home first, planting mis-information in the minds of sellers and buyers, getting everyone talking sump pumps, then every other qualified home drainage contractor will be forced to compare their proposed installations with the sump pump method, and waste their time while explaining to the homeowners why my system is better than, etc. etc.
The fact is you are talking apples against oranges. One system prevents groundwater entry, french drains, and the other does not, sump pumps, period.
The first battle of the drainage mis-information war is won, in favor of “team sump pump”.
This is a very old political trick as well. Do you own a tv? I do not. And have owned one for years.
I get news off the internet and major services without the hype of Fox or some other station franchise to sell an agenda.
The stage is set. The home inspector gets the house warmed up, and in comes the sump pump guy to validate everything he just said about needing a “sump pimp”, oops, I meant pump.
Sorry. lol Well, no, I’m not sorry actually. So hate me if you must.
The home inspector postulates, and then he brings in his friend the sump pump guy, when he is not present of course, who backs up what the home inspector has unprofessionally told the homeowners, or eluded to in his report.
A sump pump or interior crawl space french drain is required, perhaps, according to the “sump pimp” guy.
I have read home inspection reports shown to me by homeowners, and after inspecting the home myself, I have told the homeowners that there was no drainage problem at all.
This was all after they received a sump pump proposal from the sump pump guy, who bid the job at around $8,000.
A near perfect crime of ignorance and deception, perpetrated on so many smart homeowners, it would amaze you.
This is not going to just change overnight folks. It will take everyone talking about it, and finally people with legal abilities to change the laws in Oregon and enforce them. Legislating over the top of this mess and re-educating public awareness on groundwater sources and home drainage methods that work.
Do not listen to what home inspectors say about home drainage. It should be obvious if you have read this far.
Whether the sump pump guys business buddy, the home inspector, speaks out first and attempts to establish a standard or not, your preparation for his theatrics will be sufficient to end the whole thing, should it occur, with an early curtain call, should you find yourself playing the role of the home seller and/or buyer.
When he sees you are not falling hard for his stories of underground rivers and springs under the home, he will go on to easier pickings. They are basically lazy, like most thieves.
Just keep asking your questions. You are in control.
Read articles on this site that teach you how to interview contractors and stay in control of the truth of sump pump installer and home inspector intentions and abilities, as well as always research their referral base well prior to hiring them, after checking them out well.