4-Point Home Inspection Checklist: Best Practices For Property Inspectors & Auditors

Who Needs a 4-point Inspection in Florida & Other Geo Locations

A four-point examination might be required by certain home insurance companies for older properties. A four-point inspection involves the inspector checking the current state of four important systems in your house, including:

• Electrical wiring and panels
• Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC)
• Plumbing
• Roof

The most typical causes of insurance claims can be identified using a four-point check. If a house does not pass the inspection in its entirety, the inspector will discuss the necessary repairs or replacements to address the flaws. To get insurance, repairs can be required.

A four-point examination is not a substitute for a full house inspection.

Make sure you clarify with your home insurance provider exactly what kind of inspection they need if they indicate you must have one. Obtaining homeowner's insurance might be a hassle if you don't have the required expert inspection report for your property.

Who Uses a 4-point Home Inspection Checklist?

A 4-point home inspection checklist is used to assess the state of a specific property by parties such as buyers, sellers, homeowners, building inspectors, and insurance companies.

It contains the readily apparent components of each system, allowing the inspector to quickly evaluate the property's condition, age, maintenance history, and other relevant aspects.

A free printable home inspection checklist for buyers pdf is available online to get you acquainted with the process of a 4-point home inspection.

Why Use a Four-point Home Inspection Checklist App?

With the help of a 4-point home inspection checklist app, you can swiftly and easily examine the property's major systems from the convenience of your mobile device. 

The roofing, HVAC, electrical, and plumbing systems are all a part of this. A thorough assessment of the overall condition of a residential home is often necessary when dealing with lenders, insurance agencies, and real estate transactions.

By following a simple 4-point home inspection checklist, you can quickly assess the state of any home's main systems, capture geotagged images and videos, and save all of your data in the cloud for future reference. 

Without ever leaving the site, inspectors may use a home inspection app to generate and transmit PDF reports.

Say goodbye to paper checklist for home inspection,and hello to Xenia, the one-stop solution for your deskless staff. It will take you minutes to begin developing, whether you start from scratch or use a pre-built free home inspection checklist template.

Among the many useful tools for quality inspection processes, this sophisticated workflow automation plan lets you create comprehensive workflows and checklists. In addition to collecting quality data in real-time, the inspection management software lets you track quality trends over time.

Developing and implementing quality inspection methods is a breeze with its intuitive drag-and-drop interface.

4-Point Inspection Vs. Home Inspection

There is a difference between a new house inspection—also known as a buyer's inspection, real estate inspection, home inspection, or comprehensive inspection depending on your location—and a four-point inspection—which is designed for homeowners insurance purposes only. 

With 83% of those who employed an inspector noting that their lender insisted on an evaluation, this outcome follows usual mortgage requirements. Remembering this difference can help you qualify for a mortgage, which requires a fresh home inspection before you can close on a property. About 46% of buyers reported that they “used home inspection reports to negotiate a lower price on their home.”

Completing it also takes two to three hours. About half an hour is required for a visual, four-point assessment. The only exception to this rule is older homes, which may need both inspections.

Florida and Texas, two states on the coast, are known to have a higher prevalence of four-point inspections. Hurricanes are more common and devastating in coastal regions, such as Jacksonville, Tampa, and Miami, and may wipe out whole towns and electricity networks as well as highways, airports, and lives. 

Building codes are subject to periodic updates as a result of this. Building codes from 40 years ago or more were different from present codes, therefore it's possible that older houses aren't as safe.

What to Include in an 4-point Home Inspection Checklist?

What what does an inspector check for during a four-point examination of your multi-point inspection property? In order to be ready for your four-point inspection, here is a handy 4-point home inspection checklist that you can go over.

1. Electrical Wiring and Panels

In your house, what sort of wiring do you have? Because of the increased danger of fire, insurance companies will likely refuse to cover homes that use copper, aluminum, or knob-and-tube wiring. Your presence of a recalled electrical panel will also be checked by the inspector.

Insurance companies take the issue of faulty wiring seriously since they are responsible for roughly 90% of home fires. Be sure to set aside money in your budget for any renovations that may be required if your house is deemed uninsurable because of electrical difficulties. You greatly increase your danger of fire if you do not.

2. HVAC

Is climate control a feature of your house? How is the state of the units? Does it seem like there has been any damage, like a leak? Keep in mind that the standards for insuring older houses vary from one insurance company to another; still, it is not unusual to have coverage rejected due to the absence of central heating and air conditioning.

3. Plumbing

The likelihood that your home's pipes may burst is determined by the sort of pipes installed there. Because polybutylene pipes are more likely to rupture, insurance companies may refuse to pay out on claims involving them. Water damage can be excluded by certain insurance carriers, although they might nevertheless cover you overall. In such case, you would be fully liable for the sum amount in the event of a flood caused by broken pipes.

4. Roof

Roofs are evaluated based on their age, material, and condition. Roofs made of tile or metal that are more than 40 years old, or even older than 20 years, are often not insured by insurance carriers. Yet, insurance may refuse to pay out if your roof is relatively new but shows signs of damage on the exterior or if water is seeping into your house.

How To Fill Out 4 Point Inspection Checklist

• ‍Step 1: Before conducting an inspection, make sure you have the correct information on hand, including the property's location and owner's name.‍
• Step 2: The electrical system, plumbing system, HVAC system, and roof should be the first four distinct domains of focus for the inspection.‍
• Step 3: Examine the wiring, circuit breakers, main panel, and any other components that are evident to be outdated or damaged in order to assess the state of the electrical system.‍
• Step 4: Let's move on to the plumbing system. Look for any leaks or corrosion indicators while inspecting the water heater, drains, and water supply lines.‍
• Step 5: Make that all components of the HVAC system—the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning units—are in good operating order by inspecting them.‍
• Step 6: Finally, evaluate the condition of the roof, looking for indications of damage, leaks, or excessive wear and tear.‍
• Step 7: Accurately complete the 4-point home inspection checklist, noting any problems or difficulties found during the inspection.

Six Best Practices for Auditing and Inspecting

You can improve the value of your audits and inspections by adhering to these best practices, regardless of the size of your property or the sector you work in.

• Establish firm audit/inspection policies and procedures in writing: There should be no confusion among staff members on what has to be examined, how often, or how to execute such inspections. Although written instructions provide consistency, clarity, and responsibility, verbal advice is still important and essential. A business must review its audit and inspection methods after creating documented rules and procedures. Crucial questions to consider include, "Are we inspecting everything we need to?" and "Are we doing a thorough enough inspection to achieve our goals when we inspect?"‍
• Adequately train all personnel: Employees must get familiar with written rules and procedures once they have been created. It takes more than just distributing printouts or publishing information to do this. Comprehensive training is necessary for audit and inspection procedures to be effective. You need a strong training program that implants your policies and procedures in the minds of staff members before they start doing tasks that need auditing or inspecting if you want to ensure that they are well-understood and constantly at the forefront of their thoughts.‍
• Use checklists to ensure audits and inspections are done correctly: Personnel need a 4-point home inspection checklist of everything to look for while inspecting equipment, facilities, worksites, or processes, even with the best training. Workers can effortlessly walk through a well-ordered checklist for home inspection,  without having to memorize every item by using tools like Xenia, which displays items in the order that they will be reviewed. In addition to holding individuals and institutions responsible, checklists record the items they have examined and may be used to prove compliance with regulations.‍
• Constantly reinforce the policies and procedures: You need more than just first training. Forgetting, complacency, and the use of "shortcuts" are common behaviors among humans. Organizations that fail to consistently emphasize the need to conduct audits and inspections in accordance with established rules and processes are more likely to experience this pattern of behavior. By retraining at regular intervals, you can reinforce the original training. It is equally important to enforce negative consequences for noncompliance with the rules and regulations and to provide substantial incentives to employees who do so.‍
• Audit the auditors: Companies with first-rate auditing and inspection systems evaluate employees at all levels to make sure they are following company policy. To put it another way, the audit/inspection program should be subject to ongoing inspections. At some point or another, everyone ought to have to answer to someone.‍
• Proactively use audit/inspection results to make better business decisions: The purpose of audits and inspections should extend beyond only checking for conformity with established policies and laws. In order to get the most out of audits and inspections, you can't afford to throw away the useful information that comes from them. Lots of things can be done with this data, such making better buying choices, creating better preventative maintenance plans, and anticipating when things will go down. One way to gather and understand this data is to employ inspection tools, such as Xenia.

Advantages of A Property Inspection-Specific Tool

There are quite a few advantages to using an inspection-specific tool.

Accuracy & Consistency

First of all, you get your hands on more accurate data. Assuming inspectors are taking notes or entering data by hand, there will be some fluctuation. Each inspector has their own method of inspection, so if they find one problem, they may label it differently than the other.

No matter who is doing the check-up, an inspection tool helps ensure uniformity. That could prove relevant when you attempt to run reports using that data in the future.

A good example would be if you were interested in knowing which apartments have stainless steel refrigerators. You could overlook items in your inquiry if two inspectors used different terms, such as "stainless" and "silver," to describe them. 

Therefore, it is helpful to have a form that not only speeds up the inspection process but also promotes uniformity.

Save Time at Every Step

To save a lot of time and breeze through inspections, you can additionally configure those defaults and drop-downs.

Property inspections that normally take days can at times be shortened to just a few hours. With careful planning and execution, it's within reach.

For instance, you can take several images instantly without using the built-in camera program of your smartphone, which necessitates creating and saving individual photos or selecting a separate library for each shot. 

It is possible to significantly cut down on inspection time by merging two clicks into one across many phases and procedures. It will take much less time if you are able to quickly acquire the answers you need.

Customers save time when they switch from paper or simple inspection forms to Xenia which has a pre-built free home inspection checklist template library. They can take their time and do things well, and then they can do more with their data.

Intuitive for All Staff

Some of the folks that use the application are doing maintenance. When they’re out turning wrenches with their toolbelts on, they won’t have much patience for a tiny inspection form where the arrow has to be just right. You need to be able to accommodate your users so that it’s easy for them to use.

Those are some of the thoughtful elements that go into the design of our forms and our application. And those things make a difference in users’ quality of life. Going faster, being more accurate, using a simple format that isn’t frustrating so they don’t break their phones in half.

It’s important that the application makes users feel like their lives are easier and they aren’t getting saddled with yet another thing to use.

More Productive Interactions with Residents

An inspection can usually be scheduled with 24 hours' notice for residential leases. In most cases, quick access is sufficient in the event of an emergency. A business lease might last up to two days.

Another perk of Xenia is how quickly and easily you can take over an examination, even if you're not prepared.

Planning for what will be included in an inspection is essential if you want to give someone 24 hours' notice to have their unit inspected. A lot of effort and time might be wasted if one is not careful.

Pre-Populated Forms

During a unit inspection, you should make note of the finishes, fixtures, and appliances in an apartment. If you neglect to configure the form, your inspector will be compelled to manually enter that data. Dealing with it might be a daunting task.

When inspectors visit the unit, a good form will already have the choices pre-populated and will have set a baseline. Users can choose from a variety of finishes instead of having to type them in. Instead of having inspectors manually enter the appliances, you can pre-populate them for choice.

Questions that are even more general, such as "How is the carpet?" Can be addressed using standard choices, with the ability to add a remark if anything out of the ordinary occurs. However, in order for inspectors to swiftly go over units and buildings, you can pre-fill the form with most of the answers.

Preparing an insurance home inspection checklist for an inspection is time well spent, even when the actual inspection just requires 24 hours' notice.

Takeaway

Building strong rules and processes, educating and retraining staff, using a checklist for home inspection, holding everyone responsible, and using outcomes to make better business choices can all contribute to more efficient and successful audits and inspections.