Our Goals In Working with Every Client:

• Provide you the info you need to make decisions so you can arrive at your closing with confidence!

• Provide you a home maintenance project list, with some help in prioritizing projects.

• Provide a professionally guided tour of the home, including key safety features, key maintenance items, and show you gas/water/electric shut offs.

Why Choose 218 Inspect for your home inspection?

• We are Friendly, Honest, & Impartial:  Our home inspections serve as a professionally guided tour of a client's potential new home, and serve to objectively report on both the good and bad of a home.  

• We are prompt:  We respond to inquiries, show up to appointments on time, schedule inspections within 1 week of the inquiry, and provide an in-depth home inspection report the day following your inspection - via an interactive web link.  

• We are clean & respectful:  It is an honor every time a client asks us to inspect a home, and we act like it!  Every time we enter a home we wear clean booties over our shoes, clean up after ourselves, and leave no trace.

• We are thorough, experienced, & use modern technology:  Every inspection we do strictly adheres to InterNACHI's Standard of Practice, and then goes above and beyond offering significant additional value in several ways.  We offer Infrared Thermal Imaging to help identify moisture leaks in the home (and confirm any leaks with a digital moisture meter), home energy efficiency improvement opportunities & possible hidden issues with the electrical system.  We also use the latest tech in our Sewer Scope Inspections & in the near future with our Radon Testing (coming Spring 2024).  Check out our SERVICES or FAQ pages for a whole lot more information.

• We are certified & insured:  Frank is a Certified Professional Inspector (CPI) with InterNACHI & accredited by ICA to do home inspections within the state of MN.  Beyond InterNACHI's exhaustive CPI Certification, he is constantly working on continuing education courses through InterNACHI's accredited college course program (see the certification seals above, or my certifications HERE).  We're constantly working on continuing education through various home inspection focused, accredited college courses.

• Premium Value:  Purchasing a home is one of the biggest & most important investments of your life, so choosing the right home inspector for you is an important decision.  Check out this blog post on pricing of home inspections in the Duluth, MN market.  Our pricing is based on the size of the home, & number of bedrooms/bathrooms/garages - for pricing specifics visit our Services page.  To quickly get an exact quote on your inspection, fill out our Inspection Request Form or give us a call at 218-409-6263.  

• Service Area:  The following towns are the core of our local service area.  If you are looking for an inspection outside of this area, reach out to us!  Our service area includes (in alphabetical order):  Barnum, Beaver Bay, Carlton, Cloquet, Cromwell, Duluth, Esko, Hermantown, Island Lake, Knife River, Larsmont, Moose Lake, Proctor, Saginaw, Silver Bay, Two Harbors, & Wrenshall

Contact us at (218) 409-6263 or CLICK HERE to schedule your inspection!.

Our clients get home inspections done for many reasons - most commonly for a home they are in the process of purchasing.  

• Home buyers like to get a more in-depth & professional look at a home than they may have gotten in their initial walk through, particularly in today's hot market.  Many home buyers think of a home inspection as an expert guided tour of the home that they are about to buy.  Additionally, 218 Inspect Home Inspections will take the deep dive in all systems of the home - from top to bottom - to identify any safety or material defects.  The client is encouraged to accompany me during most of the inspection (except for when ladders are involved), so that we can walk the house together and discuss any points of interest discovered - good or bad.  In the end, after the inspection you'll receive a graphic rich, interactive home inspection report via email the day following the inspection.  The Inspection Report will highlight the good & bad with the home - so you know exactly what you are about to purchase and can do so confidently.  From here, see the below FAQ on what to do after receiving the inspection report.

• Home owners often like to have a professional home inspection done to identify any home safety issues, home improvement projects to be done, and the priority of each.  Homeowners often also like to have home inspections done prior to listing their home for sale - so any issues can be addressed prior to the home being on the market, avoiding issues at closing.

• Other types of clients who get home inspections done including:  investors, insurance agents, bank draw inspections, and others.

• Most home buyer clients reach out to us immediately after their purchase offer is accepted (once it's "under contract"), to schedule their home inspection for ASAP.  Offers are frequently written as "contingent based on the results of a home inspection", allowing the buyer to amend their purchase offer if a large problem is discovered during the inspection.  Our goal is to always schedule our inspections within 1 week of receiving the inspection request from the client.

Most home inspections take about 4 hours on site (in addition to a few hours preparing a thoughtful inspection report for you after the inspection).  Larger homes, out buildings (if you want for me to inspect them), homes with complex defects, or clients that choose to have multiple services done (such as a Sewer Scope Inspection, Infrared Thermal Imaging, Water Quality Test, etc) can take longer.

Clients are encouraged to attend the inspection so that you get the most out of it!  However, if you're not able to attend the inspection, our in-depth home inspection report will provide you all of the info you need.  Being there in person will afford you the opportunity to walk along during the inspection, providing you a professional guided tour of the home, and learning many specifics that are handy for any homeowner to know.  Being there in person also affords you the opportunity to ask questions, and best understand how the home's many systems operate.   Note that clients aren't allowed to climb ladders or join me in crawlspaces during the inspection.

You will receive your cutting edge, interactive, in-depth home inspection report the day following the inspection - you may view it on a device of your choice or download it as a pdf.  

After reviewing the inspection report, you will know many specifics that you need to know about the property such as the locations of the utility shut-offs (gas, water, etc), the location of the main electrical panel(s), heating & cooling shut-offs, the construction materials used in many parts of the house (such as the roof, exterior wall sheathing, etc).  We inform you on the specific condition each system of the house is in - from top to bottom.  We also love highlighting cool features present in homes, such as historic woodwork & craftsmanship - which is fun for a new homeowner to know about!

For clients that wrote their purchase offer with an inspection contingency:  If there are defects in need of attention identified in the inspection, you will at least know what repairs will be necessary in advance.  Sometimes, clients are able to ask the seller to complete some of the repairs of the identified defects at the seller's cost, or reduce the sale price of the home so the buyer can have the defects repaired (note that in this very competitive market, we neither encourage or discouage negotiation - your Realtor is the expert on this).  If a major defect is identified that the buyer isn't comfortable with, the buyer will have the option of of canceling their purchase offer (which is unusual).  

• At this time, we do not inspect homes in Wisconsin - we stay on the Minnesota side of the border.

• We gladly will inspect homes outside of Duluth, anywhere in northern MN.  With that said, we do have a modest service call charge for inspections greater than 30 miles from downtown Duluth.  At this time, we do not inspect homes in Wisconsin.

• Our goal is to provide overwhelming value with every home inspection.  Our pricing is competitive and is based on the size of the home, & number of bedrooms/bathrooms/garages & other factors.  Pricing is available on our "Services & Fees" page.  HERE is a blog post specifically on the cost of a home inspection in Duluth, MN.  To get a custom quote on your inspection, fill out our Schedule Your Inspection HERE or give us a call at 218-409-6263.  

• Every inspection we do goes above and beyond InterNACHI's Standard of Practice, exceeding the standard in several areas including inspection of the electrical system, and using cutting edge technology including Infrared Thermal Imaging to identify home energy efficiency improvement opportunities & possible hidden mechanical issues (such as electrical, heating, or cooling system issues).  

• Every home inspection client is provided our in-depth home inspection report via email the day following the inspection.  Our reports document all major systems of the house, detail the good along with the defects, and a summary is provided in plain English.  Each inspection report includes many photos of the various systems of the home, including infrared thermal imaging of key areas of the home.  This PDF report can be viewed digitally or printed for your convenience.