If you’ve ever struggled with pricing your inspections or competing with the guy down the street offering rock-bottom rates, this is episode of The Ride Along is for you.
InterNACHI COO Ben Gromicko drops in for episode 53 of The Ride Along, and he’s got one message for solo inspectors and small teams: You’re worth more. A lot more.
He’s not talking theory. Ben used to run a home inspection business and pulled in $1,000 per inspection. Now, he’s teaching inspectors how to build credibility, showcase value, and charge what their service is actually worth – without chasing bargain-hunting buyers.
If you want to stop settling and start standing out, this one’s for you.
Watch episode 53 and subscribe to The Ride Along newsletter to get new episodes delivered straight to your inbox.
Transcript
Brad Lowery
Well guys, we got another episode of the Ride Along here and we’ve got, Matt, we got a pretty cool conversation we’re about to have because we’ve discussed today’s topic previously, but I’m looking forward to kind of getting in depth with it with kind of the guy who was talking about it in the first place.
Matt Brading
Likewise. Yeah, for sure. We’ve yeah, this this topic has been brought up a couple of times on the show. And yeah, I’m looking forward to you hashing it out and talking about, you know, how we can either make it happen or make sense of it all. And yeah, I’m looking forward to it.
Brad Lowery
Now it’s gonna be good. We’ll go ahead and introduce them right here. Ben Gromico, really doesn’t take a whole lot to introduce you because InterNACHI is the conglomerate of home inspectors. And so if anybody’s a home inspector and they don’t know you, I would be shocked. So, but we’re honored to have you on the show today, man. Yeah, definitely. And how’s it going? First of all, North Carolina, I heard you a recent move. Everything’s going good?
Ben Gromicko
Thanks, I really appreciate it. Yep, I lived in Colorado for a long time, but I don’t ski. So what’s the point of being on a on a hillside when you can’t ski in the wintertime? So raise a family there for about 15 years, but move to where it’s really nice. Raleigh, North Carolina, and it’s right now it’s about 82 degrees sunny and the birds are chirping, so I’m loving where I am.
Brad Lowery
Raleigh Durham area is awesome, man. It’s been on the come up for a while too.
Ben Gromicko
It’s booming. There is so much going on, so much building, so many homes for sale. There’s a lot of people coming in. I think they all took off during COVID from California and other places, and they all wanted to come here.
Brad Lowery
Now, definitely. Now, I mean, is this giving you like a whole new batch of content to work with because you do most of the content filming or at least a lot of the content filming for NACHI So are you doing this with a lot of new construction stuff down there or what are you doing with that?
Ben Gromicko
Yeah, so right next door my friend is building his home and so we’re filming everything from footer to roof and everything inside step by step and I thought that that would be a really good opportunity for home inspectors to understand how a home is built. If you don’t know how a home is built, I’m not sure if you can really. Compete well in the marketplace with other home inspectors with that background. So why not show everybody the guts of a home?
Brad Lowery
I, yeah, definitely. No, it’s good. And especially with, with new construction practices kind of changing big time in the last several years and some big modern advances coming. I’ve got some questions that we want to get to, in the, in the rest of the interview here with you, but we want to start off first and foremost. Usually Matt, we do our drink of the day, in the evening because that’s when we record this, but it’s new.
Matt Brading
Correct. Right, right. Yeah, so it’s a little bit different today. Actually 11 here, so it’s not even noon for me. And so, yeah, I’m going with coffee.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, they’re free. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah, right. I mean, it prevents, that’s a little moral quadra here, right? Like it’s like, do we just go ahead and just be complete derelicts? Do we go ahead and just day drink or like, you know, what do we do? But you know, I, I’m responsible to court. I’ve gotten, I’ve got meetings coming up still. So, you know, HR, if you’re watching, you know, it’s just coffee, but, Ben, if we were recording this in the evening, what would you be sipping on?
Matt Brading
What? You do you, man. You do you.
Ben Gromicko
I love a bourbon Manhattan on a rock.
Matt Brading
Nice. A-Raw, like a nice solid big chunk of ice.
Brad Lowery
Good call,
Ben Gromicko
I make my own. And also I don’t do the like the wimpy bourbon. I go for the like the high proof. So I think Jack Daniels makes one of the highest proofs that I know of whiskey, and it’s like 126 proof. I want to be able to. I want fire. I want pepper. I don’t. I don’t want it. I don’t want smooth because then you just drink too much, right?
Matt Brading
Big it. Nice. That’s pretty high. I think that’s a really solid move, especially on a mixed drink. Like go for the higher proof. Like I want the bourbon to come through in a mixed drink. I want you to get that punch. And if you get something that’s lighter proof, that’s what most of mine, just because of affordability and a high proof, use Wild Turkey 101 cocktails a lot because it’s just a little bit higher than your typical stuff. yeah, I’m on board, man. I like it. I like your style.
Ben Gromicko
Yep.
Brad Lowery
This is actually giving me an interesting idea because the drink of the day, of course, is always sponsored by inspection fuel, which is going to be again happening September 8th through the 10th in New Orleans. But there’s going to be a conference kind of coming up right after that band. You want to go ahead and plug that one too?
Ben Gromicko
Is that the international conference you’re talking about?
Matt Brading
Take it my B.
Brad Lowery
I think it might be, yeah.
Ben Gromicko
You know there’s so many going on. You know the hurricane down in Florida kind of bumped one conference convention, so we just had it recently and now we’re having another one and we’ve got one coming up in Texas and we’ve got another one coming up in Colorado. So just make sure you know where your next event is. Some of the events going around for these home inspectors are so fun. I mean there’s a lot of really great events and there’s nothing like. I mean, Internet is the world of online. If you want to go online and meet people from all over the world, go to Internet. She’s forum or Facebook or something like that. But if you want to rub elbows with like minded people, I mean, you got to do an event and Internet. She chapters are really great local way, but these big conferences and conventions, not just Internet. She’s but you know the ones you go to and the one you you you are attending and you know, it’s just fantastic to meet other people there, you know.
Brad Lowery
Yeah. Well, we did the podcast, or we did some podcasting at InterNACHI in Orlando in February, Matt, but I’m thinking we need to have like a co-sponsored like drink of the day, kind of a happy hour between InterNACHI and the Ride-A-Log at the next one.
Ben Gromicko
Man, I don’t know. I don’t drink and work at the same time.
Brad Lowery
Okay, all right. All right. We’ll take care of that on your behalf. Don’t worry. But I’m sure there’s plenty of other inspectors that do the same. but anyway, no, Ben, we’re excited to have you on because you said something recently that really got our ears buzzing. And we’ve talked about it on a previous episode. And so we figured, let’s just get you on the show to discuss this. The big question being, does the home inspection industry, or the real estate industry in general support a $1,000 average ticket price? First of all, give us your views on this and why you think that’s what it ought to be and if you think it’s even possible.
Ben Gromicko
It is possible. I mean, I just, I’m a sucker for Starbucks, right? And I just had a cup of coffee from Starbucks and it was six bucks for the coffee. And then you add a tip, right? It’s just an example of like, why would anybody let alone millions of people buy a commodity like a cup of coffee for maybe, I don’t know, five times more than it’s actually worth, right? Because it’s so valuable to the consumer. So if I find it really incredibly valuable, that burger, that cup of coffee, that service, I’m to pull out my hard earned cash for it. Now it’s, it’s incredible how, how many home inspectors devalue their position on this planet. We are one of the most important critical people that anybody can know. Because we all live in a home. But is that home safe, functioning and healthy? There’s only one person on the planet who can answer that question. That’s incredible valuable information. You should be charging for that type of value that you provide. Don’t be the cheap piece of crap coffee that you can get right?
Brad Lowery
Sure. I guess on that analogy, know, Starbucks has… You know, you’re good.
Ben Gromicko
And I was charging that sorry to interrupt, but I was charging $1,000. Oh, once the last time I did an inspection for a client, right? I’ve been doing it. I do inspections all the time, but I have any clients. But when I was doing inspections back in the 90s, 1990 and 2004, 2007 was my last inspection. I brought home $1,000 per inspection. And that’s with ancillary inspections, but. I had a grant.
Matt Brading
I mean, that’s, that’s one thing that I definitely want to talk about for sure. I mean, I like the analogy and for one second I was, was, you know, taken by it, but I do, I do want to point out like to me, like there’s like in that analogy, a little bit of an elephant in the room. I mean, like when we’re talking about a $6 cup of coffee, is that six, seven bucks, you know, that’s, is that too much to pay for cup of coffee? Is that, you know, a lot to pay? is. I don’t know. No.
Ben Gromicko
OK, well wrong, wrong commodity, wrong commodity. Let’s go to let’s go to let’s go to the mall. Mean you us three. Let’s go shop. Let’s go to Macy’s. Let’s go to the men’s jewelry department. Let’s look at the under the glass on the left. There’s a $10 piece of crap that tells the time on the right. There’s a $1,000 gold watch. They do the same thing. They do the same thing. One home inspector on the left is charging ten bucks one home inspector on the right is charging a thousand dollars they basically do the same thing if all the same standards of practice these inspection reports they take pictures they have a summary they identified defects what makes that thousand dollar watch self it’s because of the value that is perceived in that product or service.
Matt Brading
Well, potentially.
Brad Lowery
Potentially exist.
Matt Brading
I mean, I can’t disagree with that. It’s just like, you know, when we’re talking about things that are like 10 , six, seven dollars, like I could, I could take a chance on something that was like that that much. And if I didn’t like it, I just wouldn’t go back or if I loved it, I might go back. But like when we’re talking about a home inspection and the thing is, is like where it is like I deal with a lot of first time home buyers, right? And it’s like they I while I 100% agree like they need to be paying like more versus less like they’re buying this huge, very important purchase. Do you want somebody in there that is just trying to hack under all the rest and get the job? Or do want somebody in there that knows their value? But it’s really hard to convince some people, especially first-time home buyers of that. Because like I say, they don’t get to do this very often. So they don’t have a comparison point to know whether or not it’s valuable. How do we get them to know how valuable it is.
Ben Gromicko
Yeah. I wasn’t ever in the business of trying to convince. I hate sales on the phone, so what I would do is I just gave it to Steve. I don’t want to his last name, but he was a buddy. He was a chief inspector in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania when where I was doing home inspections. I ran a home inspection business for a dozen years and we had that list of cheap inspectors. And so if someone was looking for a cheap inspector, that’s not me, but I know a friend. I know a buddy. He’s super cheap. He will do that job in fact if you ask him for a discount i bet he’ll give it to you because you in this in this job you get what you pay for so if you want to cheap ass inspector i have one his name is Steve and he’s right down the road that is not me that is not me I’m the I’m the gold one I am the gold watch.
Matt Brading
That’s funny. Like I have 100% refer people to my competitors for years, right? But I’ve never done it like.
Brad Lowery
It’s not to throw Steve under the bus.
Matt Brading
To the cheap guy. I’ve never done that. That’s a really an interesting way of looking at it. That is an analogy or a perspective that I really can grasp onto. Because like I say, I refer to people when I’m not available to people that I know sometimes their fees are actually more than mine. But it’s like, I know they’re going to be in very good hands when I refer them to them. You’ve got a different method and that’s like, if chief, what you’re looking for, there’s a couple of guys. Let me give you some numbers. That’s great.
Ben Gromicko
Man.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, you’re almost calling their bluff just by
Ben Gromicko
There’s
Brad Lowery
Doing that, you know, it’s there are
Ben Gromicko
A lot of them down in Florida too. Down in Florida. Where are you guys? Where you’re at, Brad? Like, I don’t know how you all are making it charging such low prices. You’re all competing on price.
Brad Lowery
It’s coming up. Yeah, no, it’s coming up. There’s guys like, like Ryan Wall, we’ve had him on the show before out of Hello Home Inspections up in Tampa. He actually we were on the phone a few weeks ago. Before we even recorded the episode and he was like, Hey, what did you charge for your last inspection? He goes, we raised it to at least 750 for what you just did. And I was like, I need to do the same. But there are guys like I had an agent up in up in Newport Richey area, say, Hey, how much are you going to charge for this older home, the square footage and I, I told her the price at the time, which I think all in was like 650-700 bucks and she goes, that’s way too high. I’ve got a guy who’ll do all of that plus your insurance inspections for 350 and I said you go get them. I ain’t driving all the way up there for that. You know, but we did we wanted to talk about that because it’s like, you know, you’re talking about the two watches, I want to get into both analogies, because I actually do think there’s some merit to the Starbucks one also.
Ben Gromicko
Yeah. Yeah.
Matt Brading
Yeah, that’s too big of a gap.
Brad Lowery
But, you know, one, you’re competing on other people’s budgets, not just the market. but when you put those two side by sides, a lot of times homeowners are going to go, okay. if this one just does the job and that’s all I need, why don’t I just go ahead and get that one? So you’ve given us one example of how you can raise perception, which is one, just believing in the quality of your own service, but how do you elevate consumer expectations so that it does justify that high ticket price?
Matt Brading
Yeah, like I think that’s actually really important. Like I know that like maybe your thing isn’t really to convince people, but as an industry standard, if we’re trying to, you know, get the industry to raise their standards, we have to convince people. I feel like it’s driven by the consumer.
Brad Lowery
I yeah.
Ben Gromicko
Yeah, I just want to be the only person in the field. So like when. You have a field of competitors. You want to be the only one that your consumer sees your customer sees. So I just want to. I think of differentiation. That’s instead of like trying to convince somebody to change their mind to pull out more money for me. It’s really like I will only want them to see me or hear me. So you have to produce. I would say that kind of credibility so that people can feel like they can trust you because they’ll hire you if they trust you. So you just social media. If you’re on social media, you’re just, I don’t know, dumb or you haven’t gone around to it yet. But people, people will make huge decisions based upon what they see on this silly social media stuff. In fact, even like Google reviews, they’ll take the word of a total stranger.
Matt Brading
They really
Ben Gromicko
Over anything you could possibly say. If you’re really good, convince her Matt. I can convince anybody about anything about me. It doesn’t matter. People will look at the opinion of a total stranger over anything you can say to convince them to hire you for more money. So you gotta do those two things. Just keep dumping a ton of stuff on social media and get Google reviews.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
So showcase your value basically and other people’s testimonials and in ways that people can consume and see it with their own eyes, essentially. The other thing too, and this is where I want to get back to the Starbucks analogy. I think Starbucks can charge the higher price because they own the market. They have a monopoly on it, right? And you were talking about how there is such huge competition in the state of Florida, Texas as well. are two of the states with the biggest inspector populations. So.
Ben Gromicko
Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Lowery
What do you got? He just drinks the 7-Eleven Starbucks.
Ben Gromicko
Hey man, hey I built before I was a home inspector. I built homes with my hands and we would. That was my breakfast. I got the big one big coffee man is in the before the sun rose. I’m just slurping on a coffee. Get into the job site, yeah?
Matt Brading
Hahaha.
Brad Lowery
Yeah. Yep.
Matt Brading
Here’s the question, does this mean I’m the guy that’s not paying $1,000 for a home inspection? Is that what this means?
Brad Lowery
there you go. But yeah, when you when you are the preferred go to of everybody, you know, then you can afford to charge that price. So is there is this raising your price come on the same scale? Or does it progress with the same level to which you grow your business? Is it commensurate with the scale of your business in terms of market share?
Ben Gromicko
I don’t want to say that I’ve never done this before. So what I say when I give a recommendation to inspectors, it’s because I know that I’ve done it before in my life. So in my home inspection business, I had a partner and we raised our fees and we worked less. So instead of working seven days a week, which is what we would do, me and Nick, I was working four and a half, right? We had our Friday afternoons off Friday, 12 o’clock. We’re all done. And we were making more money because we raised prices. We never thought we could actually do that. So when I say just raise your prices and work less, it’s coming from this core that I know it can work, but you have to have the goods to back it up. Right? So you don’t want to price yourself out of the out of the car. You want to take a look at your competition as well. what I did this morning was really cool. I went to you were talking Brad. You’re talking about like.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Ben Gromicko
You know the number of inspections your competitors and things like that. I went to Zillow this morning and I just put in my zip code and I could tell very real quick how many homes are for sale, right? It’s couple thousand homes in my zip code, right? And then you go to an Internet. You can look in your zip code. How many competitors you have? You can do the math. So the one thing I was thinking about this morning when I was walking with my wife is. If you have. If you have competition. And you have a need to be highly successful. What you need is data instead of being nervous about it. What you need is to look at what is actually in your marketplace. The opportunity. How many homes are for sale and how many competitors are there? The pie is only is this big right and we’re all trying to eat a big slice and that either is a motivator, which is what it would be for me or. It makes you so fearful you don’t know what to do right for me. If I have competition like if I have ashy just trying to make fun of online education that just drives me insane. I go berserk and I want to be the absolute best. You’ll never see me sleeping. I will compete with those. There’s about 250 inspectors in Raleigh and there’s about 2,000 inspections, potential inspections, right? And if I want to feed my family, I have an enemy. I can make it up to right. But my enemy is that my competitors, my friendly competitors, and I’m motivated because I know the numbers and the numbers maybe are too good. You know, there’s not a lot of sales going on and there’s a lot of us around. So that’s the unfortunate kind of reality that you have to have really good marketing skills. You know, and all the other things that you know, the coaches give you advice about, you know, marketing and me, even me being on social media. But you really have to have this core mean, just bite the head off of your comp, your competition. Cause you, know, the numbers and you gotta, you gotta feed your family. That’s really a great motivator, you know.
Brad Lowery
Sure. So not raising prices almost comes from my willingness to settle for some people then is what you’re saying. That’s an interesting way of looking at it. Now you’re getting into personal psychology as well. It’s like, you actually have a drive to succeed? Yeah.
Ben Gromicko
Hmm. Yeah, business is all about psychology. I mean, you know, you gotta have, you know, you can’t just be a really good inspector anymore. I’m going to be a really great inspector. The world’s best inspector is going to make a ton of cash. No, you gotta be able to manage your business and you have to have this vision too, where you have, you know, this, this thought of, you know, growth and taking risk and working harder than everybody else. And when you put all of that energy my point is when you put all of that thought and energy and work into something how dare you charge less than everybody else.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
That’s good, You do. I would love there to be a session on that at InterNACHI. It’s like, why are you not succeeding? Because you don’t have that dog in you.
Ben Gromicko
The bite man, the bite you gotta be able to. It’s dog eat dog and then you have beer and then you can have a nice drink with your bourbon with your friends. You know at the chapter meeting at the chapter meeting I’m hugging all of my inspectors, right? So that’s how you should be. We’re all in this together. Let’s support each other. But you know when I leave the chapter meeting I’m back on.
Matt Brading
So we, we
Brad Lowery
Yeah. Right, right. Getting your clients.
Ben Gromicko
Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna still I’m gonna still all your clients. That’s the fun part. That’s because if there’s no competition like that, then we’re all doll and we’re all going to be charging about $ because that’s what’s the worth. But if there’s some of us who raise, you know the you know the marketplace and you know some of those businesses to multi inspector firms are really big ones. They’re good. They’re pushing up. They’re raising the tide of everybody else. What is that phrase? You know?
Brad Lowery
That’s it, man. Rising 5.
Ben Gromicko
If they’re taking the lead so let you got to support those crazy son of a guns who are charging a lot and not doing the crazy marketing stuff and really pushing the perceived value of home inspect ions will keep pushing don’t drag him down and say we’re charging too too much for that kind of service and we should that we should respect other people’s hard earned money or something like that we’re not even close to charging 3% like a real estate agent does.
Brad Lowery
That’s exactly it. Yeah. Well, then that’s where I wanted to get back at that Starbucks analogy, because when it comes to controlling the market and establishing demand or establishing value, because you do control the market, agents still, despite the the NAR new agreement, they’re still the gatekeepers. And so they are kind of still the ones that control the overall perception of the home inspection. So how do we how do we change that with agents as well?
Ben Gromicko
3 % on a million dollars is a lot of money.
Matt Brading
Right.
Brad Lowery
Is it just more of exactly like what you’re talking about or are there other steps that we could take in addition to convincing consumers?
Matt Brading
You know, I have an opinion on that. I think that, you know, the online stuff that, you know, myself and some others have been doing is helping to change that as well, because we are now marketing not just to real estate agents, but to the public. you remember, we’ve talked about it before how like home inspection has seemingly changed, like home inspectors, the perception of home inspectors has somewhat changed over the last, I would say probably 20 years. But I mean, I haven’t been in it that long. But I mean, I think that just overall, like I think realtors change to like newer, younger realtors come in and then their perception is a newer. Cause if you get the older inspect, they are the older realtors that have been in the business for a really long time. I mean, I feel like, you know, they have the idea of the older inspectors and things are just different now, right? But you get the newer, newer ones that, that, and they have an idea that’s more aligned with what value I’m trying to bring. That’s my opinion.
Ben Gromicko
Yep. Also, I encourage I don’t want to say I blame home inspector, but I’m encouraging home inspectors to do marketing to change that narrative in there. So when I ask home inspectors that when I do like a coaching session or presentation, I’m always asking like to you know, think of where you live, you know where your house is in your street. Now think of your neighbors, all your neighbors you know and don’t know. Every one of them should know that you’re a home inspector. I mean, if you can’t market to the person who lives right next to you, don’t tell me that, I wish other people, or should I didn’t have to go through real estate agents? You know, like you gotta be able to market to anybody who has a home. You’re a home inspector. Figure out what those people in your neighborhood need from you. I’m sure you can help him out whenever there’s a weather event.
Brad Lowery
Well, that’s exactly what realtors do.
Ben Gromicko
I’ve told this story before. Whenever there’s a weather event in my neighborhood, I’m in a new neighborhood now in Raleigh. Everybody knows I’m the home inspector, right? Whenever there’s a heavy rain port and it rain and roll. It rains, but everybody knows that I’m the guy. I’m the guy who comes over. I’ll come over and have yeah, I’ll check it out. Yeah, no again. I’m I don’t have any paying clients anymore. It’s not what I do. I do all internet. She but if I was in the business. I.
Matt Brading
Everybody just knows that already, okay?
Ben Gromicko
I’d have all these people around me buzzing about me. And if you can’t do that, then don’t complain about, real estate agents are in control of everything.
Brad Lowery
That’s good. Well, you we were talking before we went on air about hurricane season coming back up. This is another shout out to Florida inspectors. know, ISN rolled out a template. I actually helped develop it. Not, not boasting here, but this was out of necessity last year when the sun coast got hit with two, actually it might’ve been three. If you’re counting the sun coast going all the way up to the panhandle, that was three hurricanes, major hurricanes last year. And so we came up with a storm damage assessment template, I think is what it was. But really it was intended for helping homeowners, not home buyers, but homeowners just get a ballpark idea of what happened to their properties. Because some of them just didn’t even know where to start the damage was so severe.
Ben Gromicko
Brilliant.
Brad Lowery
And I was giving these away for free helping people out last year. And again, it’s not to just, you know, let the left hand know what the right hand’s doing. And it was certainly not with the intention of, you know, using my home inspection services for free to get business out of it later on. But it was genuinely to be helpful, but people do. I mean, charity, charities remembered, you know, when you, when you give your services away in a sense of, the greater good like that, when the, when a weather storm comes along or some big major weather event, people do remember it. So, you know, it’s, you know, go check out that template. Storm season’s coming up. Y’all going to need it. Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Gromicko
That’s fantastic. I didn’t know that, Brad. That’s fantastic. It’s fantastic. Internet actually developed a little logo. We didn’t develop any template like you did. That’s fantastic.
Brad Lowery
Dude, now I need to get that logo so I can promote myself. Yeah, yeah, definitely man. Yeah.
Ben Gromicko
Put it right on the truck. You know, whenever there’s a storm boom or a truck or a sign, that’s fantastic. You know, but given away you, you touched on something giving right is one of the five things that wealthy people do. Wealthy people own a business. They also invest in other people’s businesses. They buy assets that make them money. They save, you know they don’t burn so they don’t burn the money and they give you know. So you gotta be doing all those those five things. And then if you’re doing those five things, man, you’re on the path to wealth.
Brad Lowery
Which there’s a big difference between underselling your services and being generous, right? Like there’s a difference between, yeah, you can actually afford to be more generous the more you charge, if you think about it that way. If you’re making more off your average ticket, you can afford to give something away in time of crisis, you know, because you’re not gonna be pressed then. That’s pretty big too.
Matt Brading
You
Ben Gromicko
But that is not you or you did not take advantage of the situation. You you were probably a light. You were in that dark time, you know, because Western North Carolina just got hit by one of the tails of those hurricanes that came up through Texas in the Gulf and just the tail of a hurricane destroyed a ton. It’s Asheville. If you want to look it up, there’s still rebuilding. My friends are still affected by that. And the one thing that
Brad Lowery
No, absolutely not. Several guys were down here. There’s a lot of people.
Ben Gromicko
The township can’t do one thing that the government can’t Deploy enough inspectors who can assess damage. They just a FEMA can’t do it. The government can’t do it. The local building officials don’t have enough building inspectors even for new construction. That’s why the government should really be thinking about the leveraging and deploying all these wonderful home inspectors who are trained and they know.
Brad Lowery
That’s a good thought,
Ben Gromicko
The neighbors, you know, that’s a fantastic thing you did. That’s really great. I didn’t know that.
Brad Lowery
No, definitely. I’m happy to partner with InterNACHI to prep inspectors for storm season coming up because it’s going to be another rough one. They’re predicting I think up to storms for this year, potentially major ones. But in terms of preparation, you were talking about, I kind of want to pivot here with this, because you were talking about InterNACHI’s online resources. And something that Matt and I were thinking about is because I’ve used InterNACHI for doing my CEs both at the conference and online. But are y’all thinking on adapting the coursework or continuing to evolve the coursework to encompass some of the modern technologies that are coming out and debuting, starting to make their way into new builds these days, or how are you guys adapting in that way?
Ben Gromicko
Yeah, so just so everybody knows that if you took a like the electrical course 10 years ago, it has gone through updates. It goes through a cycle of updates every year and we update every course of Internet. She according to the latest code. So it’s reviewed every year, but every three years the code gets updated and so all the courses get updated and I do a lot of the work, but I also hire out for people to go through the course and make sure that we don’t have any old crap in the courses people think i took the electrical course i was as well a long time ago because we’re in a credited college we have to update things so that’s just the building standards and then we’re running a very writing right now a new course on smart home features for tax taxes pre-licensing actually requires the new home inspector in the pre-licensing to understand.
Matt Brading
Okay.
Ben Gromicko
You know the new home features right to smart home features and all that other stuff. So we’re on the cutting edge of everything. I mean, because we’re in accredited college, the only tuition free online accredited college accredited by US Department of Education for home inspectors. We have to be on top of everything. We have to be updated. There are no old. If there are any old sections, you tell me. I’ll change.
Matt Brading
Think you touched on what he was talking about, with, you know, introducing courses that like have things to do with smart homes and newer technologies. think not necessarily code changes and course updates. mean, you guys have always been very good at that, but I think like just kind of looking forward to course material that might encompass modern building techniques and modern devices.
Ben Gromicko
Yeah, yeah, like tankless water heaters. mean there’s that was a new thing, but that’s kind of actually old. But you know, a of home inspectors don’t even know about tankless water heaters. So inside the plumbing course there’s tankless water heaters. I live in a home that has a spray foam on the roof, right? And the attic is conditioned. And it’s mechanically ventilated. I mean, so watch out, there’s going be a video course coming up.
Brad Lowery
Yeah. We just. There you go.
Matt Brading
Yeah, well we were talking about that. Do you have an ERV?
Brad Lowery
On ERVs.
Ben Gromicko
On. Yeah, yeah, no, I don’t. No, I don’t. No, it there’s a there’s a fresh air. It’s simply a pipe with a damper and it brings in fresh air every for 10 minutes every hour. Yeah, I wish I had that’s right.
Matt Brading
You don’t, okay? Yeah. huh. Yeah. Yeah, No, no, no, that’s just it’s not an ERV. It’s a it simply just brings in air. It doesn’t exhaust them.
Brad Lowery
Sounds like an ERV. I’ll see you later. Okay, got it. So it’s an encapsulated space at the very least. Yeah, no, that’s kind of the stuff that we’ve been getting into. In fact, we just shot a special. I’ll share it with you once it goes live. this was at, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Matt Reisinger out in Texas, big building science guy. But we were filming at one of his new projects and we took a look, was a heat pump water heater. And it’s like, okay, we understand water heaters and we understand heat pumps. But you put both of these together, we looked at each other. I was like, do we want to try to film on this? And we went, no.
Matt Brading
Yeah, I mean, that’s something like, well, I know enough about it, right? Like to be able to probably inspect it. But like, do I know like if somebody started asking me a whole bunch of questions about how it works, like I probably wouldn’t be able to answer that stuff. I could probably put it together if I sat there and thought about it long enough, but I would thoroughly love some information on stuff like that for sure.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, water to air heat exchange. Yeah.
Ben Gromicko
Well I think building sites we got a couple building science courses for energy they’re pretty good and I think I think home inspectors should understand that the houses of as a system a whole system of parts that all work together and if they’re not working together if one part is off if you really screw things up and I’ve been concentrating on and how water bulk water moves and I just learned a ton about capillary action and osmosis and efflorescence. It’s just an amazing thing. Like if you’re a home inspector. yeah, yeah. Water is everything it’s it really is like the beginning of every home inspection, right? You should think you should look at this building or even a commercial building, right? You should look at this thing is like how is water managed? Where’s the water management features, you know?
Matt Brading
Water is everything. Water is everything. It is. It is the most destructive force. Yet, you know, yes, we can control like what’s going on plumbing wise, but water just falls out of the sky too. And we don’t, we have no control over that. Right. And so yeah, all of that has to be managed. and it’s just, you know, wildly destructive. And so, yeah, I mean, I’ll do home inspections sometimes the water’s turned off or I’ll arrive and the water’s turned off. I refuse to do it. I won’t do a home inspection with water not working. That doesn’t make any sense to me. That’s the one thing that, you know, is a deal breaker. I will do it. mean, probably electricity too, but like I’ll do it. The gas is off. You know, there’s some unfinished business around a new construction house. No problem. Most of the time. But I mean, like, you know, whatever we go back and do unfinished business later. But if the water doesn’t work, I’m not doing an inspection. That’s ridiculous.
Brad Lowery
Now on your new build there, what steps did you guys take in terms of ceiling? I’m assuming you guys have a basement, you’re up in North Carolina. We can’t do them down in Florida, but when I was in Virginia, every house had either a basement or a crawl space. So do you guys employ any new practices in terms of ceiling, the basement as far as protection against water intrusion or ceiling, the housing envelope in general that’s maybe a tick above previous building standards or what’d you guys do there? Yeah, man.
Ben Gromicko
Me. I’m on a crawl space. And it’s an unvented crawl space. And so the air that building science shows that the air that you breathe in your first floor, half of it is coming from somewhere else in your house, right? Could be from the basement of the crawl space, ventilated or unventilated. So I have an unventilated crawl space and it’s the best thing. I treat it as a short basements.
Brad Lowery
- Fun stuff.
Ben Gromicko
You know, no open air vents. It’s ridiculous. It’s impossible to control stuff, but when you enclose it, insulate it and vapor retard it, it’s no longer a vapor barrier. It’s a vapor retarder. It’s it’s just a clean area. You go into my crawl space. You’d be the happiest home inspector in the world. I mean, it’s just clean. It’s actually clean. It’s a clean space. If you can imagine a clean space and it’s all lit up.
Brad Lowery
We can say that word.
Ben Gromicko
And there’s aren’t any bugs or mice or anything. It’s just an amazing. I’ve been in this house for now two years and it is just a fantastic. I have building science all around me and it’s just a fantastic way to handle this space that has really been a pain in the butt for a lot of homeowners. A lot of homeowners. What’s it? I do so right. I take a look almost every day. I’m a not Matt.
Matt Brading
Do you monitor the humidity down there? Do you monitor the humidity down there?
Ben Gromicko
I took a open up my crawlspace door I signed my flashlight and I got a meeting that’s relative humidity temperature and also can detect any water problem and many water problems so I think that.
Matt Brading
How’s your humidity level down there? Do you have any dehumidification or you just rely on HVAC? What’s going on?
Ben Gromicko
HVAC ventilation. you need if you’re going to. I don’t. The code says a lot of things about an unvented crawl space, but you gotta have some kind of mechanical ventilation. And so I’ve got a little bit of the same air circulation in my entire house that’s in the crawl space. It’s really good.
Brad Lowery
Now I love it.
Matt Brading
Been in a few crawlspaces that were that nice.
Ben Gromicko
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
Yeah. It always makes me smile, especially like when it’s like, I’ve got like a three inspection day back in Virginia and you know, two of them are absolute dumps in the crawl space. And it’s like, I could spend an hour down there just documenting every problem. And then you open that one hatch and you shine your light and you just go, okay. It’s like, thank God. Some people know what they’re doing here. Yeah. So that was always a treat, man. Very cool.
Matt Brading
That’s a girl.
Ben Gromicko
But have you have done the water drip test? So you get two shots in poor whiskey in each each one, right? And then. And then then you get just a drop of water on your finger and let it drop right? And then you see if you can taste the difference. They say that one drop of water in that shot makes all the difference in the world. Is that true?
Matt Brading
Okay, you have me now. You have my…
Brad Lowery
You
Matt Brading
I don’t know, I’ll have to, hold on. Let me go get a couple of cups.
Brad Lowery
I don’t know, but I’m gonna have to try that.
Ben Gromicko
Hahahaha
Brad Lowery
Well, it’s almost like with scotch, right? I mean, sometimes you do this, it’s like a tiny bit of scotch or a tiny bit of water and scotch. Yeah, well, it helps. It’s a scotch thing, yeah.
Ben Gromicko
That’s what it is. I was at a Scotch thing and an expert Scotch guy did that just to drop and I was like, yeah, there is a difference.
Brad Lowery
Yep. It
Matt Brading
Have heard that.
Brad Lowery
It brings out some of the other notes cuts down on some of that, that, alcohol burn that hits you when you first, you know, take a, take a sip off of, off of your, your bit of scotch there, but off your drum. Yeah. I w we got to try it, man. So next time I’m, up through, up through, North Carolina, we’ll give it a go. So it’s a pretty good bourbon up there. Bring it, man.
Ben Gromicko
I
Matt Brading
What if I like mine?
Ben Gromicko
I don’t know if there was a difference. I think I was just having a good time. Yeah.
Matt Brading
Hey, listen, I want to beat a dead horse for one minute, okay? I want to get back to this thousand dollar thing because there was one thing that I wanted to ask you. And you said back in the day you were doing them for like in the 90s and early 2000s, you were doing them for a thousand bucks. That included ancillary services. You put out a video not too long ago talking about how inspectors should be charging a thousand dollars for inspection. In today’s market with today’s prices, is that thousand dollars base fee or is that including ancillary services and if so how many ends what do think base fee should be
Ben Gromicko
Yeah, it’s hard to make a video on this subject right without route sounds stupid. So I you know I’ve done so many videos and I’m I probably have sound stupid in many other videos. But my point is right that. You gotta charge it’s based on math, right? Don’t go into this business or don’t be running a business right now based upon just guessing. So you gotta figure if you can do the math, you gotta figure out, you know.
Matt Brading
It is. You
Ben Gromicko
How much profit you want. In order to give yourself a lifestyle that you’re aiming for, right? You want to be able to support your family and do all the great things and go to, you know, to charities and all that stuff. But man, you gotta figure when that phone rings. You have you have to be able to know that this is going to be a profitable phone call, right? And you just can’t like look at your competition and say, well. You know, Mary’s charging. $500 for a home inspection. And if you add wood and radon and mold to that, maybe I can push it to 800 and that sounds good to me. That’s not the way to do it, right? We don’t. We don’t train inspectors in our business course to think like that. We train inspectors to look at the market, but also like it’s up to you to figure out what you should be charging according to your math. My math is different from Brad’s math because I desire a certain annual salary that’s going to be different than Brad’s. I have a large family and Brad has a bigger family or Mary has a has no family or something, you know, so we can’t be all like I think $1,000 for my home inspections. It doesn’t matter what my friendly competitors are doing. First and foremost, you have to do the math for yourself and make sure you’re. Your business is operating to support your lifestyle and you’re focused on your aim, right?
Matt Brading
And just make sure that your services are measuring up, I guess.
Ben Gromicko
Yeah, and you’ll know that you’ll know that for sure when you measure your marketing strategies and whether your value proposal is meeting that expectation. So if you have one of the things you can do is use your website analytics. If you have a ton of people visiting your website right and they’re not scheduling with you, you may have a problem with communicating your value. You may have a problem with your price. You may have. If you’re charging a certain amount of money, but you’re not really selling it, not convincing like Matt said, then you have a problem with your marketing, right? If you’re doing everything you can in your marketing and you’re not making enough money, right? Well, then it’s your prices. So you really have to. It’s back to measuring things. Measure measuring your efforts. Don’t do anything. Don’t do anything. In your marketing strategies, whether if you can’t measure it. Because if it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring. Even if you post on social media tonight, something really awesome, right? OK, then you probably know this is worth my time. You’re not in business to waste your time. There must be a reason that Matt is doing that tonight and I can’t wait for him to post something and I’m gonna watch it right? But you know it that is part of his marketing strategy, or maybe he’s just doing it for fun and that’s OK too.
Brad Lowery
You gotta know your numbers.
Matt Brading
I do that every day. Yeah. Right.
Ben Gromicko
But he’s measuring every business owner measures everything that we do in order to make money here. We don’t. We’re not in the business of wasting money. We’re in a business of making as much money as possible. And the cool thing is, the thing is I beat up on contractors because of our business models, right? A contractor that pulls up in the driveway with windows is in the business of selling windows. A contractor that pulls up in the driveway with insulation.
Matt Brading
Yes.
Ben Gromicko
Has a business model of selling as much insulation as possible, right? That’s their business model. That’s their motive. A home inspector, a home inspector pulls up in the driveway with nothing to sell other than I’m going to tell you everything about your home, how it works and what’s wrong and how to go fix it. I’m going to educate my clients about the home in which they live so that they can feel safe and healthy in it. Holy cow, that’s fantastic. What a value that we provide. If you can’t sell that for $1,000, what are you doing?
Matt Brading
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think some of it is probably region specific to I mean, there’s a there’s a whole lot that goes into it I get it now. I mean, it’s more just a number. You know, it’s maybe not so number specific but yeah, I mean, I just I like hearing your viewpoints on this and kind of getting a little bit deeper into that but I’m done. I’m done. I’m We can move on.
Ben Gromicko
Yeah. first card, first card.
Brad Lowery
Yeah. No, and I, I, you know, agree with everything you’re saying, Ben, in terms of, know, we understand our value. We understand exactly what you’re saying. And for me, it still comes back to, and maybe this is because I, worked through the COVID era when it was a cash buyers market. was a seller’s market, but it played best for cash buyers, right? If you could come in with a million in cash and go buy that house, you, win the day. But the first thing to go was home inspections. The first thing to get waived was home inspections and it forced inspectors to do half the job for half the pay with walk-in talks, which is twice the risk. I was telling other inspectors this the whole time, like that is a massive risk for you to go in there without providing a paper report and just saying, I’ll give you a verbal in an hour. But inspectors were having to do it to at least stay in the field and stay active and stay top of mind. So I’m like, you know, there’s I know there’s legislation that’s being pushed in places like Massachusetts that are trying to kind of make the inspection of a buyer’s right, where that helps to raise perceived value. So for me, it’s like it’s still just kind of drilling it into the consumer’s mind that you need this.
Ben Gromicko
Yeah.
Matt Brading
You know what?
Ben Gromicko
Yeah, I don’t. I don’t like it when you know a business owner says I rely on the government to do my marketing right. It’s I mean if they make home inspections required in every state, that’d be fantastic, right? But that’s not going to happen in my head. I’m going to assume that’s not going to happen and the only person who gives a crap about our problem of being undervalued in this in critical real estate transaction.
Brad Lowery
Right now, yeah.
Ben Gromicko
That’s on us. Home inspectors. We really need to. This is the time to do it too. We really need to start communicating the value of what we do. I know it’s great to look at someone who, you know, we have an, it’s a bunch of inspectors who do videos that beat up other inspectors. We have, we have inspectors who beat up builders, right? We have inspectors who like.
Brad Lowery
We know.
Ben Gromicko
Beat up other things out there. That’s it’s not. That’s not the value, right? You have to show you can’t scare people into hiring you. You have to show the value. I don’t know how else I can say it. Maybe after this Matt, Matt and Brad, I’ll probably have the right answer for you, but there’s gotta be some other type of conversation and it’s going to be. It’s reliant upon home inspectors to start that conversation. No one else cares that we’re not charging enough.
Matt Brading
Right.
Ben Gromicko
It’s up to us to show that value.
Brad Lowery
Think Matt, yeah, no, I think Matt, honestly, what he and other inspectors do as far as content goes, and there are good guys out there, like we got Trey Hill, we’ve had him on the show, where they go straight to I think marketing straight to the consumer is the solution. You know, because at the end of the day, the person that’s going to choose you and then you hit on this with Google reviews, it’s the buyer, right. And so you have to you have to find the way to kind of cut the realtor.
Ben Gromicko
Good.
Brad Lowery
Out of the equation in terms of establishing your value because the only person that really needs to know at the end of the day is the homebuyer.
Ben Gromicko
Guess how many homes right now there are in the United States? It’s about 147 million, 147, 150 million. Let’s say 150 million, right? Huh? That’s all.
Brad Lowery
Really? That’s all? That’s all? I’m actually kind of shocked.
Ben Gromicko
I think that’s right. Maybe it could be more. It could be more. Let’s say it’s more. This day is going to miss. Guess how many million I know this one. Guess how many million homes have water intrusion problems today?
Brad Lowery
Okay, is this single family? We’re not talking condos. Okay.
Matt Brading
No idea. Many, many.
Ben Gromicko
11.7 million are experiencing water intrusion problems today. A roof leak water from the foundation water leak or a water problem coming from inside like a plumbing leak of some kind. There’s water problems in millions of homes, right? Now that doesn’t have anything to do. With the real estate transaction. Now you’re telling no, you’re not telling me, but I’m just a question you’re telling me that we can’t monopolize on that. Like the one thing that connects me to just about everyone else in the United States who was living in who isn’t homeless is a home where we live in an apartment. We’re renting an Airbnb and all Airbnb should be inspected by the way I’ve reached out to them man all Airbnb should be inspected I don’t know if you’ve done an Airbnb or a vova or verbo they need to be inspected right.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, yeah, you’re a man.
Matt Brading
Man.
Brad Lowery
Absolutely. Yeah.
Matt Brading
You’re rough.
Ben Gromicko
It’s
Matt Brading
Man.
Ben Gromicko
Yeah, some of them are really rough. Some of them really. There’s so many other opportunities. It isn’t just about the real estate transaction. I think the one thing that connects all of us is that we our health, our health, your health is affected by the home in which you live and the building in which you work. Those things. Those things need to be inspected to make sure that they’re safe, functioning and healthy, and there’s only one.
Matt Brading
Yes, 100% true.
Ben Gromicko
Certified professional on this planet earth who can do that.
Brad Lowery
That’s good. Yeah, I think you’re kind of getting that, you know, like the final huge point there because we’ve talked about everything’s in terms of knowing your own value, promoting your own value and marketing your own value. But it’s I think the last one here is seeing the opportunities, right? Because we look at home inspections as OK, well, this is only for the buyer. No, it doesn’t just have to be for the buyer.
Ben Gromicko
Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Lowery
Like what you’re saying, there’s, all other manners of incidents in which a home could or should be inspected. I, I like, going to investors. I’ll do like, I’ll tell, I tell investors, real estate investors that I’ll do an investment evaluation. It’s a home inspection, but so that they know that they’re getting what they’re, what they’re paying for. Right. but when, as soon as you call it an investor evaluation, they go, you know, I could probably use that. Right. So it’s a little bit of, you know, it’s semantics, but it’s finding the opportunity. So that’s huge. Well, Ben, I can tell.
Ben Gromicko
Nice.
Brad Lowery
There’s one thing that’s definitely worth the value and that’s been having you on the show today, man. We really appreciate this. I’ve been wanting to get you on here for quite some time.
Ben Gromicko
Thanks, I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Matt Brading
You know, also Ben, I just want to say thank you because, you know, I have used InterNACHI for years. I have learned so much from the courses that are provided there and everything that you guys do for the industry. I just really thank you. You guys are awesome. I love InterNACHI.
Ben Gromicko
Awesome, thanks. Thanks fellas for having me on. Brad, really appreciate it. Matt, check you around.
Brad Lowery
Yep. Definitely man and thank you everybody so much for watching as always. Make sure if you’re not a member of InterNACHI, you need to be, go check them out. They don’t pay us to say that, I’m just saying that because I’ve gotten huge value from it. And make sure to come to Inspection Fuel, go check out the InterNACHI conference as well and go follow them online. All the InterNACHI forums are fantastic to be part of. So thank you guys for watching. We’ll be right back here on the ride along very soon. See you then.
