Home inspectors rise to highlight housing quality concerns

Recently, Zhou Qi, a citizen of Nanning, Guangxi Province, received a notice of housing delivery to allow him to accept the house on site. After a friend’s recommendation, Zhou Qi decided to ask the inspector to help. “If you don’t have two or three hundred dollars, you should buy yourself a rest assured.”

Benefiting from the huge market demand, the “home inspection” industry has developed rapidly in recent years. The survey results of Wanjiapule (Beijing) Consulting Co., Ltd., which specializes in the training of consultants for housing inspections, show that there are currently more than 200 companies specializing in home inspections, and there are countless other decoration companies and construction companies that provide housing inspection services.

Wang Delin is one of many urban “house doctors” and runs a building decoration consulting company specializing in housing inspection in Nanning, Guangxi. He explained to reporters that the role of inspectors is far more than simply allowing owners to "buy a deal." "The housekeeper's report is sometimes the owner's last straw."

On one occasion, when he inspected the house, he used a tool to lightly poke a lot of wall covering on the wall. Wang Delin issued a professional inspection report for the owner and was invited by the owner to participate in the development of the developer, the construction side, the supervisor, the home inspector, and the owner. The "Five-Party Talks" has won tens of thousands of compensation for the owners.

Behind the prosperity of the home inspection industry, there is an endless stream of housing quality problems. In 2009, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development conducted a total quality inspection of 180 projects in 90 cities. The results showed that nearly 4% of the 13,103 inspections had various problems.

After nearly three years have passed, the quality of housing still has problems: In February 2012, Vanke was found to have excessive levels of formaldehyde in the “No. 7 Lakeside Building in Xincheng Lake” in Foshan; in July 2012, a heavy rain in Beijing was poured out. The true face of a “quality real estate” in Beijing...