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JUST STOP Over the past 10 days I have heard from home inspectors, brokers, real estate agents, and real estate organizations. It has been wonderful to talk with everyone. I have been thanked, cursed, told I am selling out the industry, I am not doing enough to keep home inspectors from working, not doing enough to allow home inspectors to work, and been asked for clarification. These are interesting times. None of us has lived through a global pandemic before. My hope is that we all live through this one. The issue that is central to all the phone calls is that Empire State Development has granted waivers to some home inspectors and they are out and about inspecting homes. “Why them and not all of us??” “Hey, how come they can work and not me???” “What is wrong with the folks at ESD????” Well, here it is. The folks at ESD are busy as little beavers dealing with far more than just home inspectors. You know those garment companies that are now making PPE? They needed waivers to do that. You know those manufacturing companies that are now making PPE or ventilators, they needed waivers. ESD does not have time to investigate every request and they are going to, at this point, take people at their word that what they are doing is to deal with COVID -19. You see, in order to request a waiver, you need to certify the follow affidavit: I hereby certify that I have reviewed the guidance issued by the New York State Department of Economic Development d/b/a Empire State Development and I have determined that my business is NOT an essential business or function as stated therein but I am requesting that my business be designated essential because it is in the best interests of New York State to have my business’s workforce continue at full capacity in order to properly respond to the COVID-19 emergency. (Bold added for emphasis) If you can in good conscience explain how your doing home inspections is somehow fighting COVID-19 you too can have a waiver. We are at a point where if we are all really good citizens and stay at home and limit social interaction, we may be able to hold the death count to 100,000 – 200,000 US citizens. That is now the best-case scenario. Never before and hopefully never again will doing the right thing be to sit down and get paid to not work. I know it goes against our work ethic. It just feels wrong. Well, sometimes we must do things we don’t want to do for the greater good. So, what about the people that got waivers? Time will tell. First of all, there shouldn’t be any more work out there because realtors are not supposed to be working. Will they in the long run lose business because they are seen as poor citizens? Will their insurance not cover them because they weren’t supposed to be working? Will the state go back and audit the businesses with waivers to see if they really were helping with COVID-19 rather than their bottom line? We don’t know. What we do know is that if you really care about your community you will stop inspecting houses, vacant or occupied, even with PPE’s, even if you took a course, even this is supposed to be the busy season… Just Stop!!! If you are looking for something productive to do, take a look at the NYS SOP and Code of Ethics and make any changing you want to see and send them to me. It has been a long time since they have been updated and once this situation in the world is resolved, we will be working on the SOP. We are all in this together- 6 feet apart |
Seems to me the guys signing that exemption affidavit are just plain lying. Nobody is dumb enough to sincerely and seriously aggrandize their work by signing a waiver request. If they are that dumb, they probably can’t even figure out how a tool belt works, let alone effectively don and use their PPE. And what homeowner, under present conditions, wants a stranger in their house doing what our standards demand or beyond (which is most of us, I think), particularly touching or handling all those hard or metal surfaces, PPE or not? Oi. Same for vacant properties, unless they’ve been under surveillance and not entered for at least 12 days. Think about it. THINK about it.
Not to mention how often some of us feel compelled to spit in a Realtor’s eye. That’s assault these days.