TOPIC: starting a HI business

After 30 years as a contractor, I have decided to move into the home inspection field. What courses would you recommend to help me get started? I am in Colorado, where there are no licensing requirements (yet). There are so many course online at a million different prices, I can't decide where to start.
Thanks for your help!

Hi William,

At the very least go to nachi.org and sign up as a student so you can look at their online courses for free (they're also based in Boulder). This will help you in your decision on whether you want to follow that path or not. If you decide to proceed check out The ASHI School, AHIT and Kaplan as the top three inspection schools you're likely to find locally.

William, great benefits at InterNACHI, including free education plus much more. Can't beat it.

Hi William,
You came to the right place for answers. There are many talented folks who will gladly share information.

First of all, I don't want to rain on your parade nor dash your dreams, but I hope you are skeptical about the Inspection Training folks that promise easy work hours and high pay. They are in the business of getting you to pay money for their education. They really don't care if there is any work out there nor do they care about your success. 

I would recommend checking with other inspectors & real estate professionals and try to determine the market and the potential slice for you. You could find out the number of real estate sales and divide that by the number of inspectors in your area. I would encourage you to do your research before pumping a bunch of money into it. Home Inspection is not an "if you build it, they will come" business model.

In any case, I wish you well and much success.

William...  Check out the community colleges also. In Illinois, some colleges teach HI as a credited course; others teach it as a non-credit course.  Some of the community colleges also bring in an outside school, like Dominic mentioned....others have their own program.

From a pragmatist point of view, I hope you have carefully considered the numbers.

If you're coming from the construction field because the market is down, be sure that you realize that: contractors build more houses than Realtors sell. Realtors sell more houses than inspectors inspect. If it is slow in the construction field is really slow at the inspection level.

If you have something to keep you going during the startup phase of your business, a down economy is an excellent time to spend learning. I've done it several times. If you can't make any money, you may as well learn another trade while you're not working(if you can afford it).

Things do appear to be picking up a little though.