TOPIC: Home Inspection through escrow

Being relatively new, I got a call from someone that wanted to know if I did inspections through escrow and I didn't have an answer for them. Maybe I lost a job, but I honestly didn't know what was involved. I knew that I could perform the inspection, but I didn't know what was involved in the procedure. Can anyone give me an idea what's involved and the pros and cons of doing inspections through escrow besides waiting for payment?

That's all they wanted, to pay you later. It's fine to do this but you need to send them a contract requesting their credit card information and let them know that if escrow should fall through the credit card will automatically be charged.

Here is a personal example.  My son is buying a house.  A short sale.  It went under contract on August 8th. He got it for $40k under appraised value.  Being a short sale, it takes time.  In this instance there are 2 lien holders.  One has approved, one hasn't.  At this point, they are expecting to close sometime in November.  So you have to ask yourself:  Do I want to wait possibly 90 days or longer for payment?  As a new inspector, unless you have a years worth of income saved up, you are going to be needing your money sooner than that.  So unless you are doing 5 or more inspections per week AT A PROPER PRICE, I wouldn't recommend it.  In almost 10 years, I have only been asked 3 times.  At the same time, there are geographical areas where this is common practice.  It is something that you need to decide for yourself. As Dom said, make sure you have a back up form of collection in case the deal falls through.  I'm not a credit card proponent so a post dated check would be another possibility.

If the inspection is to be paid out of escrow are there papers that must be prepared and sent to the escrow company along with a invoice prior to performing the inspection? (California)

This is really very informative information!! Actually, I never thought to inspect my house, but now after reading your article, I am thinking to get done inspection of my house also. Do you know any Palos Verdes Home Inspector Service company?