Melanie Moore enters a Soddy Daisy residence and turns on the light just inside the front door. The oven and the dishwasher are next, and then she sweeps through the rest of the house, opening doors, turning on plumbing fans and hitting every switch she can find. When her counterclockwise march is done, she goes back to her truck, straps on a tool belt and grabs a clipboard and a pen.
Moore is the owner of Full Disclosure Home Inspection and a certified home inspector. Before she’s done, she’ll examine the house, which an elderly couple is planning to buy, from top to bottom. She’ll climb onto the roof, check the siding and crawl through the attic, all in an attempt to locate issues that would be of concern to her clients.
“There’s no such thing as a perfect house,” she says as she removes the cover of the electric panel in the garage and gives the wiring a once over. “The worst house I’ve inspected was brand new. That ended up in a lawsuit.”
Moore has been blessed with the eyesight of an eagle. Although the house is in good shape, she spots minor issues with the roof and the siding, notes a problem with the foundation that could allow bugs to enter the residence, and sees that there’s only a small amount of insulation remaining on the refrigerant line attached to the HVAC unit.
“That tells me it’s been a while since this unit has been serviced,” she says.
Toward the end of the inspection, Moore turns on the fan in the master bathroom, clambers up to the attic and sees that insulation as been placed over the corresponding vent. As a result, “organic growth” has appeared.
Although Moore hasn’t identified what she believes will be a deal-breaker, she still sits down with the buyers and gives them a blow-by-blow account of her inspection, showing them pictures of everything she found and explaining the ramifications.
“My job is to look at a property, make sure it’s safe, and make sure my clients are buying a quality product. If there’s something wrong, then I give that information to my clients. They know whether or not they have the skills to fix the problems or if they’re going to have to call someone in to do it for them,” Moore says.
Moore shows the couple a photograph of the badly worn roof of a home she inspected earlier in the day to give them an idea of what the roof of the house they’re considering buying will look like in a few years. “You’re going to have to replace the roof at some point,” she tells them. The husband nods.
“I prepare people for what’s going to happen so they can plan for it and won’t be shocked when it does,” Moore says.
While the law does not require home inspections, Moore sees her job as a critical part of the buying process, considering the size of the investment people are making.
“I tell my clients to go home, sit down and look over my report. By that point, they know what the house is worth, they know what they’ll be paying for it, and they know what their skill set is. If they’re paying top dollar, then they might want to ask for a few things. I tell them to make a decision and then talk with their Realtor,” she says.
Moore says her No. 1 job is to provide her clients with a reality check. “When someone hires me, they already love the house with their heart. I come in and help them learn about it with their head.”
As a home inspector, Moore is required to be certified in each state in which she practices, to take continuing education classes, to carry insurance and to adhere to the rules by which her profession is governed. While necessary, the schooling she’s received has paled in comparison to the real-life skills she acquired as a builder.
Moore was literally born into the construction business: Her mother gave birth to her at a camp in North Dakota, where her dad was helping to build missile silos.
Moore grew up in Dalton, Ga., and Chattanooga, and has been in the construction business since she was 17. She’s built bridges and apartments, operated a crane and owned a general contractor company with her husband. Among their projects together: the Denmore subdivision in Ringgold, Ga.
Moore likes to know her job inside and out, so in 2000, she earned an appraiser’s license to make sure she wouldn’t overbuild any projects. Although she never worked as an appraiser, the experience gave her a foundation on which to build a home inspection business when she took a voluntary layoff from a company for which she was working in 2009.
Moore works “wherever her truck takes her,” which includes vast stretches of Tennessee and Georgia. She’s licensed in the former but not the latter because the State of Georgia does not require home inspectors to be licensed. Through the national home inspectors associations of which she’s a part, Moore is contributing to the effort to make licensure a requirement in the state. (Moore is vice president of the Home Inspectors Association of Tennessee.)
While Moore didn’t plan to become a home inspector, she could not be happier with what she’s doing. “I get to help people. Many homebuyers get so nervous, they make themselves sick. But I’m comfortable with construction. That’s why they hire me,” she says.
As Moore prepares to leave the house, she makes the same counterclockwise sweep through the residence as when she came in, only she’s doing the reverse of what she previously did. When the house is silent and dark again, she pauses to look back on a job well done and then locks the door as she leaves.
“There was a fellow who found out he had a terminal illness. He hired me to inspect his home so it would be in good shape for his wife when he passed away. That’s why I love this job,” she says.