About Four-Point Inspections
A four-point inspection is not a home inspection. It is a focused report on four systems, written for an insurance underwriter rather than for a buyer, and it answers one question: is this house an acceptable risk to insure?
The four points are the roof, the electrical system, the plumbing system, and the HVAC system. For each one the report documents age, material or type, visible condition, and any active deficiency. Carriers ask for this on older homes, typically once a house passes twenty-five or thirty years, and increasingly on any home where the roof age is unclear.
In Central Texas the findings that stop a policy are fairly consistent. Roofs worked over by hail and never properly replaced. Cloth-wrapped or aluminum branch wiring in houses from the fifties and sixties. Federal Pacific Stab-Lok and Zinsco panels, which are still out there across older San Antonio and Austin neighborhoods. Polybutylene supply lines from the eighties. Water heaters well past their service life, which hard Hill Country water shortens considerably.
Knowing about any of that before you submit the report to your carrier is the entire point. Jeremy inspects and documents what is there, and the report goes out within 24 hours so it does not hold up your binder.
