Cardinal Home Inspection

Raj was very helpful and very very thorough. She found a number of issues that I hadn’t suspected before talking to her. She was also very easy to understand and communicate with. I asked her a ton of questions during the inspection, and she never rushed me, always took the time to address anything I had to ask. This is my first home purchase, so she also gave me a lot of tips on things to watch for given my houses current condition.
Highly recommended.

Raj is the best inspector I have ever worked with!
I used to be a Realtor and have been to many home inspections. Raj was one of the inspectors whom I had the pleasure of dealing with many times with clients. I never had any complaints from clients after purchasing a house she inspected.
It wasn’t until I purchased my first home a few months ago, that I had a full understanding of how helpful Raj is. Our home had some minor issues and one major issue. For the minor issues, she explained different ways we could repair them ourselves, things we should get a professional for and an approximate cost for each repair. The major issue our house had (that could have been easily missed but wasn’t) she suggested we have an appropriate contractor take a look at. Raj referred us to someone whom we were able to contact during the inspection and schedule a time for them to come out. She is very honest, does not «sugar coat» anything and will tell you if something is beyond her scope of expertise (which isn’t much).She was very thorough and pointed out things that we should maybe watch out for that we would have never thought about.
Without her thoroughness and timely referral, we would not have been able to meet our inspection deadline and/​or would have been stuck with the $ 7000 it took to fix the major problem.
Unfortunately for buyer’s, as in Sarah P.‘s case, inspectors are not allowed to be at all «invasive» and must leave the property in the same condition as when they started. They cannot look into walls, under floorboards or chip away concrete that may or may not be a façade. If there is ever any doubt about a defect, a specialized contractor should be brought in and with the owners consent, get a better look at the problem. Raj is the best I have seen at doing a thorough job while maintaining the standard of doing no harm to the property.
I am very happy with the home we have purchased and highly recommend Raj to anyone who is looking for a great home inspector!

I thought Raj was wonderful and through in our recent home inspection. She is friendly but professional and efficient. She explained everything in ‘laymans’ terms and encouraged our participation and understanding of all she was seeing. She very clearly knew what she was talking about and pointed out the details she was looking for during her inspection and evaluation process. The (same day!) report she gave was very complete, color coded and divided into more and less emergent issues as well as recommendations for resolution. She gave much more than I expected from this inspection process and I would absolutely recommend her. I also appreciated that she had names and contact information for more detailed inspection options (e.g. a foundations engineer) for issues with the home. I secretly wanted to become a house inspector after meeting her and seeing how interesting inspecting homes can be! :) Who knew?!

We hired Raj in 2007 to inspect a home that we later purchased. The house was a new construction, and Raj checked only the cosmetic things. Three days ago, we had the PSE home energy test and they discovered through a visual test that 2^nd floor cold air receiver was never working. It seems that the wood studs were not cut when the cold air receiver was installed. I know that an inspector cannot say what is inside the wall but checking a cold air receiver to see if it works is a simple «toilet paper test» — if the paper is sucked by the vent it means the vent works. We are very disappointed that she did not check the cold air receivers and the heat duct work in the crawl space (we have a 9 feet crawl space with plenty of natural light, so it is easy to check). It is an obvious visual test that any inspector could do. We are not talking about an experienced inspector. Also, two ducts in the crawl space were not connected. We have had no experience with home ownership prior to purchasing this house to know these simple rules. And all these years we did not questioned this cold air receiver because we don’t leave in that area of the house to notice that was not working. We hired Raj and we were very specific that we need to know anything that is wrong with the house so the builder will fix it. Now we will be hit by a huge bill for tearing down walls and fix the problem. We called Raj and she was very unresponsive and denied any liability. Raj you are liable for visual checking (this is the home inspector job), it is not about checking inside of walls it is about doing a thorough visual check of potential issues. We will send Raj the bill. She is liable. I will NEVER recommend Raj. If she cannot do a visual test of the cold air receivers and duct work what else she can inspect, cosmetic stuff?!

Raj came to us highly recommended by our real estate agent (who is actually Penny B. below’s business partner). During the inspection process, she was really wonderful and I couldn’t ask for more. She really teaches you about your house while she does the inspection, and sends a very complete and thorough email summary of everything she found. She told us about many small maintenance and repair issues on our 1911 home that we should take care of, and was very honest about rating them as things we should do now, soon, when we get around to it, or just leave until something breaks. She also gave her (very valuable) 2 cents on some major issues we already knew about. I was very pleased with her work and we decided to go through with our purchase largely because of her inspection.
Unfortunately, soon after we bought the house we ran into a huge problem she hadn’t identified in the inspection. We knew we were going to have major electrical work to do, and when the electricians were here they cut into a basement wall to find the insulation completely saturated. The basement had previously had serious water issues, but the previous owners had put in a french drain system and we thought we were in the clear. Not so; the water was getting into this wall through a leaking foundation and creating an ideal environment for black mold to grow. Awesome. Now, we know that inspectors can’t actually see inside the walls — but we called Raj at that time to see if she had any advice on how to proceed. We just didn’t know what type of contractor to call for this kind of repair. Raj very generously agreed to come out to our house and used a moisture meter to quickly discover the extent of the problem and recommended a few contractors we could call. Wait wait wait, what? Did I say she in about 30 seconds used a little machine to discover that one of our walls was completely full of water? She did indeed. Why she did not do this while we were paying for her to inspect our house I will never understand. So, the upshot: we are now close to the end of an unexpected $ 10k, 2 month foundation resealing project that involved, among other things, a backhoe in our yard, a brand new basement kitchen, and a great deal of stress we were not expecting while moving into a new house with a four month old infant. Knowledgeable friends have since told us that they don’t know how she could have missed this. She told us that she believed that the visibly crumbling cement block foundation that was visible in the backyard was a façade; we now know that was the actual foundation. I really, really, really want to love Raj because we really learned a lot from her while she was here and she was exceedingly professional. Unfortunately, because of our experience I wouldn’t recommend using her for your inspection.

Raj is awesome. She was very thorough and honest in her inspection. She was happy to walk through the house with me after she was done and explain all the things that needed fixing and things that I might need to fix down the road. She also showed me key things like where to turn of the natural gas, electricity and water.