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Join former CBC radio host Mark Connolly as he sits down with real estate insiders to bring you behind-the-scenes perspectives that answer your questions about home ownership.
With topics that matter whether you’re buying, selling, or staying put, this is the place to get the latest market updates for the Edmonton housing market, hear conversations about housing affordability, learn about mortgage options, and so much more.
Join us twice a month for episodes that cover local trends with context you won’t find in the national news, and get actionable insights that give you confidence for your next move.
The RAEdio podcast is presented by the REALTORS® Association of Edmonton.
Welcome to the RAEdio Podcast brought to you by RAE, the Realtors Association of Edmonton. So that's the RAEdio in our radio. We deliver easy to understand market insights, some homeowner tips, perspectives from industry experts so that you can feel informed and empowered wherever you are in your home ownership journey because better decisions start with better information. We are recording live on location at Raycon, Joining us now is Kaylen Como of A Buyer's Choice Home Inspections. Kaylen, welcome.
Mark:Thank you for having me. Thanks for joining us. So give us a little bit of your background. How did you become a home inspector? I kind of
Kaylen:took a different route than some people. I don't have a trade, but at some point about six years ago, seven years ago, I had an opportunity to shadow another inspector. Kind of when I was transitioning from owning businesses to looking for something different, It was my wife's cousin out in Hinton and we after I shadowed him for a period of time, I just kinda fell in love with it, dealing with customers, which I'm account or which I've done in the past, and just being out in the field doing something different. So after we after that shadow period, I decided to pursue it through NAIT and become a certified professional inspector. I mean, would think it
Mark:would be a pretty satisfying job. I mean, people are making the biggest purchase of their lives probably, and you're going through and making sure that everything's squared away, at least letting them know what the issues might be with the house. So that's kinda satisfying, I think.
Kaylen:It is. It's it's can be stressful. We do take our job seriously and try to provide the best information possible. You know, we're in a house for a very short period of time, and we gotta make some pretty big calls on certain systems and Right. Building envelope and everything else and try to give that information to the client in a way that they can understand it and then use that information to whether make improvements or negotiate the deal or whatever.
Kaylen:But our job is just information.
Mark:So walk us through the process though. Do you follow a checklist? Do you know what you're looking for when you go into a house or does it depend on things?
Kaylen:We typically will look at the property beforehand, whether it's the listing or Google views to kind of get an understanding of what we're getting into, especially with some of the more challenging properties, large acreages or commercial buildings. On a general typical home inspection, we do have a template which we follow. We also work in tandems typically, so there's two of us that show up on-site and we divide the house up into different sections. We move through those sections, gathering the information, when we're done we take the client on tour of our findings and provide the information kind of on a, you know, so that they can visually see what we're talking about.
Mark:Right. Yeah. So working as a tandem is a little bit of, you know, I found this, you have a look at it, and you maybe can think about it together and discuss.
Kaylen:Oh, a 100%. Yeah. It's always nice to have, you know, somebody else on-site that can be your backup, I guess. Right? So if you don't understand something or don't or you see something you haven't seen before, typically, the other guy can, get you in there and provide some more insight into that, whatever you're looking at.
Kaylen:It is also nice because we can speed the process up as well. Some of these larger estate homes and acreages, you know, there's still a three or four hour inspection with two guys on, but if you thought if you go into those with one guy, you're in there for full day or even multiple days.
Mark:Right.
Kaylen:So we can speed it up for the agents and the clients as well because, you know, that's a long time to sit around and wait for
Mark:for the information. And I mean, people would be pretty anxious to get the information that you're gonna provide to them, right?
Kaylen:A 100%. And that's why we can typically between the inspections, one person drives, one person works on the reports, editing, compiling. And then before we get to the next inspection, we can push that report out so that the client gets it within usually an hour, an hour and a half after we're Wow. Done the inspection.
Mark:There must be some aspect of being a people person. Like, you know, you've gotta know all the nuts and bolts of a home, so to speak. But also, you gotta be able to communicate to people about how serious something might be or maybe, you know, not serious. This isn't something that's a deal breaker, but maybe this is. Do you find that's part of
Kaylen:it? Again, yeah, you're we had a conversation just previous to this interview here in in water management is is one that we we talk about almost in every single inspection.
Mark:Right. Was telling you about the flood at my son's house.
Kaylen:That's correct. Right? And that's that's people don't take that seriously until it becomes an issue. Right. And we definitely, you know, we try to push that into our summary of the report, which is at the very top so that people understand if you don't make improvements to water management, what the consequences could be.
Kaylen:Right. And that's extremely important. And also just providing the information in a way that the client can understand. Sometimes we're dealing with technical people that have a better understanding of what, you know, certain HVAC systems are, plumbing, and we don't need to get into specifics with that. But you have first time home buyers that are buying a house that have no clue Right.
Kaylen:On one of the biggest purchases they're making, and we try to take the time to walk them through some of the basics and then some of the basics on maintenance as well. Because a lot of times if you get ahead of some of that stuff with general maintenance as a homeowner, it can can save you a lot of money and time and tears.
Mark:Well, of one the things when I got the inspector for my house, which was a long time ago, over thirty years, I kinda used it as a checklist to say, okay, these are the things I really need to get done ASAP and these are the things in the next year or two I really need to get to. Do you prioritize that for people or just sometimes they ask you for that list?
Kaylen:We do. Yeah. So when, we produce our reports, our reports have a summary section which is it's right at the top and that's immediate action. Well. Safety concerns, plumbing leaks, water management.
Kaylen:That being said, it could also just be an expired smoke detector, but it's a safety concern, it's gonna be in the summary of the report. Right. Where the rest of the report is gonna be general knowledge about the house and maintenance lists to check off later on. So focus on the summary. That is like immediate action.
Mark:Well, really, it's a it's a almost like a book about your house. It's like you don't know this house. You haven't lived here. You're just buying it. This gives you kind of a broad view of how the home works in some ways.
Mark:Right?
Kaylen:Exactly. Yeah. So it just gives you some good insights onto where to focus your time and money. Also, we don't know a lot of times what the situation is and what the deal is how it's coming together. Right?
Kaylen:So again, we provide that information and sometimes the house potentially could be just a placeholder for a teardown. And Right. Again, it's nice to know that because we don't need to detail as fine with missing electrical covers and junction boxes and stuff. But a lot of times people come in and you know we have a crumbling foundation and they're gonna paint and redo a bathroom and that's not really where the priority should be right now.
Mark:Are there any common misconceptions that people have about home inspections?
Kaylen:The biggest one we find is, is it a pass or fail? We get asked that every single time and we keep just going back very similar to what we've already talked about. It's just here's the information, use this information to make the best decision for your family. And, you know, if it's if it's gonna be something to you work on right now or something to work on later, at least that information is provided for you.
Mark:Right. And you and you get the idea of what is important also and what is expensive. Like, if you're gonna have to do the foundation, redo this, talking about tens of thousands of dollars when you're talking about a few $100 in another area. And that's where people can make their own judgment of whether this is worth buying and worth taking on those tasks, I would think.
Kaylen:Right? Exactly. If you're gonna live in it or rent it out for a couple years and then tear it down and put an infill in, sure. Right? Yeah.
Kaylen:But again, go in with your eyes open so that, again, you can make that decision.
Mark:Well, thinking back to the many inspections you've done, what might be some of the biggest safety issues that you've come across in inspections?
Kaylen:Oh, man. We've I'm surprised every day when we're out there. There's again, I I I do a lot of rural, so I get to see the seventy, eighty year old farmhouses that have been improved by the occupants over the years.
Mark:Trying to be The DIY. Exactly.
Kaylen:Yeah. And, yes, they work, but are they safe? And a lot of times, they're not. These farm fixes or DYI fixes, you know, they get by. And typically with electrical and some questionable plumbing, I look at a lot of septic systems and there's some crazy stuff there.
Mark:Yeah. Well, electrical, I mean, comes to mind as something that could be very dangerous from a fire point of view or something like that.
Kaylen:Right? Oh, yeah. There's, you know, open spaces, live wires. A lot of times when a hot tub's removed, is that breaker turned off or is the wire just laying in the backyard for kids or is it pushed under the deck or Right. Stuff like that we come across all the time as well.
Mark:What problem identified during inspections might be more common than people think?
Kaylen:I wanna say 99 out of a 100 houses will talk about an out of catch. Out of catches are typically poorly insulated, poorly sealed, and, they just don't do their job because the way the house is constructed, a lot of times the insulators will come in and do the insulation and then you have the mill workers that come and do all the lovely trim work and make everything look pretty. They don't leave insulation for that add a catch, so there's multiple times we see you know add a catches with no weather stripping, no insulation, and that that's it's an easy fix, but it's something that, you know, needs to be done. When you pressurize a hose in the wintertime and you push plus 25 air into that attic space that has moisture, it's gonna condense. It's gonna cause frost and potential for attic rain and other issues.
Kaylen:So everyone check your attic catches because
Mark:Sounds like attic rain is not a good thing.
Kaylen:Attic rain is not a good thing.
Mark:No. Definitely not. Well, you know, I I heard I heard a story of a friend. They're buying actually a new home, and they had the inspection done. And, one of the drains from one of the baths was not connected to anything.
Mark:And it's like, you think, how does that happen? How do you know, you wonder what happened, but it does happen. Right? Things people get missed.
Kaylen:Unfortunately, we had two in one week. Wow. And this might have been one of your friends. I don't know, but we it's a brand new house, and we my partner was upstairs filling the bathtub. It was a jetted tub.
Kaylen:I was in the basement, unfinished basement, and I heard water pouring behind Oh, no.
Mark:So I
Kaylen:went running upstairs and I get up to the kitchen level and there is water pouring through the pot lights onto the island. Oh, goodness. And then the jetted tub, we found out later was not hooked up. So we filled the tub, turned the jets on, all that water got pulled out and dumped. And then the buyers walk in right in the midst of this.
Kaylen:So Wow. The the builders took care of it, and obviously, it was a it was a one time
Mark:Right.
Kaylen:Catastrophic leak. They dealt with it, and I think the deal proceeded. But let's, if you happen to move into that house and let's say you spent all weekend moving and you poured that bath and you got into that bathtub and fired it up for the first time and you didn't have a home inspection. Woah. Yeah.
Kaylen:Could have been that.
Mark:Pretty bad about that. Yeah. I mean, that's why I've often when I've got into houses, I'm even walking around. If I'm just looking you know, I was helping my son, like, buy a house a couple years ago. I just turned on all the taps at different times.
Mark:I flushed every toilet. Yeah. Just these these basic things that that could be something wrong with them and water in a house is the enemy. Right? It is.
Kaylen:Yeah. And that's what we found out this year. Yeah.
Mark:Yes.
Kaylen:How much water did we have in basements with failed sump pumps and poor water management and grading and all that other stuff. So water can stress a house out to the point where it does significant structural damage, and it's very important to manage that water from the outside starting with the roof. Easter off, downspoots, leaders push that water as far away from the foundation as you can, especially on an older house.
Mark:Right.
Kaylen:Over the years, you know, your neighbors sometimes build up that grade so it's not flowing where it's supposed to go and it's coming back towards your house and heavy soil puts a lot of pressure on that foundation. And then you come up with other issues, you have efflorescence which is moisture moving through concrete, depositing minerals, you get heating, you get lots of things. So it's very important to manage that as best as possible.
Mark:Well REALTORS I think really know the value of a home inspection for sure. Think most of ones I've talked to about this have really pointed that out. And there's a few things that they wanted me to bring up. One is what's the deal with poly B piping in What do home buyers and sellers need to know? So maybe explain what that is.
Kaylen:Yeah. So poly b was a waterline, plastic waterline that was used in the mid nineties. It's identified by a gray color and then on there there's a stamp that usually says PB 2,110. There was some failures and insurance companies now take exception to this. So the first thing we would do if we saw it is we would make sure that the client knows it goes in the summary of the report.
Kaylen:Even if it's performing, you still need to disclose that to your insurance companies to make sure you're protected and you have the right insurance in place. Other than that, know, if it's performing, our job isn't to see the future. Job is to give that information and, you know, guide the the clients in a way that makes them understand what the consequence could be. Right. We don't get too excited about it, especially if there's not major splices and we don't see any active or current leaks, but it is something that you need to know.
Kaylen:Because a lot of times it is harder to sell a house with PolyV because there's so much information out there and it's typically not the good information. Right?
Mark:Well, yeah, and information in this case is power for the homeowner. What about aluminum wiring? Is that still a big concern?
Kaylen:Oh, You see it all the time. Typical, you know, early to mid sixties or seventies houses. It was used because copper was expensive and the issue with it is that it expands and contracts more and it becomes brittle as time goes on, so especially in a mechanical switch where you're turning that on and off, on and off, you know, day in day out, it has the chance to break and then arc out inside the box and then cause the fire. So insurance companies do like to have a process called pigtailing, which is adding copper to the existing aluminum. You don't need to rip it all out.
Kaylen:Mhmm. You add copper to the existing aluminum within the fixtures, so receptacles, switches and any of the lights. And it provides essentially a new connection that's more reliable and that's how the insurance companies want to see it moving forward. So Alright. We still see, you know, a good amount of houses, especially condos that were built in that time frame that haven't been upgraded yet.
Kaylen:Again, we just we do a small spot check and see if it has been pigtailed and if it has, usually there's some documentation that goes along with it that the insurance company wants to see.
Mark:Are there any other problematic building materials that people should know about?
Kaylen:We get asked about, you know, hazardous materials all the time, so asbestos, lead paint, etcetera. Right. And again, anything built really before 1985 has potential, so go in with your eyes open. If you don't wanna have anything with potential asbestos, you might need to look at after that date. It was outlawed in 1976, but some stuff trickled through and is was used after the fact.
Kaylen:So just be careful going with your eyes open. If we see something like that, we will identify the material and let the client know that, you know, this has potential. We don't do any testing because that's an invasive test that you need Speaking to bring a specialist in
Mark:of trickling in, let's go back to water. A lot of people have had issues with water this year and we, you know, grading is a big part of that. Where is your grading? But part of it is also how old your basement might be. Are there any non permanent or even wood basements that you sometimes come across or even even cement basements that were built at a time that doesn't have the same standards.
Mark:How do you judge those things and and what kind of feedback do you give to people on it?
Kaylen:Really, it comes down to performance. How is it performing? And and I always use this year and when we see a wood foundation or a brick foundation or even an old foundation after this summer, if it's performing and there's no water in the basement, there's a pretty good chance to You're you're not gonna get water in your basement. Right? Yeah.
Kaylen:But there's still steps we can take to manage that from the outside. So with wood foundations, they have the longevity of concrete foundation if it is installed correctly and if the water is managed correctly. They will last a very long time, but if you dump water on anything, it's just gonna deteriorate, so water is the enemy to houses. Really, again, I wanna say most houses over 50% have some grading issues whether it's under the deck or around the outside, and it's really important to to get that water away.
Mark:I mean, we had a renovation ten years ago on our front and backyard, and, you know, they did a great job in improving the grading. But even now, noticed, oh, I think I need to throw a little bit more against my basement wall. It's gonna deteriorate over years. Right? You you need to be on top of that.
Kaylen:You get settlements, especially with the clay based soils we have in the Edmonton area here. You know, when they backfill, that clay stays in large chunks and then doesn't you know, when it finally breaks down, it leaves big voids and you get settlement against foundations. So it's really important to, you know, monitor your grading even on a brand new house all the way to an old house and stay on top of it. Mhmm. Don't use, we always like to choke, waterproof mulch or waterproof rocks because that just per it lets up the water go right through it.
Kaylen:Right? Yeah. So use something that you can compact and sculpt to drain that water away or direct the water away, and then you can put your nice landscaping materials back on top of it. Yeah. So really comes down to just really monitoring and, you know, take the time.
Kaylen:You know, it's it's it clay is relatively cheap if you can get your hands on it, and that's the product we like to recommend.
Mark:What are the most common deal breaker issues that arise in a home inspection where people decide, you know what, I'm just not gonna go forward with it?
Kaylen:Really, it's case by case. I don't think there's a one off. I know sometimes, you know, like asbestos. You know, if someone just it wasn't aware and they were going into a house and as soon as we mention the word, can see that it's done. And unfortunately, it's just the age of the house and its characteristic of the house.
Kaylen:Nothing you can really do even if it is safe. It it it's it's there. The other one is water in the basement mold, which we see again quite often. We do see, you know, water intrusion over time, especially in a back storage room that gotten some materials wet at some point and we do have some old growth. So it's hard to determine how far and how big of an extent it has gone to, but we will direct at least to that area and make sure it's currently either dry or currently wet.
Kaylen:Mhmm. And then from there, further investigation is typically required based on the comfortability of, you know, the homeowner taking on the project. Right. Foundation cracks, we see in almost every house, new or old. Vertical hairline cracks, very normal.
Kaylen:Yep. Again, anything with a crack in it, if you dump water on it, it's probably gonna leak. Yep. Let's direct that water away. Horizontal cracks become a little more serious, that's more of a structural concern.
Kaylen:So really, you know, if you have visibility, really have a good look at that when you're doing your walk through, have a really good look at the foundation. A lot of times we come into the back storage room and I keep going back to that storage room because no one ever that's not the prettiest part of the house. No one wants to look at that. But that's it tells you a lot what's going on with that with that foundation. So have a really good look in those storage rooms for for cracks.
Kaylen:We've we've of That's the last place we usually inspect, and you walk in and you have a horizontal crack and now it more of a conversation with the agent and potential deal breaker, right?
Mark:Yeah, for sure. So Kaylen, is there anything I haven't asked you about that you think is important people know about home inspections?
Kaylen:Oh, top of my head. I don't I can't think of anything else. I'm asking some great questions here.
Mark:You've covered a lot of it? Yeah. No problem. We always like to wrap up with this question for all our guests. It's gonna be a bit of a question I'm springing on you.
Mark:But think about your own house and home and where you live and to you personally, what makes a house a home?
Kaylen:The people within it. Yeah. Yep. You know, you have good family and good friends, and that's what makes the home home.
Mark:Excellent. Good answer, Kaylen. Thanks for doing this. We really appreciate it, and wish you the best of luck.
Kaylen:Thank you very much.