Reinspection Fees

Cass

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How many reinspection attempts does your municipality allow on a residential building without charging another fee? We only get one opportunity to make corrections before we have to pay another inspection fee. That's always seemed stingy to me, because sometimes the building inspector misses issues, or simply fails to note them on the form, during the first inspection.
 
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We charge a reinspection fee after 3 inspections if it is obvious the contractor is not making any attempt to fix the issue.
 
We allow up to two re-inspections. After that, we reserve the right to charge a re-inspection fee at our discretion.

I work for Kane County in Utah, which spans over 2,000 square miles. The county is very sparsely populated and is served by only two inspectors, which means we cover a lot of ground. A single inspection can require up to a 200-mile round trip.

When we travel that distance for a re-inspection and find that no effort has been made to correct the original issue, it becomes a significant waste of time and resources. As Jeff mentioned earlier, if a contractor isn’t making a genuine effort to resolve the problem and we’re repeatedly sent out only to find that nothing has changed, we will charge a re-inspection fee.
 
In New Jersey we do not have a fee for Re-inspections. The permit fee covers all inspections, no matter how many there is.
 
If work is not ready for inspection when the inspector arrives, we charge a reinspection fee. If work fails twice for the same reason, we also charge a fee. The fee is doubled if the inspection fails a third time for the same reason.
 
We generally can charge after the second inspection. However, if they are genuinely trying or got it partially correct, we will do a partial with the correction needing a third inspection. If they still get it wrong, the reinspection fees begin. We are a small community, and we can usually get anywhere in town within 15-20 minutes, and other inspections are close enough to swing by to do a reinspection. I totally understand the county inspectors who travel long distances. We shouldn't treat everyone the same; instead, we should examine each circumstance and its impact on our community and budget. After all, (how would you want to be treated?), we are public servants who get paid by our community.
 
In my municipality, we charge a fee for every missed inspection/ re-inspection as we are very adherent to schedules
 
My inspector will have me charge on the third re-inspection. Our fee is $130.
 
Once that particular inspecton fails 2x we require a $40 fee prior to going out for another inspection.
 
I am late to the party. However, we have set a program up for reinspection fees for our tract home builders and occasionally a custom home builder. With homeowners it is a matter of educating them and we do not do it on commercial builders.

The inspector goes to the job site, and it is not ready at this time he normally incompletes the inspection with notes not ready AND a picture of what is not ready. - this helps when contractor calls the front counter my team can look at the picture and share that with them if need be. Builder reschedules for the next day. Still not ready - we hit them with an $85.00 re-inspection fee - then the next day they call it in again. Still not ready they get a 3-day hold and a $170.00 re-inspection fee. We programed it so Etrakit puts an automatic hold on the permit they cannot get inspections for 3 business days. By noon on the third business day, they can log in and pay their fees, and the permit is released by 5pm that night.

We do Fee Roofers for calling and they are not ready especially if they say they need an AM inspection for Mid and the inspector shows up, and the roof is not even torn off they will get a reinspection fee. We do not put holds on roofing permits. Most of the time they are calling and saying they were ready and all the inspector did was drive by and mark it as incomplete. That is when the pictures are super handy. They then usually pay a same day inspection fee or $125.00 plus the $85.00 reinspection fee and we go back out that same day usually at the end of the day or when the inspector is finished with his/her other inspections.
 
How many reinspection attempts does your municipality allow on a residential building without charging another fee? We only get one opportunity to make corrections before we have to pay another inspection fee. That's always seemed stingy to me, because sometimes the building inspector misses issues, or simply fails to note them on the form, during the first inspection.
We allow only one for the same issue. Then they get charged a reinspection fee. But if it is a new issue then we would allow for another inspection with no charge. We haven't run into the issue of the owner not knowing what they needed to get fixed before requesting another inspection.
 
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