Let’s say you are purchasing a house, and you have the home inspected. The home inspector notices some foundation settlement and recommends you get an engineer to look at it. At this point, you might wonder, how much should you pay for an engineer’s evaluation? How much is that going to cost you? If you call around, your are going to find a wide range of fees. Around here in Atlanta, some of the fees for an “engineer” to come out and look at the house are very low. Some are fairly high. Spoiler alert – we’re not cheap. I’ll get into that further on in the post.
First off, let’s look at what you want if you are getting an engineer to look at the house you are purchasing. Obviously, you want an engineer. A lot of firms will send out a “technician” to look at your house. This might be someone experienced in construction, a new graduate engineer, or someone’s brother-in-law that is between jobs. So, you get a wide range of possible knowledge, or lack of knowledge. A lot of the firms around us that use the “technicians” have these guys on 1099’s. They typically split the money between the “technician” and the firm. They’ll generate some sort of boiler plate report that typically starts with “A representative of XYZ engineering…” and makes some sort of statement of the problem. An engineer will stamp the report, and maybe the engineer read the report, or maybe they didn’t.
Your are making a very large purchase that will affect your finances for years to come, do you really want to save a few hundred dollars on this report? What you want is to have the structure examined by a licensed Professional Engineer, or better yet, a licensed Structural Engineer. You want a person with experience in this business and this type of work. So, when you call around, ask a few questions:
- Who will actually do the inspection? Is it going to be a licensed engineer, or a technician. If it’s a technician, stop here and go to the next firm.
- What does the firm include with the inspection? Will the firm issue a written report? Will the firm give a recommendation for repair? To be fair, the case occurs where the house has significant problems, which will require design work above and beyond what the report says. The engineer should clearly state this.
- What is the turn around? You don’t want to be sweating your Due Diligence period.
- Read the Google reviews. Some of my competitors here in Atlanta have awful reviews. Unfortunately, you can’t please everyone, so one bad review out of many is not an issue. Look at a pattern. Does the person generate reports in a timely manner? Are they professional? Do they seem to know what they are talking about?
Why can it be so expensive for an engineer to come out? The issue is time. Around here in the Atlanta area, it takes at least an hour in heavy traffic to get anywhere. So, we lose often 2 – 4 hours in just travel time itself. It always takes at least an hour on site. So, a simple inspection can eat up 5 hours in field time before we even write the repot. Add another hour or two to write a report. A good report is more than just one page stating the problems, and will often include photos or drawings to illustrate what we are talking about.
This adds time. The time we spend out in the field makes it hard to function when we get back to the office. After you spend 4 hours or so going out in traffic to look at a house, it’s hard to get back to the office and be fully productive. We’ve tried dedicating days of the week for “field days”, but that hasn’t worked. We run into the Due Diiigence period, or the geography of the Atlanta area working against us. I suspect it’s much the same with other large metro areas in the US.
How much should you pay? That depends on the area. The rates will vary, so I can’t give a figure. I can tell you how much is too low. If the engineer quotes you $300 to $400, that’s not enough and something is wrong. You aren’t getting a bargain. Generally small engineering firms do this type of work, the big firms are too bureaucratic to make a go at this. The overhead factor for a small firm is about 2.8. That means the hourly rate they have to charge has to be 2.8 times the employee’s hourly rate to make any kind of profit.
If they are paying someone “on a 1099” they can be cheaper, but they aren’t providing health insurance, disability insurance, or any other benefits. They usually are also paying a low rate when you figure in the person has to pay the employer’s share of social security, and often times their own workman’s comp too. You aren’t going to get the most high quality person for that kind of deal. Again, do you want to have that person going over what can be the most expensive investment you will be making in your life?
To do a bit of shameless promotion, if you are in the Atlanta area, and you choose us to look at the house you are purchasing, you get me, George (Bill) Runkle, looking at it. I have 45 years experience as an engineer with 25 years of that in the residential area. I’ve been doing structural condition assessments of residences since 2002. I have a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Maryand, and a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from Columbia University, New York. I also have a license as a Professional Engineer, and a Structural Engineer. As I said in the beginning, we’re not cheap, but you get what you pay for.
