Since we added the home inspection category to our annual Best of Arkansas poll in 2021, Little Rock’s Blackbird Home Inspections has come out on top every year. What sets them apart from the rest of the competition? There are a lot of reasons, but I’d guess the biggest one is the fact that owner and McCrory native Eric Young doesn’t think of his services as a one-time transaction.
“The more communication that we can have between us and the buyer of the home, the better,” he said. “I tell them that I want them to call me a million times after they receive the report. But even more than that, as they continue to live in that house, [I tell them] to continue to call me if they have questions. I’ve got a guy that I’m stopping by to see this afternoon who bought a house two and a half years ago.”
Young, 44, doesn’t charge extra for that sustained attention either. In fact, affordability is the main reason he got into this line of work in the first place. Young started Blackbird in 2017 and has nearly 6,000 inspections under his belt, but he’s been in the business of buying, renovating and selling houses for more than 20 years (he estimates that he’s flipped about 120 houses in total), a venture that intimately acquainted him with just how expensive it can be to get a home inspection.Â
“I thought that what was being charged of people was really too much,” Young said. “[Inspectors] were making in a few hours what it would take some people a week to make. … Buying a house is expensive in and of itself. So a lot of people were either passing up on a home inspection or it was financially difficult for them to pay for the home inspection plus everything else that goes along with buying a house.”
Young’s renovation work makes him a strong judge of character when it comes to houses that aren’t exactly what they purport to be. “It’s got to have a solid foundation, it’s got to have solid electrical, it’s got to have solid HVAC, it’s got to have solid plumbing. And then you add the cosmetic stuff,” he said. “So many flippers come in and throw that cosmetic stuff on and skip all the rest of it.”
He sees a lot of houses that look good on the surface but have serious underlying issues. “It’s probably on a weekly basis where I’ll go into a house and it’s been painted and new carpets have been done, but there’s standing water underneath the house and the floor joists have become rotted out,” he said. “The pillars are in poor shape and the foundation is giving way because there’s just no support.” Depending on the severity of the situation, a discovery of that kind could eventually cost a buyer anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $100,000, Young said.
Still, it’s important to Young to give homebuyers agency regarding whether or not they ultimately choose to purchase a property. It’s a tricky line to toe, given how emotionally fraught the process can be. “I don’t want people to make a decision because they’re scared. But I do want people to make a decision because they’ve been well-informed,” he said. “I never recommend somebody buy a house or don’t buy a house — and I try not to know what they’re paying for a house, either.”
If home inspection sounds to you like the cushy job of someone who saunters around bestowing judgment without getting their hands dirty, think again. More than one time, Young has had a snake slither underneath him while shimmying on his stomach in a tight crawl space.Â
“[This work] really is taxing on the body,” Young said. “During the summertime … attics will exceed 180 degrees, so it doesn’t take long for you to be dehydrated. In fact, if you take your iPad up in one … it won’t stay on for more than 15 or 20 seconds before it shuts off due to the heat.”
He’s also seen his fair share of accidents, including multiple ladder mishaps. Once, a ladder fell while he was entering an attic and “the scuttle hole collapsed” on his fingers, breaking three of them and flaying “the top of them off.”
No matter how dangerous and uncomfortable the work can be, Young finds that the satisfaction of being able to help people outweighs the drawbacks. “It’s just the way I was raised.”
Reflecting on a recent inspection, he said a client shared his report with a friend who’s a home inspector in another state. “He came back and said it was the most detailed report he has ever seen in his life come from a home inspector. It’s things like that — to hear that you did a really good job for him — that’s the reward.”