One insurance field services firm (not a SOFI member) is offering exterior residential insurance inspections at a very “TINY” fee of $7.00. This is significantly below the market fee for such inspections. They add lipstick to the pig by suggesting that field service inspectors can complete 30-40 of these inspections in a day. These inspections are a lot of work what with creating electronic house exterior footprint drawings, photos and a detailed report.
Morning rush hour doesn’t end until about 9 AM and starts again at 4PM. It gets dark in the winter at 5 PM. That computes to about maybe 7 hours (or less) of practical daylight and performing about 4-6 inspections every hour. Expect to devote many hours in the evening with the inspection reporting and management. If the report management takes 5 minutes for each of the 40 reports, the time spent in the evening managing and finalizing 40 reports would require over 3 hours of time. If you are slow and spend 10 minutes on each report, you are talking about expending 6+ hours in the evening with report management.
Take the “self test”. First, leave your house and drive around for a bit. What do you estimate as the minutes between jobs in your area … 5 minutes … 10 minutes … 30 minutes? Return home. Walk around your home. Take photos, describe the structure, measure the structure, create a drawing of the exterior footprint. How many of these inspections can you perform in a day? How much time will it require for after inspection reporting and management? What were all of your expenses to complete the job … gasoline will be a big expense? What will be your “per hour” profit? Be honest! How much do you think these inspections should pay?
If it oinks like a pig, it is a pig no matter how much lipstick is applied. Use some common sense and always do the mathematics BEFORE you accept any jobs. The study of numbers (mathematics) is very important in determining the decisions you make and the success of your business.
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