Carson Dunlop & Associates Home Inspection

Very disappointed with Carson Dunlop. We're first time buyers and purchased an older home this spring. Carson Dunlop was referred to us by our real estate agent. We asked Gordon to be particularly attentive to basement moisture issues during the inspection. He spent relatively little time addressing this, and touched his moisture detector against the vapour barrier (which doesn't make sense - we later learned that the only way you can get at the moisture is to pierce the barrier). He also spent a lot of time chatting with the owner of the house, and both of them kept reassuring us that there were never any issues with leaks in the neighbourhood due to the "sandy soil." Fast forward a couple of months later. Heavy rains have resulted in leaks in our basement. We just had someone come out to inspect the area, and as soon as he pierced the vapour barrier with the prongs of the moisture detector, he found water. When we peeled back the insulation we found significant amounts of mould, loose stone and moisture. We understand that a home inspector will not take apart insulation, but a few extra seconds would have pointed Gordon towards this latent problem with the house. We are also concerned about the potential conflicts of interest between Carson Dunlop and realtors. We asked Gordon to keep the results of our inspection between us, but as soon as he generated the glowing report, he copied it electronically to us AND our realtor. (Our realtor kept stressing this report during the offer process, and we used it as the basis to make what we thought was an informed decision.)

This entire experience makes us feel very deceived, and we are left wondering about: a) how committed our inspector was to finding problems; and b) whether his customer was us, or our realtor.