The Five Questions
Ask these of any inspector working Cocoa Beach, including us. They are the difference between a four-hour inspection and a ninety-minute one, and no amount of star ratings will tell you which you are buying.
- Do you remove the panel dead front?
- Do you enter the attic or view it from the hatch?
- Do you walk the roof, and what do you do when you cannot?
- Do you carry thermal imaging, and do you confirm it with a moisture meter?
- How does your report record areas you could not access?
The last one matters most and gets asked least. A report that simply omits the attic reads exactly like a report on a sound attic. If nobody writes down what they could not reach, you have no way of telling the difference, and on an island property the inaccessible bits are often where the corrosion is.
Our Answers
The dead front comes off on every inspection. The attic gets entered wherever it can be safely reached. The roof gets walked where the pitch and covering allow, and the report states the method used on each slope rather than leaving you to assume. Thermal imaging is carried on every job and nothing is called a moisture problem on a thermal image alone. Anything inaccessible is recorded as not accessed, with the reason.
Credentials, and What They Actually Cover
Florida licenses home inspectors, which means training, examination and insurance. It is a real filter and you should not hire anyone without it.
What to Verify
The license number, which you can check rather than accept. Liability and errors-and-omissions insurance. InterNACHI certification, which adds continuing education and a published standard of practice on top of the state requirement. SureHome works under FL License #HI 11755 and every inspection is performed by a licensed, InterNACHI-certified inspector.
Where the License Stops
It does not distinguish between two licensed inspectors who spend very different amounts of time in the same house. Both are licensed. Both carry insurance. Only one of them took the panel cover off. The license is where you start narrowing the field, not where you finish.
Cocoa Beach Experience Is a Real Variable
More of this market is condominiums and former rentals than anywhere else on the Brevard barrier island, and both need an inspector who has done them before.
Knowing Where Ownership Ends
In a condo you own the interior and the systems serving your unit. The shell, the roof, the corridors and usually the exterior glazing belong to the association. An inspector who does not draw that line clearly either wastes your money reporting on things you cannot control, or leaves you thinking the building was assessed when it was not. The right answer includes telling you to go and read the reserve study.
Knowing What Salt and Turnover Do
Corrosion concentrates in a predictable set of places here: the condenser coil, the panel bus bar, exposed roof and soffit fasteners, garage door springs, slider hardware. Rental wear concentrates in another: rollers, cartridges, fill valves, hinges, seals. An inspector working a generic checklist finds neither reliably, because neither is dramatic enough to notice unless you are looking.
Reading Reviews Without Being Misled
Inspection reviews are unusually easy to fake and unusually hard to judge, because most people hire exactly one inspector in their life and have nothing to compare against.
What a Real One Looks Like
It contains something only that customer could know. The type of property, the finding, the timing. "Found a corroded bus bar in a 1970s oceanfront unit and explained what it meant for our insurance" is an experience. "Professional, thorough, highly recommend" is a sentence anyone could write about anyone.
Read the three and four star reviews first. They usually come from someone broadly satisfied with one specific complaint, and that complaint is where the business actually strains.
Patterns Worth Distrusting
A cluster of five-star reviews posted within days of each other. Identical phrasing across several. A flawless average across dozens, which real businesses do not have. Testimonials published only on the company's own website with no platform behind them. And any firm offering a discount in exchange for a review, which tells you exactly what its rating measures.
What We Do Not Do
We do not pay agents for referrals. We do not perform repairs on properties we inspect, so no finding in our report is a quote for our own work. We do not offer discounts, gifts or entries in exchange for reviews, and we do not write them. That policy costs us reviews, and it is why the ones that exist are worth reading.
Get a figure from the rates page or the Cocoa Beach cost page, see the full scope on the checklist, or go back to the Cocoa Beach overview.