All Commercial Building Inspections Are Not Created Equal

Careful real estate investors get a Commercial Building Inspection or Property Condition Report prior to buying a commercial asset. There are multiple grades of commercial building inspections and there are a lot of different types of professionals performing theses services, all of which are appropriate for one situation or another.

A few of the classes of professionals that perform commercial building inspections are:

1) Due Diligence Firms. These firms usually call their commercial building inspections Property Condition Assessments or Property Condition Reports. My firm Partner Engineering and Science, Inc. is included in this group. The better of the due diligence firms employ registered engineers and architects and have a specific engineering inspection practice. I am not saying that the best inspectors are necessarily engineers or architects; rather that quality inspectors can work under the responsible charge of an engineer or an architect very effectively.

2) Home inspectors who do commercial too. This group varies widely in my opinion. Some are very good no doubt.

3) Architectural firms. Architects know buildings and building codes well. They are a very good choice when you are planning to do a major renovation after purchasing the building.

4) Structural engineering firms. Structural engineers tend to focus on structural issues as opposed to all building systems, but there are no doubt plenty of structural engineers with broad building systems knowledge.

5) General Contractors. GCs generally know buildings well too. Contractors also run the gamut from very good to less so. A general contractor is great at providing cost data for a renovation, and GCs tend to be a practical group A GC generally does not want to produce a long narrative report.

As my firm is an engineering due diligence firm, I would recommend the first choice; however, I have seen all five of these types of commercial building inspectors yield high quality work. I have also seen due diligence firms, especially firms that are really environmental firms trying to add this service to their offerings, produce really low quality work.

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All Commercial Building Inspections Are Not Created Equal