Windy City Home Inspection, Inc

The inspector was efficient and thorough. The report was helpful and I will easily be able to follow up on suggestions.

Chris did a very good job. He was thorough, very nice, and patiently answered all my questions. He provided me with a written report the same evening and has been willing to answer some additional questions by e-mail since then.

Quick and informative

Fantastic! Professional, thorough, prompt, first-rate. Great explanations too! I highly recommend this company. And Jarrod is really nice, patient, and knowledgable. A++++

I believed it went well. The inspector, Troy, took his time, pointed out any concerns and discussed them with me. He arrived earlier than the appointed time to inspect the outside of the home, saving my time. The report was sent to me that day via a pdf. This is the second time I have used Windy City and would use them again.

It did not go well.  My home was built in 1909, and the fact that the inspector was in and out in just over an hour should have been a clue that he was trying to check off his list as fast as possible, when an old house clearly should require more attention.  I would not use this company, and I would not recommend them to anyone else.

On the plus side, he was relatively pleasant to deal with at the inspection, on time, emailed the home inspection report promptly afterwards. On the down side, he missed a number of basic things that have ended up costing us quite a bit of money to fix, including two major appliances issues (a small fridge completely not working, a busted oven component that has to be replaced) and a leak in the ceiling. When I called him to notify him of these oversights he was fairly dismissive. Would absolutely not use again and would not recommend.

They missed an entire crawl space and a lot of stuff on the inspection and I was not happy.

The inspector went through the house and seemed to the basic stuff and he got up on the roof and looked around and found some small things like a chimney cap that was missing, and a small crack to repair in the chimney. 
However when it came to other things.  My inspector missed the battery backup on my sump pump was dead and wouldnt even run the pump.  A plumber uncle stopped by and was taking a look at some stuff for me and decided to test it and we found the battery was completely dead and the pump wouldn't even run.  My inspector said i had
They didn't really crawl into the crawl space they just shined their flash light around and missed a section of drain tile that was broken in the corner and duct that had been sealed with duct tape and part of the tape had come off.  Luckily I had the ducts cleaned and was able to talk with the people about how to fix it pretty easily myself.  The more i work around my house the more stuff I find they missed  because they really didn't look that close and i have only been in the house two months now.  I would not ever use their services again and I have provided the feedback to my agent who referred me.  I am new homeowner and now I am considering hiring another higher recommended service on Angies List to come help me find all the issues that Windy City did not.   Luckily i have not found anything super major yet that they missed that is going to cost me a lot of money.  I hired a inspector to avoid surprises after I moved in and now I have been finding little surprises here and there.  Really disappointed and thankful I have a handy family to help me deal with the smaller issues not found now.

This guy Jarrod is a total idiot and scam artist. The items he found on
the inspection were all very minor things, and he completely missed
several major issues in our condo.
One week after we moved into
our condo, our dishwasher completely broke. This was the first time we
used it after moving in. All of the plastic pieces literally popped off
the inside and it had to be replaced. Fine. But...
A couple of  weeks later, we noticed that our stacked washer/dryer was leaking. It's
very clear from the rotted linoleum tile floor below that this is an
issue which has been going on for some time. To make matters worse, the
way it was installed in the building by the original developer was not
up to city code whatsoever--the front of our wall in the utility room
actually blocks access to the machine's front panel by four inches,
something that is prohibited in the city of Chicago and elsewhere. He
completely missed the entire thing.
After three different crews have unsuccessfully tried to remove the washer/dryer from the utility
area due to the way it was improperly configured, we need to have a general contractor come in and tear down half the wall and rehab the entire space, including walls, flooring and ceiling.
This guy is a total joke.

Inspector found a small list of minor items with esimated correction value at $1,500.  The actual cost to fix these plus many other items he missed which were since identifioed exceeded $7,000.  Shoddy work - don't use.

Not sure why I needed the inspector to come out, I could have just emailed them my check, basically the inspector's report was useless.

Overall, we were disappointed. 

While Jarod showed up on time and seemed to perform his "inspection" in a timely and efficient manner, I subsequently learned that a bedroom window ... which is the only alternate exit from that room in the event of an emergency, was completely sealed and nailed shut. This was ignored entirely during the inspection and on the report. Speaking of the inspection report, the section that spells out the condition of the skylights was marked "none." There are two skylights in the home. When asked to clarify his answer, Jarod replied "I don't remember seeing any skylights; if I did and there were any issues with them, I would have noted that on the report." How thorough is the inspection if you don't see two giant skylights when you are up on the very small roof? It should also be noted that the crawl space underneath the back deck/porch was completely ignored, both on the initial visit and the requested follow-up visit. I can only guess that it is because it would require the inspector to crawl underneath the deck/porch in order to examine the foundation in that area of the home. I would not use again, nor recommend, this home inspector.

Never, ever use these people!!!!

I hired this company because they were recommended through a friend who had worked with them (they were referred by a broker). When I called to setup the appointment, I asked specifically if they had experience giving inspections on houses that were partially gutted and they said Yes. I worked directly with the owner of the company, Jarrod Spadino, and I was left with much to be desired. First of all, he showed up 20 minutes late. Apparently there was traffic in Chicago on 290 that he did not foresee. In case you are not from Chicago, there is ALWAYS traffic on 290. Once he did show up, he did a quickie inspection that was frequently interrupted by his private Cell phone calls to the contractor that was working on his OWN home. He said there was no point to write down anything he said because everything would be in the report. He sent said report to me literally 45 minutes after he left the house. The report included a total of 14 pictures of random stuff some without captions, most of which were duplicate pictures of the same things (there were only 6 different sets of pictures). He didn't even get pictures of the most important issues like the garage roof that he said needed to be replaced or the water damaged brickwork in the back that caused most issues seen inside. It contained no recommendations of what to fix or what was broke. All it had was a 1 sentence summary that said he recommends that a general contractor come in to evaluate further. Thanks, but that's what I paid you for. $325 dollars spent on a 1 sentence summary that tells me nothing with 25 + pages of internet derived "home improvement tips" that were written by someone else. I called him up and asked him for a more thorough inspection report - so that I could use that as my starting point for talking to contractors. He got defensive and angry that I should question his quality of work because "the house needed repairs in all areas". He was right. It did, but I still wanted something written down. He sent me an updated inspection report a few days later that contained captions for the pictures that he did take (thanks!) as well as a multi-sentence summary at the beginning. I will not be doing business with them again nor recommend them to anyone. This was not what I needed when making the decision to buy a house in as-is condition using cash. Too much risk to go with them.

At the time, I was very happy with the inspection. The inspector was very reasonable and down to earth. I was attempting to purchase a house that was in poor condition for my first gut rehab project. The inspector showed up early, worked the place and gave me a few very good pieces of information that I ended up using. However, I found out just before purchasing that the city inspector had determined this property to have several code violations, many of which were minor. A couple were not. The inspector had indicated that the back deck was old, but sturdy. But, by the city, the back deck of the property was considered "dilapidated", which required me to tear it down and build a new one, which was not one of the costs I was hoping to incur at this junction. When I had the city inspector through, he noted several of the signs that should have been very obvious to anyone that knows this information. For example, someone had sawed a big section of the supporting beam, which was very unsafe. Also, there is a slight vault, which indicates that the deck is sinking and that the footings were incorrectly placed. I feel that the inspector should have known this. Lastly, there were a couple of heating units, which since they had no pilots lit, he was unwilling to check. This seems reasonable. However, I had the gas company come out and there were a couple of flex pipes being used to the house space heaters that I was told must be hard pipe. I think he probably should have noticed this as well. I admit, I had a tougher house than most, however, this was not a cheap inspection service, so I expected a little more. When I contacted the offices, I heard the same thing from everyone I talked to, which was "We don't check against codes, we only check safety", however, the topics I ran into were safety issues and not so much codes.

When purchasing my first home, my Realtor recommended Windy City Home Inspection for my home inspection before closing on the property. After reviewing their Web site and my realtor's assurance Windy City was one of the best in the area, I scheduled an appointment for one of their professionals to come and assess my home. The gentleman that arrived was early, very professional and did a fantastic job. He was helpful, answered questions, and offered tips on how to handle certain problems he found. His report was very thorough and helpful, and emailed to me before he even left the house. His report included color photos, first-time home buyer tips and guides in the back, as well as a wealth of information on the specific things he found and documented within the home he inspected. He did a great job!