When buying houses, I've really only hired them because I don't want to get on a roof myself if I don't have to :-) Or crawl around in an attic, for that matter

When buying houses, I've really only hired them because I don't want to get on a roof myself if I don't have to :-) Or crawl around in an attic, for that matter. Most folks are pretty bad at spotting problems with houses, because they simply don't know what to look for (and why would they? It's hard to know everything), so an inspector's probably a good idea. Me, I spend the entire time at an AirBnB distracted by noticing every single place work wasn't done quite right, every cut corner or lazy shortcut, every interesting (or "interesting") material choice, "oh, looks like they replaced this shower insert but didn't want to fully redo the drywall so took the lazy route and added trim", "uh oh, this tile shower floor has serious drainage problems", "interesting, this doorway must have been added", et c., but most people aren't like that.