Home Inspectors Share The Strangest And Least Safe Things They Come Across

Updated September 8, 2021

For the last 25 years, James Brock has conducted home inspections in the Boston area through his firm, Boston Home Inspectors.

It's a pretty straightforward name but as Brock told The Boston Globe, he tries to ensure that the business itself sees a new innovation every year. This usually involves getting new uniforms or improving customer reports, but the biggest idea to raise the firm's profile came from his kids in 2016: start an Instagram account to attract new clients.

Although he was hesitant at first, he soon found that finding material for this page was pretty easy as he comes across strange and ill-advised features in the homes he inspects all the time. And while Brock has gained new customers as a result of his posts, many of his 15,000 followers are just curious to see what oddities he comes across.

And as we're about to see, there is really no shortage of bizarre design decisions that reveal themselves during these inspections.

While a lot of Brock's finds are the result of someone's MacGyver-like repair job, some of them don't even make that much sense.

For instance, here we have a random bottle of...let's say "aged" chili sauce just hanging out in this fan.

And judging by a comment from the house's owner, they were just as surprised to see it as Brock was. I guess we'll never know why it was there.

You don't have to know much about making footing for a foundation to recognize that this isn't how you're supposed to do it.

Some commenters referred to this as the infinity footing, while Brock described the job with the caption, "Pour twice...measure once!"

Based on the number of facepalm emojis he added after that, I'm guessing that wasn't serious advice.

It's almost hard to recognize but this is supposed to be a deck.

It's like they tried to recreate an M.C. Escher painting with this one and it's probably about as easy to navigate as his famously impossible staircases.

Why did they just keep going up?

I don't know about you but I'd be pretty nervous about stepping onto this porch.

It seems like Brock barely needed to start his inspection before it became clear that he'd have to watch his step around this place.

I can already imagine the unsettling creaking sounds.

If it's not clear exactly what's wrong with this picture, Brock's caption should do a lot to fill you in.

In another sarcastic jab, he said, "Painting over the termites makes them go away."

Well, now I know what to look for when I'm giving a new place the once-over. No wonder so many people follow this account.

Oh yeah, that'll hold for sure.

Again, you wouldn't think that somebody would need a home inspector to tell them that this idea's not going to work out but here we are.

Maybe people don't go up to the roof that often.

Brock didn't have much to say about this basement but there was one little feature here that caught his interest.

And unless you're a big wine or cycling enthusiast, it should be pretty easy to see what it was.

Still, this is probably the least weird thing we've seen so far. After all, you have to put your Halloween decorations somewhere when it's all over.

From the looks of it, somebody tried to make a shortcut in their house and wasn't as successful as they may have thought.

Sure, they technically got it to work and they even thought to add some padding to prevent slipping.

But at the same time, there's only so much you can do with an angle that awkward. All the padding in the world doesn't mean much if you're trying to make your ankle go in a direction it doesn't want to.

Oh wow, I wonder how Brock was able to see through such a seamless shimming job.

It's not just the fact that someone tried to use random big rocks that makes this hilarious, but rather the fact that they thought people wouldn't notice if they painted them white.

Brock referred to this as a "Jenga support column" and I don't think there's a better way to describe it.

I honestly think I'd be less nervous if the house I moved into came with a live tiger than if I moved into this place.

Granted, there's a slim chance that the tiger would be friendly and not immediately try to eat me, but those odds are still better than the probability of this staying standing a month from now.

I imagine it's hard not to feel like you've seen everything when you've been doing this for as long as Brock has, but this was still a new one on him.

As he said in a reply to a comment, "I have never seen water temp this high...not safe."

I couldn't tell you how this house's water go so hot but this picture definitely illustrates how thorough Brock is when he conducts these home inspections.

Filed Under: