Atlanta Home Inspection-certified member ICC,

An 11Alive News investigation into some building inspection records from several Metro Atlanta counties raised some questions about the depth of the inspections and whether the inspectors are being overworked.

Georgia is one of the few states in the country where home builders are not licensed, although agents,inspectors,and appraisor have to be.The legislature is in the process of addressing that issue, which makes home inspections even more important.

In one of the counties included in the investigation, 11Alive News found records of building inspectors conducting more than 80 to 90 inspections in one day. One day in July, one of the inspectors reported 101 inspections at 28 different homes.

His supervisors said that roughly a third of those were quick re-inspections to make sure problems that failed previous inspections had been fixed. But records show many of those 101 inspections were more involved.

Don Jascomb of the Department for Planning and Development in Gwinnett County said the inspectors were meeting standards set by the International Code Conference (ICC). The 11Alive News investigation, however, suggests otherwise.

For example, the standards recommend 45 minutes for a final inspection on a new home which includes the final check on the structure, the plumbing, electricity, and heating.

But when one the inspectors followed by 11Alive News during the investigation – the same inspector who reported 101 inspections in one day – he spent 10 minutes or less on several final inspections.

Meanwhile, in Cobb County, records show one inspector had a day of 52 inspections and averaged about five-and-a-half minutes per inspection the entire month. His supervisor called him an experienced employee and said his expertise allowed for such short inspections.

"If it were somebody other than Tim, he might be rushing himself, but with his experience and with the checklist we're trying to use with all our folks, he was probably okay in doing it in five minutes,” said Rob Hosack of Cobb Community Development.

Phil Bennett has no way of knowing how much time inspectors spent checking out HIS Cobb County home. He does know that after he moved in -- and after Cobb building inspectors had approved the house -- an independent engineer found more than two dozen code violations that included leaks in the basement and untreated wood against a foundation wall.

Cobb County forced the builder to fix the problems.

Mark Cordel, a building inspector in Fulton County, said a reasonable number of inspections in a day was about an average of 15.

Most Fulton County inspectors do conduct around fifteen building inspections a day, according to county records, but to help with the workload, Fulton also uses independent inspectors who are not county employees. The 11Alive News investigation found those inspectors doing as many as 70 building inspections in one day.

Why don’t the counties hire more inspectors?

Most of the time, it's a cost issue. However, DeKalb County was hit with a mountain of complaints several years ago. So they did hire more inspectors. Their inspectors now average less than 20 home inspections a day and the complaints have almost disappeared.

Officials with each of the counties insist they get few complaints about the work of their inspectors.

Many interviewed in connection with this story agreed that home owners need to hire their own private building inspector who can spend hours going over the home. That can cost between $300 to $500 do for one inspection.