Ryan Lepine (of Lepine Home Inspections) examined four properties for me between 2006 and 2019. Two were residential, two commercial and I purchased all four. Ryan is a friendly, highly personable professional and the man just loves delving into the unique details and intricacies that make up each individual home (and, in my case, two small office buildings as well). The breadth and depth of his knowledge of the structure of houses and the various systems inside (heating, cooling, electrical, plumbing, etc.) is truly remarkable. He knows what to look for and, if there are problems, he finds them. He finds wood rot in places that, from a distance, would look perfectly normal to most people. He understands intricate details about proper (and improper) flashing. He’s even a licensed pest inspector. Ryan climbed up on top of each roof of the four buildings he inspected for me and moved around as comfortably as if he were born on one of them. He looks down chimneys. You name it – he tests and/or inspects it. Then he wraps it all up into a highly-detailed report with lots of color photographs illustrating various aspects of the home, with any important issues or problems clearly described in text. His reports are thorough, smart and well-organized. Depending on the circumstances and my strategic position, I have kept some reports private but, at least once, shared one with the property owner. Please consider one thing in advance of your inspection, however. There’s a decent chance you’ve been looking at houses for a while and at last you’ve found the “perfect one” – the one you love. As such, you can’t be blamed for hoping that Ryan is going to come in, fall in love with it too and tell you how perfect everything is. Well, if that’s what you want, bring a friend over instead, because that’s not what you should be hoping for from your inspector and it’s certainly not going to happen with Ryan. No matter how “perfect” your dream house seems to you, there are going to be some problems with it – potentially many. In this regard, at least one of Ryan’s reports was, frankly, kind of depressing. But would you rather know about the problems while you are still in the decision-making stage, or after you move in? In my case, I eventually bought all four properties Ryan inspected. That said, the choice wasn’t always clear and, at least once, I had to do some real soul-searching before finally making the decision to move ahead. In this case, I was certainly disappointed about the problems (more exterior rot and decay than I would have liked). In the end, however, my wife and I were happy to be able to make an informed decision, and we moved ahead with the purchase of our dream home in spite of some very real problems. I should also add that, for how much work he does (both during the inspection and for the reports), I have found Ryan’s fees to be most reasonable (especially relative to the cost of what he is inspecting).