WDI inspections for real estate

If you are buying, selling or lending on a property in this region and somebody has asked for a termite inspection, what they need is the Texas Official Wood Destroying Insect Report, form SPCS/T-5.

Two things are worth knowing before you book it with anybody. It has to be done by somebody holding a specific licence category — not a general pest licence and not a home inspector's licence. And it covers considerably less than most people assume, which makes understanding the limits part of the service rather than fine print.

Rule 4 TAC §7.175(d) sets the mandatory areas, where accessible and unobstructed, and it is a longer list than most people expect.

Plumbing in bathrooms, kitchen, laundry and elsewhere. Window and door frames and sills. Baseboards, flooring, walls and ceilings. Entrance steps and porches. The exterior of the slab or foundation wall. Crawl spaces including support piers and stiff legs, floor joists, sub floors, sill plates and the foundation wall. The fireplace. And weep holes.

Then the report is written on the department's form, which under §7.176(a) may not be altered or revised. It carries a diagram with approximate perimeter measurements — §7.175(c) says it does not have to be to scale — showing construction details, areas of current activity, areas of previous activity, conditions conducive to infestation, and the areas that were inaccessible or obstructed.

Conditions conducive get reported whether or not anything is active, and §7.175(e) lists them: wood to ground contact, formboards left in place, excessive moisture, wood debris under or around the structure, footing too low or soil line too high, insufficient clearance in a crawl space, expansion joints or cracks in a slab, and decks.

A sticker goes up. Rule 4 TAC §7.177 requires a durable sticker on the wall adjacent to the water heater, the electric breaker box, or beneath the kitchen sink, giving the inspector's name and licence number, the date, and a statement not to remove it.

And you get a copy. Under §7.176(d) copies go to the person who ordered the inspection and to our business files, and under §7.176(e) we retain them for a minimum of two years. If you are the buyer and the seller ordered the report, ask for it directly — only the purchaser of the service is required to receive one.

We will explain the report rather than hand it over. Including the inaccessible-areas section, which is the part that determines how much weight the rest of it carries. That conversation is part of the job.

We will not tell you the house is free of termites. Nobody honest can. The rule itself says concealed infestations and damage may not be discovered.

We will not convert conducive conditions into a treatment recommendation. For a real estate transaction report, §7.175(a) requires visible evidence of active infestation, or visible evidence of previous infestation with no evidence of prior treatment, before a corrective treatment can be recommended. Conducive conditions get reported — they are genuinely useful, and they are a repair list rather than a sales opportunity.

We will sign the independence attestation, because it is on the form. Section 7A of the T-5 states that neither the inspector nor the company has, has had, or contemplates having any interest in the purchase or sale of the property.

We will tell you what we could not see. Not as a disclaimer buried at the end, but as part of handing the report over — because on an occupied house being sold, the list of areas that could not be inspected is often longer than the list of findings, and a buyer who does not understand that is making a decision on less information than they think they have.

You are free to take the report elsewhere. If something is found and you would rather have the treatment done by another company, that is entirely normal and we will not make it awkward. The inspection and the treatment are two separate transactions and it is healthier when everybody remembers that.

And if a treatment is warranted, the quote follows the ordinary rules — 4 TAC §7.174 disclosure documents with a written estimate before any work begins, and the warranty terms written out with the re-treatment and damage distinction made plainly. A closing deadline is the most effective sales pressure there is, and it is not a reason to sign something unread.

Real estate work is the least flexible thing in this trade, and it is worth being straight about what a one-truck operation can and cannot promise.

The WDI radius is 90 miles, and it is not the same as our service territory. The general territory runs to about a hundred miles. Inspections for a real estate transaction run to 90, because a report tied to a closing date is a different kind of promise from a pest call that can move to Thursday. We would rather publish two numbers and have them both be true than publish one and stretch it.

Which puts Big Spring outside it. Big Spring is about 95 miles out — inside the ordinary service territory, past the WDI radius. We still do general pest work there. We are not going to take a dated inspection there and hope. If you are buying or selling in Big Spring, call anyway — the honest answer may be a recommendation to somebody closer, and that is a better outcome for you than a missed date.

Odessa and Stanton sit exactly on the line at 90 miles. Those are yes, and they are planned days rather than same-week fits.

Closing dates do not move. Ours is not a business that can absorb a same-afternoon request from the far edge of a 90-mile radius, and pretending otherwise would fail somebody at the worst possible moment in a transaction.

So call when the contract is signed, not when the option period is running out. Three days is the notice he asks for, and a week is an easy booking. Two days is workable near Seminole. Same-day from the far end of the radius is not a promise anybody should make you.

Seminole and the towns nearest it are responsive. Seagraves, Denver City, Andrews and Gaines County generally can usually be fitted quickly.

The outer towns run as planned days. Grouping helps enormously — if a title company or an agent has several inspections in one town, saying so gets everybody a better date than booking them separately.

Tell us the deadline at booking, not at the visit. The closing date, the option period expiry, the lender's cut-off. Those drive everything about how the work is sequenced, and they are the single most useful thing you can say on the first call.

Peak season is the constraint worth planning around. Termite swarms in this region come in April and May — later than anywhere else in Texas, because swarm timing runs on a north-south gradient — and that is also when spring transactions are moving. If your closing sits in that window, the notice you give matters more than at any other point in the year.

And if we cannot make your date, you will be told immediately rather than booked in and disappointed. On a transaction that is worth more than a booking, and it is the only version of this service worth offering.