Chile Forum

Either my son or I want to buy a property he is renting in Vitacura, Santiago, Chile. However, before buying and making an offer, I would like to have an inspector go and check the fireplace, chimney, electrical, plumbing and roof. Can anyone suggest where I can find a reliable person or company? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Diane Lynch

Greetings, and welcome to the forum.

Our company does have qualified engineers that provide building inspection, in addition to legal, relocation, and general construction consulting.

Our engineer in the central region has an undergraduate in engineering plus 4 years of architecture. She also has a masters degree in restoration and speaks very fluent English.

Please feel free to PM me or email me if you would like to know more.

I say go with Jay...something tells me its the best bet and the best results..


p out.

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ok, I'm going to leave Jay this time, and give him a chance to come back and explain. The second post is a little less aggressive.

Jay got banned not because of what he is offering. He got banned because he has one post and is making such offers. For an established user in the community, that is all fair game. But with one post?

Last year we had a guy come in and do something similar with just 1 post. I banned him, and some of the other users and moderators also turned up research that the guy had been run out of Argentina after scamming people.

New users need to establish themselves before jumping in with such offers.

ok Jay, I gave you more than sufficient time to come back and defend yourself. You are now band (again).

If you just cruz the forum with those sorts of post without contributing, your going to get banned.

El Puelche I share your concern about unqualified use of the word "engineer" in Chile, but I do not bring people on my team that can not hold their own internationally. My people are way over qualified for the work we have them doing.

I have seen plenty of the "licensed" U.S. contractors robbing their clients.

no worries...


I don't know the particular cases in CHile or the forum where US nationals have decieved people after making a connection here on the forum or in general through your business..

But I do know and have seen that the titled degree holders in CHile are 100 theoretical and not experience based...that is to say that within the degree program, there is no or very little field work required on the part of the student and so the now graduated degree holder has no or little knowledge of the "dirty mechanics of how thing are actually built in the field and as one could imagine.... far from the clinical enviroment from which it was designed...

If it was the building from the ground up that we were talking about, than by all means have the CHilean engineer spec it out but now we are talking about a building that is already done with every imaginable flaw and problem built in and built to last...I believe american contractors are problem solvers and by nature are inclined to access the levels by which something might be repaired...after all the USA is killing off every contractor it can as every project is determined by its "litigeous" load more than its static or dynamic load.....cya, baby...

p, out.


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We are talking about a home inspection here. Our inspector uses the same standards as the United States, and she currently does inspections in Chile for both banks and European companies.

regardless...


I don't know the value of the "home " she is talking about but if its in Vitacura then its not an insignifigant investment...I don't know Jay and I don't know the women you are proposing but experience tells me that in this case I would lean on an American general contractor before I would a Chilean engineer/architect for a home inspection.....with no other evidence that is my opinion...


p out.



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As a home builder in Chicago for the last 10 + years, in construction since my college days in the early '80's I have had alot of dealings with home inspectors so here's my 0.02 cents.
Before each closing I go thru, the buyer employs an independant home inspector to conduct a inspection. They generally tend have little or no on site experience .An individual home inspector cannot possibly have the knowlage to conduct a good home inspection, as a detailed knowlage of electrical, masonry ,concrete ,plumbing etc will be required therefore if the home inspection is not conducted by a "team" of individuals qualified in the various fields it is not very effective.In our case For each inspection we leave a flaw that should be spotted by a trained eye,some thing that is easilly fixed before closing, some times electrical, some times heating, sometimes other and it has never failed except in one instance to fool the inspector.(The purpose of this is to discount the inspector in case of the inspection being used as a price renegotating tool .)

Here are examples of SOME of the issues to address when conducting a PROPER home inspection in Chile.

Given that alot of the homes are built from reinforced concrete, I would require a core sample of the reinforced concrete to make sure the concrete is adequate (crushes at or above 28 kn) To determine if the rebar in said structure has adequate coverage and overlapping of rebar etc a section of rebar would need to be exposed to determine quality of installation.This proceedure is expensive and would only be carried out if excessive spalling is visable.
The design of the concrete it's self ie. the strenght amount of steel,lapp coverage thickness of steel etc should be determined.
The soil that the structure sits on should be tested.
Heating systems would fall under plumbing as the heat tends to be in the form of radiators so to determine the quality of pipes, concrete walls may need to be opened to unearth the pipes to determine the quality etc.Gas heaters should be considered needing replacing if not two or less years old.
Roofs in chile tend to be under designed with rafters in single family homes being of 2x4 quality or less. take a look at roofs in the older sections of town and you'll see alot of deformed (not symmetric) roofs incapable of holding a "100" year snow load or the worst case senario earthquake.(the roofing tile will long out last the structure that holds it up.
Electricity is a subject all to it's self and given the 220v services there I would insist on a licensed electrician.
Now all this and more ,much more would be required to do a professional home inspection.
Therefore in conclusion I will say that the use of good old common sense is best for inspections.View the property your self and use your head. Remember if your gut feelings tell you somethings wrong then in most cases there is something wrong. That is not to say that people shouldn't hire inspectors but do not let them have the final say and never use recomendations from the realtors to hire one.
Hope this helps in some way........and there is much more involved in the inspection process but its late.

We have a two pronged approach.

The person we have doing the inspection has an architecture degree and does the stock inspection.

Our head of construction has an engineering degree, and a masters degree in restoration that goes in and does the report on general estimates for what it would cost to fix things.

The idea is that just because a house has say a 50 million value, in an area where houses sell for 60 million, does not mean it can not be saved. Part of valuing a house is trying to figure out if with say 5 million in repairs and renovations you can get yourself a house that is worth 60 million or more.

On the other hand, one of the most common problems we encounter are bad foundations.

Personally I like to go with the replacement value in Chile. If the place burned to the ground, how much would it cost to replace it stick for stick? This however is often nothing in relation to the market value in Chile. In Santiago, it is perhaps more consistent property to property, but there are still price distortions by things like perception of how desirable an area is to live.

For example an apartment in Los condes will likely be seen as more desirable than an equivalent apartment in the downtown area. A gringo might simply not care about the difference.