Chris D Hilton Home/Building Inspections

If you are in the business you will know that Inspectors have all different skill levels, not one on the planet will find every single flaw or make every single client happy every single time. Chris Hilton goes above all others in explaining whats going on with the house that my clients are getting ready to purchase, has a website that I can see his schedule when I need him on a short notice. As far as knowledge goes I have dealt with over 10 home inspectors in the last 10 years on being the owner of Hepler Realty, nobody has more knowledge in my experience with home inspectors than Chris. This guy knows his stuff, and uses photos, some inspectors don’t! And doesn’t quote out work to your client for fixing (this is a contractors job). Bottom line my clients get what they need with a report that back up any need for repairs from the seller to make. Also I once called 3 inspectors to inspect my church roof, not one could do it within 2 weeks but Chris came out and walked the roof, and didnt even charge! That is a honest person with integrity, and earned mad respect from lots of people in the community!

Chris is exceptionally expensive. I would have been just fine with that if his work had been commensurate with the fee. I needed a thorough, professional inspector when I was prepping to buy an older home and wanted to reduce my risk of expensive unplanned repairs; unfortunately, that wasn’t what I found in Chris Hilton.
As another reviewer mentioned, Chris does provide a very detailed inspection report – pages of things that very few people would care about at the inspection stage (e.g., the storm door doesn’t pull closed on its own, a toilet has a loose bolt, etc.). Unfortunately, in my case he seemed to miss the forest for the trees. He neglected to note a major defect (an improperly installed indoor sewer line) that ended up costing me almost $ 1100 only ~5 weeks after closing. My licensed general contractor (a former home inspector himself) and licensed plumber both stated very clearly this was a defect easily visible on their inspection of the basement. I provided a written statement to that effect from the plumber to Chris, and I also provided him with phone numbers for both of those contractors (he declined to call either one). My plumber had done an emergency repair to correct the problem, which arose while I was out of state packing up my former home, because raw sewage was pumping into the basement from the sewer line. The plumber provided a detailed explanation of the work he’d done on his receipt, which I also provided to Chris.
Before you can hire Chris, you’ll have to sign his contract, which says that he takes no responsibility for his work. However, my real estate attorney recommended that I pursue the issue with Chris anyway, as he said this type of problem is commonly covered by an inspector’s errors & omissions insurance. Chris’s response to the complaint was to cut & paste passages from his contract stating that 1) he has no accountability for any errors in his work and 2) for any settlement to be made via his warranty company or otherwise, I would have needed to give him the opportunity to inspect the problem before doing any repairs, and to decide whether he’d rather arrange to make the repairs himself. That obviously was neither reasonable nor feasible in this case because of the sewage leak.
Chris put a lot of effort into conjecturing, deflecting, and arguing, but zero effort into determining whether he was actually at fault (e.g., calling either of my licensed contractors for additional details on the situation instead of assuming they were both either wrong or lying, which seemed to be his default conclusion).
I’m a small business owner myself. The customer is not always right – but sometimes he/​she is. Even if I had a zero-​accountability clause in my contract with a client (which I would never consider doing, because I do hold myself accountable for my work), I would have thoroughly investigated the problem and made appropriate recompense in a situation where my error cost a client this much money. This was a poor experience, and I regret hiring Chris as part of my pre-​purchase process. Not recommended.
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UPDATED based on the comment on my review:
The speed of Chris’s reply, and its lack of substance, illustrate my points about his priorities.
67 pages of mostly superficial, minor inspection points are not useful or valuable if the inspector misses a $ 1000+ defect in the process of picking at items like missing springs or light bulbs and loose bolts.
I am neither a plumber nor a home inspector. That’s why I pay plumbers and home inspectors a lot of money to do what they do. My understanding – as a lay person – is that my plumber, who was there to install a kitchen, cut a pipe in an area that under normal circumstances never should have been backed up with sewage, and that when he found that it was, he quickly traced it to the easily visible and apparently very unusual defect that Chris had overlooked. Whatever my understanding of the situation, though, Chris could easily have gotten more technical detail on what happened by calling the plumber, who’d made himself available and was more than willing to discuss. Instead, Chris made a self-​serving assumption that he’s using as a get-​out-​of-​jail-​free card.
Chris is correct that I notified him what the consequence would be if he didn’t take appropriate steps to resolve the situation: that I would post a review so that others wouldn’t spend their hard-​earned money on an inspection that might yield similar results. Other Unilocalers have saved me from using bad vendors by posting useful reviews, and I try to do the same where appropriate.

I was disappointed with the inspection itself because it was simply a cursory description of visible flaws, the vast majority of which were trivial, and contained no interpretation or analysis I could use to judge the condition of the home. For example, there was water damage on the ceiling on the 2^nd floor. I expected that an inspector would go into the attic to try to locate the source of the water. Now I have no idea if the water damage is something to be concerned about or a 20 year old leak that has been fixed.
The same pattern was repeated concerning the other issues with the house, leaving me with no actionable information, just a list of things to have someone else check out. I could be wrong, but given that Mr. Hilton provided no pictures of the crawlspace, attic, or roof, I can only assume that Mr. Hilton didn’t actually go into those areas.
This was further reinforced by my experience with the second inspector. He was younger, in-​shape, and slim and still had problems fitting through the crawl space, so I strongly doubt Mr. Hilton took the trouble. Luckily for me, the second inspector found that one corner of the house had fallen about ½ inch, and, unlike Mr. Hilton, provided not only a slew of pictures showing exactly what caused the problem, also gave suggestions on how best to fix them.
A couple of weeks into staying in the new house and one of the kids started getting terrible headaches. An inspection showed that the gas furnace had holes in the heat exchanger that had been pumping carbon monoxide into the house. I re-​read the inspection, and there was nothing flagged about the furnace, but sure enough, in the fine print of the contract Mr. Hilton specifically states he doesn’t check heat exchangers, which strangely enough is the number one thing that goes wrong with a gas furnace. Apparently the «furnace inspection» checks to see if it is pumping out hot air, but not that the air is poisonous, i.e. something the home buyer could have done himself.
The inspection itself would have garnered two stars, but I dropped the evaluation to one star because Mr. Hilton gives your contact information to one or more 3^rd parties who market services to people buying homes. Being called by a security alarm company promising a deal is not saving me money but selling my contact information as a sales lead. If you like getting emails with lots of words like FREE and SAVE, and getting cold calls from sales people then you might appreciate the extra value Mr. Chilton provides.
While it is true that I should have read the contract more carefully, the idea that my personal contact information would be used in this manner is so outside the realm of ethical behavior it never entered my mind to check the contract for it.

Very, very thorough inspection. Great inspection process!
I have been through many inspections on my own homes as well as having been a realtor and he didn’t exaggerate minor items like many home inspectors do which actually needlessly scare buyers. He merely pointed out good and bad and described what would need to be done to correct.
Really recommend his service!

Chris is an OUTSTANDING home inspector, with his great amount of experience in the construction industry and his years of of experience as a home inspector have made him one of (if not the TOP) home inspector in North Carolina! So much so the state board comes to him! He is very understanding for those clients that need that extra time to explain issues, and he is specific and informative enough on his reports for those buyers that cannot attend the inspection. Chris is my GO TO guy for home inspections as well as a preferred vendor for our firm!
Larry Story
Broker/​Owner
Total Care Realty, LLC