What Is an Inspection Order? How It Differs From a BPO
Inspection orders look like BPOs in your inbox but ask for far less. Here is how to tell them apart.
Alongside BPO broadcasts, many agents receive property inspection orders. They arrive the same way and are just as contested, but the job is different.
What an inspection asks for
- Confirmation the property exists at the address.
- Occupancy: owner, tenant, vacant or unknown.
- Visible condition and any obvious damage or hazards.
- A set of exterior photos.
There is no valuation, no comparable sales and usually no written narrative.
Who orders them
Servicers and investors use inspections to monitor properties between valuations, for example to confirm a home is still occupied or to check on a vacant property.
Fees and time
Inspections pay noticeably less than BPOs, but many take only a few minutes on site. Their value depends entirely on routing: an inspection two streets from your next BPO is easy money; one twenty minutes away rarely is.
Inspection or BPO: how to tell from the email
Look at the order type field and the fee. Very low fees usually signal an inspection. Vendors such as GroundWorks send almost exclusively inspections.
Setting rules for inspections
Use a tighter radius and a separate minimum fee for inspections. In BPOFlow, low-fee inspection orders are billed at a lower per-order rate than BPOs.
Read next: getting inspection orders from GroundWorks.