Zhang Lei speaks to a room of students learning how to become house inspectors. [Photos provided to China Daily]
Zhang Lei enters an apartment with his 10-kilogram toolbox and immediately gets down to work."There are six checkpoints on the door and I need to check every one, although it is very unlikely that every one of them has a problem," Zhang said.
He is one of the city's 70 house inspectors.
Zhang said that usually the inspectors work in teams of two and that they check up to four properties every day, including apartments and villas. They work according to a strict work flow.
They check 100 to 300 checkpoints in each property, which usually takes more than two hours.
He uses a laser to measure area of a house and uses a light to reveal the patterns in glass. This shows whether the glass is toughened or not.
"According to the national standards, windows in apartments on the seventh floor and above need toughened glass for safety reasons," Zhang said.
In September 2009, while he was checking an apartment near the North Fourth Ring Road he received an electric shock he can still remember, when he checked an electrical socket.
But, although he can discover such problems he cannot always tell the owner why the problem has occurred. As a house inspector, Zhang only checks for problems and offers owners some possible explanations.
"It is the developers' responsibility to explain the reason for the problems. House inspectors just need to look at the problems objectively," said Jiao Nanbo, secretary-general of the House Inspector Management Association of China, who is also a consultant for the company Zhang works for.
Jiao said house inspectors only compare houses against standards regulated by the government.
Some of the equipment used to verify the quality of a new apartment or villa. [Photos provided to China Daily]
Being a house inspector is a new and growing career choice in China, although it is common in other countries.
"Whenever people buy a house in the United States (either new or secondhand) they usually have an inspector come and survey the property before signing the contract," said Jeff Levionson, an American living in Beijing for several years. "House inspectors are very common."
In China, getting a property inspection is a relatively new idea.
The first house inspector in China was Ding Bo in 2004, who became famous in Nanjing.
Zhang Lei, was at college majoring in construction engineering technology at that time.
"I read Ding's story in a newspaper and thought being a house inspector might be a promising job," he said. "But there were few formal courses for the career at that time."
Zhang accepted training by the House Inspector Management Association of China in 2007, a year before he graduated. After successfully completing the training he registered with the association.
However, there is no official certification for house inspectors in China.
The Huashang newspaper reported in 2008 that some people claimed they were the victims of fraud, because they paid for the training and received their certificates from the association.
An officer with the Bureau of NGO Administration told the Huashang newspaper that even though it was registered in Hong Kong, it still needed the approval of the Ministry of Civil Affairs since it carried out its business in the mainland.
