Today we’d like to introduce you to Blake Salcetti.
Blake, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
After college, I started in the financial investment business. After three years, I made a decision to follow my father’s footsteps into the home building industry. I loved the financial business but I am not great at sitting still at a desk. I like to be moving around. I spent 7 years building homes with companies like Lennar Homes and David Powers Homes and then several years managing the quality assurance department for a home builder. That is a fancy way of saying I trained and managed the group of internal inspectors who inspected the homes being built. In 2009 I decided to start my own home inspection company and I’ve never looked back.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We’ve been very blessed. The housing industry in Houston is a very healthy one. My greatest challenges are making sure I get the best inspectors to serve my clients and balancing the need to interact with current clients versus spending the time to market the company and earn new clients. I use a small group of select/experienced inspectors to serve my clients. Even though they all went through the training and testing to gain their certification, I won’t use any inspector until they have observed a minimum of 30 home inspections with one of my established inspectors. As you can imagine, it takes a very detail oriented person to do this. Someone who is something of a perfectionist. And the books can’t cover every scenario – especially when you live in the subtropics where we constantly fight to maintain our homes from the elements. Picking the inspectors I work with is a challenge but I do feel I have the best. It’s assuring I continue to bring in the best as we grow, that is one of my challenges.
Being a business owner, I have to balance my need to serve my clients and the need to market my company to bring in more business. Four years ago I realized I needed to have someone dedicated to answering the phones and scheduling the inspections. This occurred after taking an early long weekend and getting 16 calls in 1 hour and over 130+ calls for the day. I realized then I wasn’t going to be able to grow the company and answer every call. That was a hard transition for me. I liked to talk to each customer and I had realtors and home buyers who I knew and took care of personally. Now, my clients know Dalita and love her. She’s awesome and keeps me and the other inspectors organized. She enables the client to talk to me when they need to but also gives me the time to market the company which is essential to our growth.
Please tell us about Texas Certified Home Inspection.
We provide home inspections. There are several types of inspections we perform:
• New home inspection,
• Pre-owned / Existing home inspections,
• Wood Destroying Insect Inspections,
• Pool inspections and
• Stage Inspection. This is a three stage inspection done for new home construction. We inspect the foundation prior to pouring concrete, then a pre-sheet rock inspection and then a final inspection prior to closing.
I feel our knowledge of home building and our extensive experience in this sets us apart. When I tell a home buyer that there is an issue, I can tell them if it’s a big deal or a small issue that can be corrected easily. One of the reason we are so picky about the inspectors we work with and try to get those with home construction experience is that buying a house is a huge / scary process to go through. Last year we did 1,576 inspections. Since starting the company, we have completed over 7,000 inspections. I won’t say we’ve seen it all but we’ve seen most and can give good advice. Another practice that sets us apart is that our inspectors do a maximum of two home inspections per day. It is important to me that they take their time and do a thorough job both in the inspection and the report which details findings.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
One of my favorite all time childhood memories would be when my family traveled to Italy to meet all of the relatives. For the most part I could not talk to them but it was fun to try and we were able to pass the time with games, sightseeing, fantastic Italian cooking and lots of hand gestures.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.TCHI.com
- Phone: 281-705-6889
- Email: Blake@TCHI.com
- TREC#10389
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