Looking Back Over the Years

When I called Marvin Goldstein, he was busy preparing for an opportunity to inspect 4,000 multifamily properties per year in rural areas nationwide, talking to team members all over the country to put the finishing touches on their proposal before an urgent deadline. He’d been up until midnight going over everything with his team the night before. “When you’re doing federal contracting for a multimillion-dollar contract, they require a 25-page response with very detailed metrics you need to meet,” he said.

Goldstein works with partners all over the US, overseeing inspections in all 50 states as president and CEO of Building Inspection Service (BISCO) in Southampton, Pennsylvania. BISCO has done decades of inspections for the government, and Goldstein said they’re almost always happy to do more. It’s this diversification that has helped to make him so successful. One of ASHI’s founding members, Goldstein also served as ASHI Past President (2012), ASHI Treasurer, and was on the Board of Directors (2010, 2011), and Past President (2013). 

The Beginning

Goldstein helped found the American Society of Home Inspectors, write the Standards of Practice, and develop the code of ethics as part of a panel of early inspectors. “I knew what a good inspection was, and an ASHI inspection was a good inspection,” he said. 

He started inspecting when he was 27, seven years before ASHI was born. He has his father to thank for getting him involved. “I didn’t listen to my dad much over my teen years and early 20s, but when he suggested that the building inspection field was a business of the future, fortunately I listened to him,” he laughed. “Ever since 1970, I’ve been very happily engaged in various types of building inspections.”

Goldstein trained with his father, going on 50 inspections with him before doing any on his own. “That’s what got me started in building inspections back in the 1970s.”

At the time, his father was chief engineer of the Department of Public Property for the City of Philadelphia. He had a friend at HUD who asked if he could do technical home inspections because he was a professional engineer with the skills to review many things—like plumbing, heating, electric, roof, termite, and the other certifications required by the FHA—rather than hire many different specialists to inspect the houses.

The Goldsteins weren’t the only ones who saw the need for expert inspections. It was around this time that ASHI Founder Ron Passaro started to assemble a group with the goal of starting a professional organization. The original 50-some charter members were largely spread across the East Coast, Goldstein said, but the need and interest soon spread across the country. “At points in 1971 and 1972 I was doing so many of these inspections I couldn’t keep up. It was crazy busy. But then interest rates got really high; when they got over 10% the housing market started drying up. Then I started looking around for diversification.”

Diversification

Early on, Goldstein helped to create an industry around lead-based paint inspections and ensure repossessed homes got proper inspections before they went back on the market. He also helped to found the American Association of Radon Scientists in the 1970s, further diversifying his business by offering to add on radon inspections when he inspected homes. “It’s amazing the avenues building inspections can take you down when you follow your good instincts,” Goldstein said.

It’s good to have other sources of revenue outside of home inspecting, considering that the housing market is so cyclical, Goldstein said. “I have had times where I couldn’t keep up with the work coming in my door, and I’ve had times when I didn’t have many inspections to do. I’m sure many new inspectors who are out on their own have experienced that.”

Goldstein got more involved with HUD when he realized a great need to inspect repossessed properties, especially as HUD was likely spending a lot of money on these properties and hoping to get them back on the market quickly, he said. At one point, HUD had 2,000 repossessed properties in inventory in Philadelphia, Goldstein recalled. He took the initiative to reach out, asking HUD if they needed any help inspecting these properties because he understood they were fixing them up and selling them directly to the public.

His expertise and dependability helped him build strong relationships that often came with government contracts. Today, BISCO does several million dollars of multifamily inspections each year, working for HUD, USDA, and a small percentage for FEMA. BISCO recently inspected 200 modular homes going to Maui survivors after the tragic fires of 2023. “We’ve inspected mobile homes for FEMA, and then we helped them redesign them when they wanted sprinkler systems,” Goldstein said.

This year, BISCOhas done more than 7,000 apartment complex inspections for HUD and USDA all over the country, with about 85 inspectors doing this work. Goldstein himself oversees six full-time employees in his office, managing inspectors who are subcontractors. “I love my work, and I don’t have to climb on ladders anymore,” he said. I don’t have to go in crawl spaces. I’m sitting here in my office with half a dozen people around me managing our inspectors nationwide.”

Bettering the Profession

“Inspectors had, and to some extent still have, a little bit of a bad reputation for taking kickbacks. It was important for me to have a strong organization, like lawyers and doctors have, where 
you have to show what you’re doing. You have to take an exam, and you have to comply with a code of ethics. I felt we needed the same thing for building inspection,” he said of the need for ASHI.

The public urgently needed a reliable source for inspections, Goldstein said, because if anyone could do it, some would only be interested in making money for themselves.

Goldstein looks back at his early home inspections fondly, when he’d spend a couple of hours going through a property with potential homebuyers, showing them things like where the electric box and emergency water shutoff valve were and how to deal with any potential issues around the house. He completed the report directly after the inspection, and he’d sit in his van with the buyers to go over everything. He said it was then that the buyers realized they were working with someone who wasn’t just out for their money, but who really had their best interest at heart. “After about five years, most of my business came from recommendations. I didn’t have to go to real estate agents’ offices and try to convince them to convince their clients to use me.”

Now 83 years old, he promises that this October 2026 he’ll cut back to just one day a week in the office. He said his wife will be happy.

Industry Challenges

Goldstein said the biggest challenge for inspectors today continues to be the marketplace itself. “You can’t fight the cycles of the market and of life. There are going to be ups and downs in the real estate market, and there will always be people looking to take advantage of a situation,” he said.

The biggest impediment is the shortage of houses for sale, he said, as many people continue to buy property without home inspections since Covid, often purchasing for a price significantly higher than asking. He recalls a recent meeting where a real estate broker told a group of sellers, “I’ll make sure there’s no home inspection for the buyer.” He audibly booed. “I’ve been in this industry 50 years, and foregoing inspections has never happened to the extent that it has these last couple of years,” he said.  Goldstein considers his work and the work of his colleagues part of a noble profession. “I always felt when I did an inspection for a homebuyer that I was really helping them out. Most of the time, they really told me how much they appreciated it,” he said