A few weeks back, I wrote a column about a seller complaining about a home inspection.

In response, I received a few e-mail taking me to task for writing the column. I sat there, scratching my head, then passed the column to a few colleagues, a home inspector I know and a couple of real estate agents, trying to figure how anyone could have read what I had written in the ways they did.

None of the people reading the column after the fact read it the same way as any of the e-mail respondents. One, in fact, pointed out to me that each of the e-mail writers had put his own spin on what I had written, so that the objections to my column were not only not shared, but in several instances contradictory.

In a week, I will have been a reporter for 38 years, and these things never cease to amaze me.

Anyway, let me make a few observations about home inspections, before getting to a bit of news from the American Society of Home Inspectors

I had my first home inspection in 1983, when I bought my first house and before it became standard operating procedure. Houses followed in 1987 and 2001, and each time, the house was inspected before we purchased it.

Each time, I was with the inspector the entire time, armed with pencil and pad, asking him questions as we went from one part of the house to the next. Being present through the entire inspection, I was better able to understand the final report, and to make educated conclusions about the data presented.

Because home inspection was, to say the least, unusual in 1983, the listing agent and my agent, who was with the same firm as the listing agent, objected strenuously to it, but, since I was a first-time buyer, I believed it necessary. There was no contingency clause in the agreement of sale for an inspection.

Today, as agents and inspectors have reassured me, contracts are written so that the window for a home inspection is established and the inspector is made fully aware of that time frame so he can schedule and complete his work.

Even today, new-home builders often make it difficult for buyers to have a house inspected, setting up unreasonable times for those inspections, including the settlement walk-through. The builders say that they know better or that the inspectors don't know enough. There is always a middle ground.

In a real estate market where every house seems to have a surplus of buyers, too many people are walking into open houses and forgoing home inspections as a bargaining tool.

Have I been satisfied with my inspections? In the main, they have been. Inspectors are human, and because inspections must be carried out within a prescribed period under often-difficult conditions, there is a chance a problem can be overlooked. In general, the inspections have been very helpful, providing me with information I needed to determine if I could afford to do what needed to be done after spending most of my cash on the purchase of the house.

Should a buyer have a home inspection? Yes. Should the buyer be present during the home inspection? Yes. Should the listing and buyer's agents be nearby? Yes. Can the seller be present? Yes, but he or she should not accompany the buyer and inspector during the inspection. The inspector is working for the buyer, not the seller. The seller should be available to answer questions, but the buyer's agent should be the one asking the listing agent to ask the seller. In addition, the listing agent should be familiar enough with the property and with how home inspections to explain the process to the seller beforehand.

Do home inspectors kill real estate deals? There was a home inspector in my market who was reviled by listing agents as "the deal killer." He explained that problematic houses killed deals. His job was to inspect houses and write reports on what he saw.

Sometimes, a buyer with second thoughts may use an inspection to get out of a deal, as I believe happened with the subject of my previous column. My experience has been, however, that buyers really hope that inspectors don't find problems. Most prefer to overlook the minor stuff and hand the major things over to their agents for negotiation with the listing agent and the seller.

Now, to the ASHI report. Thirty states now regulate home inspectors and inspections, with most enacting these laws in the last eight years. New Jersey's two-year law is ranked the best, followed by Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

What these states have in common is superior experience and education requirements, a valid high stakes examination, and standards of practice and a code of ethics comparable to ASHI's own, said Don Norman, the group's 2005 president.