ASTM Standards Development Update

An Organizational Meeting hosted by ASTM took place at the annual conference of the National Association of Home Inspectors in Las Vegas on February 19th. A letter announcing ASHI’s opposition to this effort was emailed and mailed to the entire ASHI Membership earlier in February.

While no formal vote was taken at this meeting to approve creating an ASTM Standard and committee, a vote was taken on whether or not another Organizational Meeting should take place later in 2007 in a more neutral location where all interested parties could come, discuss and ultimately vote on whether or not ASTM should move forward. In addition to home inspectors, we anticipate this meeting would include state housing authorities, consumer advocacy groups, builders, real estate practitioners, insurance representatives, and others. The list could be quite extensive.

At this time, we have no information on when or where this next meeting will take place, other than late spring or summer of this year. As we obtain more information and details, we will pass them along to you.

Nearly 600 letters, faxes and emails were sent from the ASHI Membership to ASTM on this matter and our strength and breadth was definitely noticed by the ASTM representatives. In addition, of the approximately 80 attendees at the meeting, almost half were ASHI members. We are grateful for the efforts taken by everyone on this matter, especially when we were faced with a two week notification of the meeting. We will need this strength again later this year, so please watch for information as we pass it along.