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Data Wars: Big Money’s Race to Own Your Clients
by Isaac Peck, Publisher
Once upon a time, the service providers in the home inspection space were small businesses led by bootstrapped entrepreneurs whom many home inspectors knew personally. Those days are over.
Residential Warranty Services (RWS), Home Inspector Pro (HIP), Spectora, HomeGauge, and Inspection Support Network (ISN). These are the largest service providers for home inspectors in the U.S., and, by Working RE‘s estimate, account for roughly 85 percent of inspection software used by inspectors. These software and warranty brands are now controlled by only two entities: Porch and Radian Capital.
Inspectors who have lived through these acquisitions know what happens when private equity controls the software their business runs on. The tremendous race of capital into the inspection space comes down to one thing: data.
The data that comes with a home inspection—information about the home and the relationship with the homebuyer (and their contact information)—can be used to sell insurance, alarm packages, home renovation and maintenance products, utility start-up services, and the list goes on.
The only problem? That client relationship belongs to the home inspector.
The result has been an intense struggle over who owns that relationship, and ultimately over the core of the inspector’s business. What will happen next is the real question.
Data Hungry
Starting with American Family Insurance’s 2017 acquisition of HomeGauge, the largest inspection software business at the time, public and private capital has been increasingly interested in the home inspection space. Porch, a publicly traded home services business, joined the fray, acquiring ISN in 2017. Porch went on to obtain Palm Tech Home Inspection Software in 2020 and America’s Call Center in 2021.
The rush of capital has only accelerated in the last five years. Porch now claims that over 40 percent of home inspections run on its software, and it has made it no secret that it has a key interest in the inspector’s relationship with the homebuyer.
ISN updated its Terms of Service shortly after it was acquired by Porch, and inspectors soon learned that they had been auto-opted into the new “Porch Program,” which inserted new consent language for the inspector’s customer into the signing flow:
“By clicking below, I [client name] consent to have [inspection company], Porch and my Home Assistant, and providers of products and services for my home to call or text me at the number I provide, including using automated, prerecorded or autodialed calls. I understand that my consent to marketing communications is not required to make a purchase.”
Turning it off meant digging into the settings menu and finding the Porch toggle, a step most inspectors did not know existed until another inspector told them. Bob Elliott posted the opt-out instructions on the InterNACHI® forum that same September of 2017, pointing out that every other add-on service inspectors used was opt-in, but this one was not. Many inspectors complained that they had never agreed to sharing their customer data and felt betrayed. A thread on InterNACHI®’s forums titled “ISN sells out?” drew 104 replies and more than 12,000 views. By December, a second thread had appeared under the heading “PORCH (formerly ISN) is going too far.”
There have been similar home inspector revolts against most inspection software providers post-acquisition, precisely because the big money owners often introduce some forced or auto-opt-in solution designed to market directly to the inspector’s customer.
When American Family Insurance bought HomeGauge, it announced that the pooled data from HomeGauge inspections would help it “protect consumers.” While the company said there would be “no surprise sales calls or emails to you or your customers,” a few weeks later HomeGauge emailed inspectors telling them to modify their own client agreements by January 31, 2018. The required language said client, inspector, agent, and property information would be collected into HomeGauge and “may subsequently be used by the provider of HomeGauge.”
Inspectors were understandably upset. An insurance carrier now owned the software that captured the buyer’s name, phone number, email, and the condition of the house. Michael Gleeson posted the email to the InterNACHI® forum under the heading “HomeGauge behaving like Porch.” That thread produced 207 replies and more than 15,000 views.
HomeGauge faced a second revolt in 2022, when it began presenting insurance offers to clients at the moment they went to access their inspection reports. Brian Cawhern, CMI, wrote that HomeGauge was capturing his clients’ email addresses and marketing to them, that the client belonged to him and not to the software company, and that he was paying to acquire that client and then paying again for the software.
At an industrywide inspection conference Working RE Home Inspector attended shortly after HomeGauge’s 2022 announcement, there was talk of a mass exodus of inspectors away from HomeGauge.
Meanwhile, Porch kept buying. In 2022 Porch picked up Home Inspector Pro (HIP) for an undisclosed amount, as well as the home warranty and inspection software businesses of Residential Warranty Services (RWS), paying $33 million for the assets. Nathan Thornberry had built RWS (in part) by turning home inspectors into a collection channel for homeowner data. Porch was interested in RWS’s business by itself, but perhaps more interested in the direct path to the homebuyer that came with it. Two years later, Porch described its approach to homeowners insurance as leveraging “unique data for advantaged underwriting.”
Thornberry, who retained the RWS corporate entity after the asset sale, sued Porch in June 2024 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware over the deal. The case is Residential Warranty Services, Inc. v. Porch.com, Inc.
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Spectora Fiasco
Spectora has spent much of the last decade as the alternative to big corporate-owned software. Launched in 2017, Kevin and Michael Wagstaff, two brothers, built Spectora’s user base by showing up at InterNACHI® events, answering feature requests personally, and telling inspectors they were different. When inspectors revolted against ISN in 2017, and against HomeGauge in 2022, Spectora was there.
The goal of the Wagstaffs was always to sell though, once sufficient scale was reached. Radian Capital quietly took a minority stake in 2023 at a $90 million valuation and later moved to a majority position at a $110 million valuation. Radian Capital, obviously invigorated about the inspection space, provided the financial backing for Spectora to buy HomeGauge in April 2025.
On March 31, 2026, Spectora gave its users one week’s notice, announcing a new partnership with Fixle. Beginning April 7, clients opening their inspection reports would see Fixle Protection Products inside the client portal, offering homeowners insurance, home warranties, and home security products. There was no opt-out for inspectors.
By the time Spectora made this change, it had built itself into arguably the leading inspection software on the market, with over 10,000 inspectors on its platform. In other words, it was single-handedly rivaling Porch’s many acquisitions, closing in on 40 percent of the inspection software market itself.
The home inspector community’s response was both panicked and enraged. Over 10,000 inspectors were now having their client relationships disintermediated by the largest player in the space, with no way to opt out. Alongside its new Fixle marketing program, Spectora launched a rewards program that credited inspectors with points when their clients engaged with Fixle offers. Spectora did not say what the points were worth. A thread on the InterNACHI® forum titled “Forced Partnership” ran to 284 replies within days.
George Spetz, owner of Central Jersey Inspections, captured the sentiment of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of inspectors when he defiantly wrote:
“I am moving my business off the platform, regardless of any future concessions regarding Fixle. A last-minute opt-out provision will not change my course. The perceived disrespect and the aggressive corporate positioning against the small businesses that fueled their growth have made the relationship untenable. I cannot align my brand with an organization that maintains such a posture toward its users.”
Jessica Brownwood, Chief Growth Officer at Greenworks Inspections, arguably the largest, privately held inspection firm in the United States, posted a taunting video to Facebook, saying:
“Let’s talk about Spectora for a second. I spent two million dollars last year in customer acquisition. I paid you six figures. And you think you’re going to offer my customers and monetize my customers that I paid to acquire, all while I’m a paying customer of yours? That’s not how this works. We’re not dumb inspection companies. Let’s go.”
(Watch the full reel here: Bit.ly/fb-brownwood).
Spectora reversed course on April 4, four days after the announcement and three days before the rollout was to begin. In a note posted to the company’s website, CEO Peter Osberg told inspectors he owed them a direct conversation. The company had heard them loud and clear and “moved too fast with this,” he wrote, introducing something into their businesses without delivering clear value upfront and without making sure inspectors were in control. “That caused real stress and anxiety, and I want to apologize for that,” Osberg wrote. Inspectors who did not see value in Fixle could opt out, he said, and Spectora was building self-service controls to let them manage settings down to the individual product. The company still intended to build the Fixle brand, but would have to earn inspectors’ trust by building it with them.
Many inspectors did not accept the apology. When the letter was posted to the InterNACHI® forum under the heading “We won,” Ian Mayer, CMI, called it a pompous and arrogant apology. David Freund asked why Fixle was mentioned in an apology at all. Bert Hull, CMI, said Spectora still planned to harvest client data one way or another, whether it disclosed that or not, and that he was evaluating alternatives. Brian Cawhern, CMI, put it most plainly, “That was not an apology because they are not sorry. That was a minor course correction with an opt-out option.”
The Homebuyer Was the Plan
Kevin Wagstaff, one of the brothers who founded Spectora, gave a very revealing podcast interview at BuiltToSell.com. Wagstaff is describing how he and his brother did a formal process looking for a buyer in March 2022. At the time, Spectora had 9,200 home inspectors subscribed to its software, against a total addressable market of 30,000, according to Wagstaff.
Wagstaff describes how, with over 30 percent of the market, some private equity investors didn’t believe Spectora had much growth left in the tank. (Spectora ended up growing towards 40 percent of the market.)
Wagstaff then explains how he and his brother addressed these “market size” concerns:
“What is the story [to grow our total addressable market]? We also looked at the homeowner and insurance basically, after the sale. What that could lead to. We purposely mapped out a second and third act in our [investment] deck to present. To say: hey guys, if we max out our industry, let’s say we get to 50 percent market share. Cool, maybe it’s a $150 million dollar business. But if we monetize the homebuyer and have all these other products we can stack on and go to adjacencies, ok now we’re in that $300, $400, $500 million dollar range. Our bankers really helped us map out those scenarios.”
In other words, the Wagstaff brothers were deliberately dangling the opportunity of “monetizing the homebuyer” to private equity buyers as part of the story behind a $90 million minority stake in 2023 and a $110 million valuation in 2024. The pitch was that Spectora could quadruple in value, in part, by facilitating offers of insurance and warranties to the buyers already flowing through the software. By “leveraging” the home inspector’s clients, Spectora could grow to a $500 million valuation, the story goes. Radian Capital apparently saw the opportunity and went for it.
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Betrayal
KC Bartley, a Tennessee home inspector, was one of the vocal inspectors who was deeply disappointed by Spectora’s attempted rollout of Fixle. Bartley’s voice carries in this space, in part, because he built a report template that is incredibly popular amongst home inspectors. The KC Bartley Inspection Template contains more than 6,000 narratives and is used by more than 500 inspection companies across nearly every state. It was originally built for Spectora.
Bartley sees the similarities between what Spectora did and what Porch and HomeGauge did in the past:
“In 2017, before Spectora really came into fruition, most report writing software providers like HomeGauge and HIP weren’t all-in-one platforms. They didn’t have payment integration or scheduling. That year, ISN was purchased by Porch, and they did the exact same thing: they said, ‘we’re going to market to your clients, we’re going to offer your clients additional services.’ Spectora was starting up right around the same time ISN announced this. That really led to Spectora’s dominance. They became one of the first true all-in-one platforms for inspectors, and they weren’t trying to market to the home inspector’s clients back then.”
When Spectora made its own announcement on March 31, Bartley says the language was familiar. “It was the exact same thing. In the initial announcement, they didn’t give us an option to opt out. They said they had polled inspectors and realtors and found they would like these services offered to them. Starting on this date, your clients will see Fixle products offered to them,” reports Bartley.
Bartley continued:
“That inspector-client relationship belongs to the inspector. We spent our marketing dollars to get that client. We performed the inspection to get their trust. The homebuyer doesn’t necessarily differentiate between the inspector and the software platform the inspector uses. If, after the inspection, they begin seeing marketing offers or communications inside the same client experience where they receive their inspection report, they may view those offers as coming from, or being endorsed by, the inspector. That puts our reputation into a marketing relationship we didn’t choose. That creates the potential to damage some of the trust we worked to build with that client.”
What sharpened it, Bartley told me, was the contrast with the feature requests inspectors had been filing for years:
“I was mowing my lawn when I got the notification. I pulled out my phone, saw an upcoming feature from Spectora, and read it. I stopped mowing. I had to get off my mower. I was so disappointed because there have been so many features we have wanted them to implement and we’ve been asking for years. To have the time to roll out a program that benefits them, but not work on the things that benefit us, their clients, their revenue generators—it hurt. I knew right then I was going to have to find another software.”
Bartley does not expect software platforms to stay independent forever:
“I understand that as these companies grow, outside investment or acquisition may eventually become part of the equation. But these companies have to know that the client relationship belongs to us. Home inspectors are the software provider’s client, but the homebuyer is our client. Now with AI, it is going to be insane the amount of data they are able to capture. They want to sell home insurance and warranties and alarm systems. They want to hook up the utilities, and more. My advice to home inspectors is don’t allow vendors to market to your clients unless you have affirmatively chosen to participate. It should always be the inspector’s choice, not the vendor’s choice. It’s your reputation and your credibility.”
Regulatory Concerns
There are also regulatory concerns. During the HomeGauge and Spectora controversies, inspectors pointed to Louisiana’s Code of Ethics for licensed home inspectors which bars a licensee from disclosing inspection results or a client’s personal information without the client’s approval, and separately prohibits accepting compensation “directly or indirectly, for referring or recommending contractors or other service providers or products to inspection clients” unless the arrangement is disclosed and scheduled before the inspection takes place (Title 46, Part XL, Chapter 5, §501). Inspectors in Wisconsin raised the same objection, pointing to state law barring direct and indirect kickbacks for referrals, and no state board has publicly answered whether a software vendor’s marketing program puts a licensee in violation.
Building an Alternative
Nick Gromicko, founder of the International Association of Certified Home Inspectors (InterNACHI®), argues that inspectors have misread the situation from the beginning. “The only reason our industry thinks for-profit companies shouldn’t have their fingers in this profession is InterNACHI®. Anywhere else in life, you walk into McDonald’s and you know they’re trying to upsell you. Nobody’s offended. We held the ethical ground so high for so long that the industry gets flustered when it runs into reality,” says Gromicko.
Gromicko does not think the big money buyers were ever after subscription revenue:
“Every one of these software companies is a for-profit business. Everyone has to realize that Porch, which is now a $1.6 billion market cap, for-profit, public company, didn’t buy inspection software companies to sell inspection software. Nobody big wants your $499-a-year software. There’s no money in it. The value is in the data. The economics and the value of the home inspectors’ data mean that every software company that gets to 500 users will be getting too-good-to-turn-down offers from private equity. It makes acquisitions and roll ups of software vendors inevitable.”
Gromicko has seen what the data is worth firsthand:
“Why would somebody big want inspection software? These are second grade questions. The way you price insurance really well is through data. We were offered north of $200 million to put InterNACHI® underneath a management company so they could get at the home inspectors’ data. I turned it down. Matt Ehrlichman at Porch is a longtime friend of mine, comes out three or four times a year, and I won’t sell him data either. InterNACHI® has never given him one piece of data.”
InterNACHI® resisted for decades the call to get into home inspection software. Now, Gromicko says he has no choice:
“Based on what we’ve seen over the last five years, I’m doing software because it’s too valuable to survive without being purchased. Big money is coming after the inspectors’ data. InterNACHI® has always stood behind home inspectors so the best way we can do that now is to build our own software. In phase two, we will build a way for the inspector to ethically sell their own data, if they want to, on a platform with their own clients’ permission. It will be the inspector’s choice. I think it can provide a second source of income for home inspectors and provide something really valuable for the client as well.”
Conclusion
Spectora is only the latest in the decades-long struggle between home inspectors and their service providers in the war for data. While Spectora backed down earlier this year, nothing about the ownership of the industry changed. Two companies now control roughly 85 percent of all home inspection software. And both are aggressively pursuing market share. In late July 2026, Spectora CEO Peter Osberg posted to LinkedIn an announcement that Carson Dunlop, an industry veteran serving inspectors for over 50 years, was retiring its Horizon software and recommending Spectora as the platform for its customers.
Many inspectors have left Spectora for smaller platforms this year and they are betting those platforms stay small. But if Gromicko is right, any of them that get big enough will be bought too.
What inspectors did prove in April is that they have leverage. They complained loudly enough that a company reversed itself in four days. The move proved risky for Spectora as well, as many home inspectors lost trust in the company and publicly documented their switch to other providers (like KC Bartley). Will that leverage hold? And how safe is the inspector’s data anyway? Time will tell.
About the Author
Isaac Peck is the Publisher of Working RE magazine and the Senior Broker and President of OREP.org, a leading provider of E&O insurance for savvy professionals in 50 states and DC. Over 14,000 professionals trust OREP for their E&O and liability insurance. Isaac received his master’s degree in accounting at San Diego State University. Reach Isaac at isaac@orep.org or (888) 347-5273. CA License #4116465.
Published by OREP Insurance Services, LLC. Calif. License #0K99465