The TREC Commissioners met on May 3 in Austin in person for the first time in over a year.  It was nice to see everyone in person once again.  Tony Slagle presented the Commissioners with a legislative update, which included two inspector-related bills. The first would reduce the number of license types by eliminating the Real Estate Inspector license, and the second included the removal of the Inspector Recovery Fund.  With the priorities for the current session being focused on other priorities, such as budget and infrastructure, these two inspector-related items will likely not come out of committee.  We will be looking forward to the next session to get some traction on these items.

The new Inspector Legal/SOP course was approved by the Commissioners.  The effective date of this course will be September 1, 2021.  The course will be valid for two years. This new course will help with consistency issues that have been a concern in the past. This is the first time that the course has been completely done from start to finish internally. The amount of effort that the committee, subject matter experts, and especially staff is substantial.  I want to thank everyone for the amount of time that was spent on this project.  Now that we have a solid template for this course, subsequent updates should be substantially easier to create. 

During the May Commission meeting, rules relating to the Inspector Standards of Practice were proposed. These proposed revisions are the product of many meetings of the Inspector SOP subcommittee and the work of the entire IAC. This means that we are now in a 3-month public comment phase for any changes to be made to the Standards.  These proposed Standards have been in the works for 3 years now.  Along with these changes, there will also be a new proposed Inspection Report form as well.  The new report form incorporates the SOP changes as well as some other items, including a complete rework of the preamble to make it easier for consumers to take in the information provided. 

I encourage each of you to review and comment on any of the proposed changes. TREC has launched a new, easy-to-use, online public comment tool or by emailing general.counsel@trec.texas.gov. These proposed changes will be considered for adoption in August.