O's Home Inspection

O's Home Inspection is essentially one man: Otis Ellerbee, who runs the firm himself and, by his Better Business Bureau listing, has been inspecting homes for 17 years. He works out of the Dorchester/Boston area and, by his own account, built an independent practice to give buyers — first-timers especially — a closer, more patient walk-through of the house they're about to commit to. That patience is the throughline of his reviews. On Angi and HomeAdvisor, which carry the same 19 ratings, he sits at 3.5, built mostly from a cluster of early-2010s write-ups that credit him for being thorough and for taking time to explain what he found rather than handing over a checklist. The catch is the calendar. The newest of those reviews dates to 2017, nearly a decade ago, so there's little to go on for how the work looks now. His reviews aren't uniformly positive either — one unhappy customer described a rushed inspection and a report that never arrived. His BBB page is an A+ with no complaints on file, though the business isn't BBB accredited. For a first-time buyer who wants someone to talk them through a house as he goes, Otis fits that description on paper. Given how long it's been since the public reviews were refreshed, ask to see a recent sample report and pin down turnaround time and pricing before you book.