{"id":302011,"date":"2026-07-21T18:24:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T18:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/302011\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T18:24:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T18:24:12","slug":"she-was-told-shed-fail-now-shes-a-top-home-inspector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/302011\/","title":{"rendered":"She Was Told She’d Fail \u2014 Now She’s a Top Home Inspector"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joseph Gathers wanted to own a home inspection franchise, and back in 2016, he was close to opening a Pillar To Post<\/a> location in Brooklyn, New York. Then his cancer returned. He died soon after.<\/p>\n

His widow, Jacqueline Gathers, didn\u2019t know anything about the home inspection industry<\/a>, and she didn\u2019t have a license. At first, she had no interest in running the business. She even reached out to <\/a>Pillar To Post about selling her husband\u2019s location back to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then I thought about all the hard work he had put into training and getting his license and starting the business,\u201d Jacqueline says. She wanted to honor his memory. And she realized she was being given a midlife opportunity<\/a>. She was in her 50s, and after 30 years with the New York City Housing Authority, she was skilled at managing people and customer service<\/a>. That\u2019s a competitive advantage with home inspectors, because many inspectors are, as she puts it, \u201ca little rough around the edges.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

After training and getting her New York State license, she finally opened her husband\u2019s location in 2018. \u201cHome inspection is a white-male-dominated industry,\u201d says Gathers, who is Black. \u201cI thought, What in the world? How am I going to fit in here? But I put one foot in front of the other.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It must have been incredibly difficult to take over your husband\u2019s franchise when he died.
It actually helped me through my grief<\/a>. My youngest son had gone away to school, so I was in the house by myself. The business gave me a reason to get up, to go out every day, to manage my grief. It was rewarding.<\/p>\n

What was it like as a woman doing home inspections?\u00a0
A lot of the male brokers \u2014 they were very dismissive, to put it nicely. One even told me, \u201cWho\u2019s going to give you business?\u201d I wish I were kidding. He was saying, You don\u2019t belong here.\u00a0 But not for nothing, I was probably smarter than my male counterparts. People started to pay attention. Most of my female realtors said they\u2019d never seen a female inspector.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Do you still perform the property inspections yourself?
I don\u2019t do a lot of inspections now. I don\u2019t want to be on roofs or in basements anymore. I\u2019ll do some condos here and there, but I have a team. I spend my time teaching the home-inspection component in seminars for first-time homebuyers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How are you centering technology in your offering?
We have a package that includes\u00a0a virtual tour and floor plan. In this day and age, people want a digital copy of their property,\u00a0and they\u2019ll pay for it. For insurance purposes with an investment property, say, they have a virtual copy of what that property looked like before anything might happen. You can zoom in as close as a switchblade. We do a lot of million-dollar condos, and they don\u2019t bat an eye. They\u2019ll take that virtual tour and floor plan and email it to their contractor for a home-improvement project.<\/p>\n

What else do you consider critical to your success?
Customer service. If you give somebody exceptional customer service<\/a>, first they\u2019re shocked, and then they\u2019re going to come back and tell their friends. I take those extra steps. I make a phone call to the client and say, \u201cHow did the inspection go? Do you have any questions?\u201d Sometimes a client will call or email at 10:30 at night, and I respond. They always say, \u201cThank you for your quick response.\u201d I\u2019ve had families where I did the mom\u2019s inspection, the daughter\u2019s inspection, the aunt\u2019s inspection \u2014 because they felt they got good service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some people might worry about starting a business in their 50s or 60s. What do you say to that?\u00a0
Being older has helped me really be successful. I understand how to pick and choose battles. Some are not worth fighting. It\u2019s a waste of energy. I just remove myself from those scenarios and keep on doing what I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n

Joseph Gathers wanted to own a home inspection franchise, and back in 2016, he was close to opening a Pillar To Post<\/a> location in Brooklyn, New York. Then his cancer returned. He died soon after.<\/p>\n

His widow, Jacqueline Gathers, didn\u2019t know anything about the home inspection industry<\/a>, and she didn\u2019t have a license. At first, she had no interest in running the business. She even reached out to <\/a>Pillar To Post about selling her husband\u2019s location back to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then I thought about all the hard work he had put into training and getting his license and starting the business,\u201d Jacqueline says. She wanted to honor his memory. And she realized she was being given a midlife opportunity<\/a>. She was in her 50s, and after 30 years with the New York City Housing Authority, she was skilled at managing people and customer service<\/a>. That\u2019s a competitive advantage with home inspectors, because many inspectors are, as she puts it, \u201ca little rough around the edges.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joseph Gathers wanted to own a home inspection franchise, and back in 2016, he was close to opening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,114501,114502,114503,63348,9,24,63,114504],"class_list":["post-302011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-franchise-opportunities","tag-franchise-success-stories","tag-franchisees","tag-franchises","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-women-entrepreneurship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}