How should a lender choose a draw inspection company?

What to check before the first order.

1. Coverage. Every address in your pipeline, rural ones included, at a stated price. Ask whether the price changes by location.
2. Inspector qualification and independence. Who the inspectors are, how they are vetted and how the company keeps them independent of your loan officers. The FDIC's construction and land development examination procedures ask examiners the same questions.
3. A sample report. Look for percent complete by budget line, photos tied to those lines, date, time and location data, and clear exceptions. A sample that would not support a disbursement decision predicts live reports that won't either.
4. Pricing in writing. A per-inspection rate, unit add-ons, and any minimums or platform fees.
5. Turnaround as a measured average. Ask what is measured, from which event to which. Treat a promise for every order with caution.
6. Your own inspectors. Whether in-house or preferred inspectors can work in the same workflow and produce the same report.
7. How work moves. Ordering, status updates and delivery inside the systems you already run, with an audit trail behind each order.

Treat it as a third-party relationship.

For banks, the federal banking agencies' Interagency Guidance on Third-Party Relationships (June 2023) expects risk management scaled to the risk of the activity across the whole life cycle: planning, due diligence, contract terms, ongoing monitoring and termination. A draw inspection company touches every advance on a construction loan, so document the diligence and review performance after onboarding, not only before it. Credit unions and private lenders answer to different rules but carry the same practical risk.

How RAZE answers those questions.

RAZE publishes its residential draw inspection rates on the RAZE Rate Card: $125 per single-family inspection when RAZE sends the inspector, or $25 per request with your own inspector, at any U.S. address, including Alaska and Hawaii. The same page shows an example report. Direct Request lets your own inspectors complete orders in the RAZE Mobile App on the same report standard as RAZE Marketplace inspectors. Orders come from the Ordering Engine, the RAZE API or the RAZE MCP. RAZE averages 1.1 days from request to submission on residential draw inspections nationwide, an average rather than a promise for any one order.

For the questions to ask on a vendor call, see how to choose a draw inspection company: 7 questions to ask.