By admin 
California families are staying in their homes longer. They are adding rooms for aging parents, converting garages for adult children who cannot afford rent, and upgrading kitchens that have not been touched in 20 years. The housing market has priced out moving. Families are left with renovation as a solution, and it’s only getting more expensive for reasons that have nothing to do with supplies or labor.
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The inspection process contributes to the higher cost of home maintenance. In much of California, even the most routine job requires a homeowner or contractor to schedule an in-person visit, and the wait can run up to two weeks. Many building departments will not give a time window until the day of the inspection, forcing a crew to stand idle for a check that takes only minutes. What makes this expensive is not the permit fee; it’s the time we’ve lost.
This summer, however, the state legislature can fix that. Assembly Bill 1738, authored by Assemblymember Juan Carrillo, D-Palmdale, would let homeowners and contractors request a remote inspection instead of an in-person visit for a defined set of simple, low-risk projects. That set covers work like water heaters, HVAC systems, re-roofs, associated minor electrical and plumbing, and home solar and battery storage.
The inspection is done over a video call, often with same-day approval. And cities and counties keep full control over how they run it.
I watched this problem up close for decades. When I served as Placer County’s chief building official, I launched our remote inspection program in 2019. Rather than having to schedule a building inspection several days out and then wait hours for a building inspector to show up, contractors and homeowners doing simple home renovation projects connect with our inspectors over a Microsoft Teams call. They get same-day approval without delay.
The program was nearly free to implement and saved the county money, including letting us shrink our vehicle fleet. Our inspectors complete more inspections per day because they are not spending half the day in traffic. Our small team can now focus on the complex building projects that actually require eyes on site.
Homeowners and contractors also save money with remote inspections. According to the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), California contractors routinely wait two to six hours for inspections that take five to fifteen minutes, losing a full workday and passing costs of more than $1,000 per inspection on to homeowners.
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In the seven years since Placer County launched its program, not a single contractor or homeowner has misrepresented their work or misused the program. I mention that because it is usually the first concern people raise: What stops someone from cheating? The answer, based on years of running this, is that the concern is largely theoretical. What is not theoretical is the cost of the status quo.
When the process is that burdensome, people stop getting permits at all. that in most California jurisdictions, permit compliance for water heaters and HVAC falls below 20%. A permitting system that the majority of people quietly go around is not protecting anyone.
Remote inspections are not a workaround, they are a better process. Inspectors retain full authority to require corrections or escalate to an in-person visit. Random on-site audits serve as a quality check, and any homeowner found to have willfully misrepresented their work can be barred from the program. The National Fire Protection Association and the International Code Council have both issued formal standards and best practices for how to do this right.
Beyond Placer County, at least 19 California jurisdictions are already running remote inspection programs.
The savings from remote inspections matter most for the projects California most urgently needs to accelerate, like upgrading your roof in time for wildfire season, or installing a heat pump water heater or home solar and battery system to keep the lights on during a blackout and saving money on utility bills.
Now, with AB 1738, California leaders can speed up these projects and make them easier and more cost-efficient for California families. That is the right policy choice.
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Tim Wegner was formerly Placer County’s chief building official.