The pillar on live video for construction inspections sorted the moments in a build into two kinds: the ones where something is about to be covered up, and the ones where something is about to be paid for. The last three posts in this series were all the first kind. This one is the second.
Construction financing arrives in stages. Somebody from the lender comes out to look before each stage is released, on their schedule, with their own list. I am not going to describe what that person looks for, because it is not my list and it is not the same from one lender to the next. What I can describe is the walk that happens between those visits, when the owner is in another city, the framing is up, the rough-in is half done, and both of us want the progress before the draw on record with a date on it.
Why the owner wants it and why I want it
The owner wants it because they are sending money toward a building they cannot see. A photo folder that arrives on a Friday with forty files in it tells them the house exists. It does not tell them what happened this week, in what order, or whether the thing they asked about on the phone actually got done.
I want it for a more selfish reason. The next time somebody says the plumbing rough-in was not done at the second stage, I want to open a recording from the day I said it was, walk to the master bath wall, and show the stubs. Memory does not settle that. A dated walk does. Timestamps that hold up is about why the date on a recording is worth more than the date on a photo.
Neither reason has anything to do with the lender's visit. That visit is its own thing, on its own day, with its own person. This walk is the record the owner and I both hold, and it happens on our schedule.
The progress before the draw walk, in order
I do it the same way every time, so the owner learns the route and this week's recording is comparable to the last one.
Start at the street. Wide shot of the lot, say the address, the date, and which stage we are in. Then the exterior, all four sides, because the owner has not seen the house since the slab and wants the shape of it before the detail.
Inside, room by room in the same order as the plans. In each room I say the room name and which wall I am facing, then what is done and what is not. "Kitchen, west wall. Rough electrical is in, the island circuit is stubbed at the floor here. Plumbing is not started on this wall yet." Done and not done in the same breath, every wall. The not-done is the part a photo folder never volunteers.
Mechanicals get their own minute. Furnace location, duct runs, water heater stub, panel. Then the roof from the ground or the ladder, and the site: what materials are on the lot, what is staged for next week.
Twenty minutes for a house this size. It goes faster than a written progress report and it says more.
Stills of every wall before it closes
While the walk runs I capture full-resolution stills, and they stay attached to the inspection. One per wall on anything that is about to get covered, one wide per room, one of the panel with the labels readable.
The reason is that the owner will ask about one specific spot in three weeks, after drywall, and a still of that wall answers it without anybody scrolling a recording. At framing the stills are of blocking and headers. At rough-in they are of stubs and boxes. Whatever is exposed the week the stage turns over is what gets a still, because it is what will not be visible the next time anybody asks.
The owner watches live, and shares what they choose
The owner taps a texted link and watches in the browser on their phone. No app, no account, no camera prompt. They can be at their desk in Denver while I am standing in the mudroom. If they want their spouse or their architect on it too, the same link works on more than one phone, up to five at once.
They cannot talk to me during the walk. The viewer side is watch-only. What they can do is tap "I have a question about this," which saves the frame they were looking at with a short note and shows it to me on my screen while I am still in the room. Most weeks that is "is that the outlet we moved?" and I turn the camera to it and say yes. Voice questions wait for the phone call after I end the inspection, and taking a call mid-walk on an iPhone suspends the stream anyway.
Afterward the recording lands with my company in the dashboard, not on my phone, with the stills, the flagged frames, and a timestamped history of when it started, when the owner joined, and when it ended. Recordings are private and reached through short-lived signed links, never a public URL, and the owner decides who else sees one. Their lender's contact, their appraiser, their father-in-law. That is their call and I do not make it for them. The security page has the specifics on access.
What this walk is not
It is not the lender's visit. Their person still comes out and still looks with their own eyes. I have never had a walk like this stand in for that and I would not offer it as one.
It is not touching the work. A recording of a header does not tell anyone it is bearing where it should be bearing. Somebody with a level and a hand still has to be there.
It is not a written progress log. The log says what happened. The recording shows what it looked like. The owner reads one and watches the other, and they are better together than apart.
And it is not for every week. On a slow week, with a pour delayed and nothing changed since the last walk, I say so in a two-minute recording from the street and do not text anybody. The walk earns its twenty minutes at the stage changes, which on most houses is also when the draw comes up.
Where to start
If you already run progress walkthroughs the owner believes, this is the same walk with a stage boundary and a date pinned to it. Run it the week before the lender's person is due, with the owner watching, and keep the stills. The mechanics of the viewer side are on the how it works page.
InspectStream records what an inspector observed. It is not a public adjusting service and does not prepare, negotiate, or advise on insurance claims.