JMIReports: Field Inspector Work Site

What’s JMIReports?

JMIReports enlists freelancers to do field inspections of commercial and residential properties, paying a set rate for each job.

How it works

You sign up with the company, verifying that you have a smart phone, driver’s license and can pass a background check. You also set a geographic radius around your home, based on how far you’re willing to travel.

Once accepted to the platform, you’ll see assignments that fit your service area. The orders will include the pay for the assignment, where it’s located and what needs to be done. You’re compensated for each assignment, but are not paid for mileage or drive time.

Assignments

Assignments typically take about 20 minutes, according to JMI. Most “easy” jobs appear to pay between $7.50 and $10 per inspection. The company says you can do 15-20 of these inspections per day, earning roughly $150 to $200 in an 8-hour period.

With experience, the site says inspectors can be given more complicated inspections that pay better, but may require a measuring wheel or telescoping pole for your smart phone. JMIReports estimates that at this level, you could earn $250 per day.

The site recommends that you batch multiple jobs in a tight geographic area and handle all of them in a group. That allows you to cut the uncompensated drive time and earn the most.

The catch

But, field inspectors say that you don’t get a batch of inspections. Instead, you’re likely to be presented with one $7.50 job that’s geographically undesirable. The job may only take 20 minutes, but factor in your gas and driving time, and you see that you’re getting considerably less than minimum wage.

Worse, you need to be trained to do even the simple inspections. And that training appears to be all on your dime. If there was no training requirement, it might make sense to sign up for this side hustle, just in case it presented an easy job within a few miles of your house. But, to train for that off-chance is a waste of your time.

Recommendations

We’d suggest you avoid JMIReports, which gets substandard ratings from worker reviewers on both Indeed and Glassdoor. (See worker comments below.) You can find JMIReports here.

If you want to do property inspections, we’d recommend ProxyPics, IVueit and WeGoLook.

What their users say (from Indeed)

A job 30 miles away one way (an hours drive at least) pays $7.50. So minus costs of materials and gas I’d be walking away with $0.75 per hour of my time (not even including wear and tear on the vehicle).

I have been with JMI for 4 years as a field inspector and it was one of my best companies. Now it is awful! New management has implemented a phone app that rarely works, takes more time to use and reduced the pay. An example of my day: I drove over 3 hours for three inspections that played $10.50 each. I arrived at one with a locked gate so I did not even get the inspection done. The app went out. I had to come home to finish the inspections-another 15 minutes each.

Pay is horrible

The pay is horrible, the software is garbage, the management is worthless. They’re currently trying to change how residential orders are completed. Don’t waste your time at JMI Reports because it will cost you.

I enjoyed both the residential and commercial property inspections and the online training was good. You control your schedule, so it is good for a part time gig. You don’t get paid for drive time or vehicle mileage, so you need to take assignments that are not too far away. The pay for residential inspections is minimal and is currently being reduced with the introduction of new reporting software.

From Glassdoor

You will drive 58 miles for a job paying $10.00. So, you could be driving an hour, on your time, and spending 10-15 minutes on site. May have to do part of entry when you get home. Drive an hour back. For $10.00. No thanks. You are paying them to do the reports.

Definitely a money loosing proposition. You have the option of accepting only the jobs you want, but if you don’t accept what’s assigned, you will not get additional jobs in future.

12/12/2022