This happened to me a while back but I thought it would be good to share to possibly save someone 10s of thousands of dollars.
I had some foundation cracks and a few small cracks in the drywall of my house. I got worried and called out a foundation company that offered a “free” inspection. The inspector proceeded to tell me that my house was “sinking and breaking in half like the titanic” and I needed $25k in repairs. I became very stressed. With a repair that large, I wanted a second opinion.
I hired a proper structural engineer. It wasn’t cheap, he charged me $450 to look around for about 15 minutes. I had told him what the foundation company had told me and he laughed. I ended up needing no repairs besides a point and retuck. The cracks in the brick? He said those were cracks from thermal expansion. He saved me about $24.5k.
I later read that a lot of the “free” foundation inspectors operate on a commission basis. They will always tell you that you will need foundation work, otherwise they would be going out of business. Beware of free inspections.
I grew up in poor mountain areas. Our local tree guy (name was Woody) also did cheap home repairs. He certaintly was not certified or an expert but he would do it pretty cheap along with other odd jobs. He would be the first to tell you if it was something he couldn’t do and he always smelled funny but did a great job.
As an adult I can’t believe my parents hired him but we were really poor and needed a tree to come down before it crushed our house so I suppose desperation played a part.