Between 2016 and 2026, Lou Rubino inspected 11 homes in Clinton Hill. The neighbourhood's rowhouses hide their most expensive problems in the one place no buyer visits: the roofline, where parapets, coping stones and drainage details spend decades failing quietly before a ceiling ever says so.
Rated 5.0 on Google as of August 2026 · U.S. Army veteran owned · NY licence #16000039568 · 516-330-3870
Displaced coping, open mortar joints and painted-over parapet brick all read as trivia from the sidewalk. They are how water gets into the top of a masonry wall — and once inside, it works downward through the house for years on the party-wall side where no one has a window to notice. Lou walks the roof where access allows and reports the wall tops like the structure they are.
Drainage is the other half. A row house sheds its whole roof through a leader or two, and a disconnected or short-changed leader is a foundation problem on a delay timer. It is the cheapest serious finding in the report — when someone looks.
Related: How Lou inspects a brownstone · What an inspection costs · Schedule an inspection.
All three photographs are from Lou's own Clinton Hill inspection reports, chosen because they show a building component and nothing that identifies a property or an owner.
A flat roof hides everything from the street: membrane seams, patches, drainage and parapet condition. Patching is normal maintenance — the question a report answers is whether the membrane still has a working life. How roofs are examined and reported.
A flat roof hides everything from the street: membrane seams, patches, drainage and parapet condition. Patching is normal maintenance — the question a report answers is whether the membrane still has a working life. How roofs are examined and reported.
An inspector removes the readily accessible panel covers because New York requires it — most of what matters in a panel is invisible with the cover on. Double-tapped breakers, mixed wire eras and scorched connections are all findings that only appear with the cover off. Why the covers come off.
The crawlspace is where the floor structure, plumbing runs and half the wiring actually live — and the part of a house nobody visits between sales. New York requires the report to say what was and was not accessible, and why. The "not observed" rule, explained.
Supply plumbing is judged by material and era — and by the small evidence at the joints. Corrosion and mineral tracks at connections show slow weeping long before a failure. Moisture evidence, explained.
All photographs are from Lou's own inspection reports for jobs in this area, screened so nothing identifies a property or an owner.
Lou covers Long Island, the five boroughs and Westchester from his base in Wantagh, and the archive behind these pages shows where that work has actually concentrated.
Also nearby: Bedford-Stuyvesant · Bushwick · all 26 towns.
His Clinton Hill file goes back to 2016. Yours would not be the first.
Not sure yet? Read what New York requires of your inspector or see a real report.