Questions, answered directly.

Scapular provides manufactured-home structural inspections, FHA/HUD foundation reports, PFGMH and affixation documentation, aluminum-wiring certification, and load-bearing wall engineering.

Engineering reports are signed and sealed by a Professional Engineer licensed in the state where the property is located. Service availability is confirmed for your address.

Primarily: mortgage lenders, loan officers, real estate agents, title companies, and homebuyers who have been told by their lender or insurer that a specific inspection needs to be signed and sealed by a licensed Professional Engineer.

If you were told "we need a PE-stamped structural report," you're in the right place.

Because different professionals search for our services using very different language. A loan officer looking for an FHA inspection types different keywords than a title company looking for a PFGMH report. Each specialty site is built for one audience and one kind of report. This site is where the firm and the engineer live.

Same firm, same engineer, same seal on every report regardless of which URL you ordered from.

A Professional Engineer is licensed by a state licensing board after passing two multi-day technical exams and accumulating at least four years of qualifying engineering experience under another licensed engineer. It's a legally binding credential — when a P.E. stamps a report, they're putting their license on it.

FHA, VA, and USDA underwriters require PE-stamped reports specifically because the signature carries legal weight that a home inspector's report doesn't. More on this in The P.E. page.

Foundation type and condition, anchoring system, skirting, tie-downs, pier spacing and integrity, frame and chassis, HUD data plate verification, and any visible structural concerns. Every inspection produces a sealed PDF with a photo-documented appendix.

The underlying inspection is similar across loan types — the report formatting is where it matters. FHA loans should use the FHA-specific variant (ordered through inspectfha.com) because the documentation format is built around FHA underwriting requirements. Conventional, VA, and USDA loans typically work fine with the standard manufactured structural report.

Not sure? Order through the request form and we'll route it correctly on intake.

No. A home inspection is a general condition survey performed by a home inspector. A PE structural inspection is a focused structural evaluation performed by a licensed Professional Engineer and carrying a legally binding PE seal. They answer different questions, carry different liability, and are not interchangeable.

Most buyers of manufactured homes need both — the home inspection for their own informational purposes, and the PE inspection because the lender requires it.

The inspection scope is similar to the standard manufactured structural inspection, but the report is formatted around FHA's specific documentation requirements: HUD data plate verification, permanent foundation compliance against the Permanent Foundations Guide for Manufactured Housing (PFGMH), and appendix-ready photo documentation structured exactly how FHA underwriters expect to see it.

Our first-submission approval rate on FHA inspections was 97% in 2025.

FHA accepts reports from licensed Professional Engineers, yes. But in practice, reports formatted outside of FHA conventions frequently come back from underwriting with revision requests — which adds days to the close. We build the FHA variant to avoid that round-trip.

They're distinct documents, though lenders frequently use the terms interchangeably. PFGMH (Permanent Foundations Guide for Manufactured Housing) is a foundation certification — the engineer certifies that the foundation meets HUD's permanent foundation standards. An affixation report separately certifies that the manufactured home is permanently affixed to the site.

Real property conversions typically require both. We deliver them together on the same field visit.

Most commonly: when a manufactured home is being converted from personal property (title in the DMV) to real property (deed filed with the county recorder), and when FHA financing is being used on a manufactured home. Some VA and USDA loans require it as well.

If you're not sure whether your deal needs it, your title company or lender will usually specify. When in doubt, order it — unlike most inspections, it's cheap insurance against a deal stalling in title.

Alumiconn is a specific type of connector used to remediate aluminum branch-circuit wiring in homes built roughly 1965–1973. When a home inspector flags aluminum wiring — which is common in that era of STL housing stock — insurers frequently refuse to bind coverage until the wiring has been remediated and certified.

The certification is typically triggered by one of three events: a buyer's inspector flags aluminum wiring, an insurer refuses to bind, or a lender conditions the loan on remediation.

Two reasons. First, aluminum wiring concentration follows housing-stock age — St. Louis County and St. Charles County have the highest density of 1965–1973 housing stock in our coverage area. Second, Alumiconn certifications are performed by the certifying engineer personally (not delegated to a field inspector), which caps how far we can cost-effectively travel.

If your property is outside the two-county zone, email us and we'll refer you to another PE who handles this service in your market.

We respond within one business day. Your quote confirms the field-visit window, report-delivery target, and any rush fee.

Have a closing deadline? Include it with your request so we can check whether the available schedule meets your needs.

No. You need to arrange access — coordinated through a listing agent, seller, or lockbox — but your physical presence isn't required. Most of our inspections are performed without the buyer on site.

We are currently licensed and actively inspecting in Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Indiana. Availability depends on the service and property address; aluminum-wiring certification has a separate service area. The interactive map on our Coverage page shows active status by state with estimated field scheduling times.

We can often refer you to another PE who covers your market. Email us directly — if we know someone credible in your area, we'll make the introduction. We don't charge for referrals and won't send you somewhere we wouldn't go ourselves.

Yes — this is where most of the work is. Manufactured homes are disproportionately located in rural and exurban areas, and we've built our scheduling around that. We don't have metro-only restrictions or minimum population requirements. If the property is in a state we're licensed in, we go. We routinely cover properties 150+ miles from St. Louis without issue.

For properties within our standard coverage radius, drive time is included in the base fee. For outlying locations — typically properties more than 200 miles from St. Louis — a travel supplement may apply. We quote this upfront when you submit the request, so there are no surprises at invoice. Most lenders find the all-in cost still compares favorably to sourcing a local engineer cold.

No. The ordering party's location is irrelevant — only the property address determines which state license applies. We work with lenders and title companies headquartered across the country who have borrowers in our coverage states. Wire instructions, portal delivery, and invoicing work the same regardless of where your office is.

Border properties are extremely common in our territory — the MO/AR line, southern IL, the KS/MO metro corridor. The report is issued under whichever state the property sits in per its legal address, and we're licensed in all the relevant combinations. If the address puts you across a line into a state we don't yet cover (Tennessee, Oklahoma, Nebraska), let us know — we can advise on the fastest path forward.

We batch field days geographically when we can — a rural county in southeast Missouri might be grouped with two other jobs on the same drive. That batching actually helps rural clients: it keeps costs down and means we're already in the area regularly. In practice, rural properties in active states schedule within the same window as metro ones — typically 3–7 business days out.

Our licensed P.E. — personally. Every report in the network. Field work may be performed by inspectors operating under P.E. supervision (except Alumiconn, which is performed by the certifying engineer personally), but the seal and signature are on every PDF we deliver.

Yes. Scapular carries $2M aggregate professional liability coverage. Proof of insurance is available on request for partner agreements and as a standard attachment on Enterprise-tier delivery emails.