'Home Inspector Joe' Went Blind When He Was 23 Here's What Happened

Is 'Home Inspector Joe' blind? Although he can currently see, the HGTV star lost his vision in his early 20s because of keratoconus. HGTV fans have been tuning into Home Inspector Joe since it first premiered in November 2021, and it hasn't taken long for them to fall in love with Joe Mazza's attention to

(*23*)Is 'Home Inspector Joe' blind? Although he can these days see, the HGTV big name lost his vision in his early 20s because of keratoconus.

Michelle Stein - Author

HGTV enthusiasts were tuning into Home Inspector Joe since it first premiered in November 2021, and it hasn't taken long for them to fall in love with Joe Mazza's consideration to element when it comes to making sure safety in houses. With the help of designer Noel Gatts, Joe is helping families pick out and renovate homes. What fans would possibly now not understand is that he was as soon as blind. Keep reading to be told more about his enjoy.

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Joe Mazza of 'Home Inspector Joe' went blind at age 23.

Those who have tuned into Home Inspector Joe have spotted that Joe is exceptionally gifted when it involves identifying and finding peculiar smells within the properties he's examining. (He can scent mildew a mile away.) As it seems, there is a reason why Joe has evolved this kind of prepared sense of smell. That's as a result of when he was 23, he misplaced his eyesight because of an eye illness known as keratoconus.

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People with keratoconus revel in thinning and bulging in their cornea into an irregular cone shape, resulting in vision loss, in line with Johns Hopkins Medicine. Joe ended up needing two cornea transplants with a view to restore his imaginative and prescient.

"A 7-year-old child passed away in Ohio and the parents donated his cornea to me," he explained in a 2017 Instagram post. "Moral of my story is, don’t take anything for granted, especially your health."

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Joe Mazza has a bat tattoo in honor of his nickname when he misplaced his eyesight.

Home Inspector Joe fanatics have indubitably spotted that Joe has various tattoos on his fingers. Among this ink is a bat keeping two eyeballs — his first-ever tattoo — which he were given on an episode of Miami Ink.

"My nickname is 'Joey Bats' because 23 years ago, I lost my eyesight from a condition called keratoconus, and I had two cornea transplants," Joe mentioned in an interview with Realtor.com. "My friends started calling me Joey Bats because I was blind as a bat. So as a joke, it stuck, and that’s my name now."

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Joe earned any other nickname on account of his heightened sense of scent.

While he was quickly blind, Joe evolved a heightened sense of smell that he nonetheless has to nowadays. It permits him to briefly determine if a house is musty, if there is a hidden fuel leak, and even supposing humidity ranges are too prime. Fittingly, this has earned him every other nickname: "The Sniffer."

"When you lose a sense like eyesight or hearing, something else kicks in," Joe advised Realtor.com. "So when I lost my eyesight, my sense of smell really got strong, and it works in my business because all I do is smell around a house, and it allows me to find issues in the home. It’s pretty wild. I can walk into a house and be like, 'All right. We have a mold condition here.'"

You can catch "The Sniffer" in action in new episodes of Home Inspector Joe on Wednesdays at Nine p.m. EST on HGTV.

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