Home inspections early and often?

I've been seeing a number of pieces encouraging homeowners to have professional home inspections more regularly than is commonly considered. Obviously, all potential home buyers MUST do a home inspection before their purchase (why do some 20% of people waive their inspection rights...my experience?). But should the average home owner be having inspections periodically to check-out the condition of their home regardless of its being on the market or not? Why?

Some of the reasons might be to find and repair items pre-listing so you're not opening the door for a potential buyer to get out of a deal under the inspection contingency or simply to protect your investment and see what's happening with your property. Though I see some of the self-interested inspectors talk about every 3-5 years (that might be a bit much), every 7-8 sure sounds viable to me. We're talking about most peoples most important investment and from my experience in the Chicago area we're talking about $300ish. And for people like me who can't fix anything or wouldn't know what to inspect, I think this information would be valuable.