What Does a Home Inspection Report Look Like?

A quick guide to navigating your home inspection report

The home inspection report is an important part of the buying process. The report will provide you with detailed information about the condition of your future home. If this is your first home purchase, you may not be familiar with home inspection reports and how to navigate and understand them. Likewise, if you haven’t purchased a home in several years, you may be unfamiliar with the technology of today’s reports.

We’ve included some tips below to help you get the most out of your home inspection report.

1. How will the report be delivered?

These days, most home inspectors will deliver the report in digital and PDF formats. Good home inspection reports should be viewable across all device platforms (mobile, desktop, ipad, etc.). The report should contain high resolution photos and videos (as needed) and include a table of contents and summary for easy navigation.

2. Sidebar navigation

On the left side of our home inspection reports is the sidebar navigation. You can quickly jump to different segments of the report by clicking on the desired section. Sections that contain repair recommendations will have a blue circle with the number of suggested repairs/improvements for that particular section.

3. Viewing options

Directly beneath the main picture you will find a blue bar that contains button options that allow you to view the full report, view a summary of the suggested repairs/improvements, or view only the significant/safety related items listed within the report. There is also a button that enables you to download the full report or summary report as a PDF document.

4. Individual sections

Each section will contain information about that particular item or component. There are also subsections that include more specific details about particular items or components that fall under the main section label. For example, lighting fixtures and receptacles can be found under the electrical section.

If repairs or improvements are recommended within a particular section, then one or more high-resolution photos, along with a description, will be displayed in a color-coded box. Clients can further view any included photos in a full-screen lightbox to examine hard-to-see details. Long comments and descriptions are stored in expandable text boxes to keep the report clean and understandable.

5. Quick contact links

Clients can contact the home inspector or their Realtor by phone or email with any questions they may have in one click.

6. Report Tools (for Real Estate Agents)

Our advanced home inspection reports have built-in tools to help make the Real Estate Agent’s life a little easier. Once the report has been finalized and repair requests have been discussed with the buyer, the Real Estate Agent can take advantage of the “Report Tools” tab located in the upper right corner of our home inspection reports.

One of the most popular tools is the Repair Request Builder, which allows Real Estate Agents to quickly create and share a repair request document directly from our home inspection report. The document includes photos, videos and customizable text, and can be shared by the Real Estate Agent via email or text message.