What happens after a home inspection?

The report arrives, it is forty pages long, and it contains a hundred and forty items. The instinctive reaction is panic. The correct reaction is triage — because a long report is a thorough inspector, not a bad house, and the overwhelming majority of what is in it is maintenance, not disaster.

Sort every finding into four buckets

1. Safety. Anything that could hurt someone: gas leaks, unsafe wiring, missing handrails and guards, blocked flues, absent CO alarms. Address these regardless of who pays.
2. Major defect. A system at or near end of life, active water entry, structural movement. These carry four and five-figure costs and are what negotiation is for.
3. Maintenance. Caulking, grading, servicing, cleaning, minor repairs. Every house has dozens. Do not negotiate over these — asking a seller to caulk a tub is how you lose credibility for the item that matters.
4. Note for later. Items with useful life remaining that you should budget for. The roof with six years left. The furnace at year twelve. This bucket is your capital plan.

A good report does this sorting for you. If yours does not distinguish severity, that itself tells you something about the inspection.

Call the inspector. Actually call them.

This is the most under-used part of the service you just bought. Twenty minutes on the phone will tell you which three items on that list actually matter, what each is likely to cost, and which ones warrant a specialist quote before you decide. An inspector who will not take that call has sold you a PDF rather than an assessment.

Your options in an Ontario transaction

With a live inspection condition, you can generally:

• Waive the condition and proceed. The most common outcome by far, because most reports contain nothing deal-breaking.
• Ask for a price reduction. Usually cleaner than asking for repairs — you control the contractor, the timing and the quality.
• Ask for repairs before closing. Reasonable for safety items. Be specific about scope and require documentation from a licensed trade, because a seller with no future stake has every incentive to do it cheaply.
• Ask for a holdback. Funds held by the lawyers pending completion of agreed work.
• Walk away. If the condition is properly drafted and you are within the period, this is your right.

Your real estate lawyer and your agent should be driving the mechanics. Talk to them before you send anything.

How to ask without blowing up the deal

• Ask for few things. Three items lands. Twenty-two items reads as a renegotiation and hardens the seller.
• Attach evidence. The report excerpt and, where possible, a contractor's quote. "The furnace is old" is arguable; "the furnace is a 1998 unit with a cracked heat exchanger and here is the $6,400 quote" is not.
• Do not ask for what you knew. If the listing said "sold as is, roof needs replacing" and you offered accordingly, asking for the roof is bad faith and everyone in the room knows it.
• Decide your walk-away number before you start. Negotiating without one is how buyers end up accepting a deal they resent.

After you close

The report keeps working. Use it as the maintenance plan for your first two years, and keep it — when you sell, a report showing you addressed the findings is a genuine asset.

Do these in the first month: locate and label the main water shut-off, the gas shut-off and the electrical panel; test every smoke and CO alarm; find out how old the furnace and water heater actually are; and put the roof, furnace, AC and water heater replacement dates in a calendar you will actually look at.

Frequently asked