Found a home you love? That's great, but before you get too excited we need to look at the property's condition. That's where the home inspection comes into play.

I’ve been in this business for ten years. I have walked through hundreds of inspections. And one of the things I still see happen, regularly, is a buyer read an inspection report and think everything is basically fine... when the report is quietly trying to tell them it’s not.

The thing is, inspection reports are not written for you. They’re written to protect the inspector. The language is hedged and passive almost by design. And when you don’t know the dialect, you miss things.

So here’s what I’ve been saying to clients in my office for a decade, now written down.

“deferred maintenance”

Nobody has been taking care of this house. And deferred maintenance compounds — the skipped caulking becomes the water intrusion... which becomes the rot and mold behind the wall. If an owner let the visible stuff slide, you have to wonder what happened behind the walls. This phrase is never just cosmetic, even when the list looks manageable.

“serviceable”

Still works. For now. I’ve seen this word on 22-year-old HVAC units, water heaters that are living on borrowed time, roofs that have quietly exceeded their useful life. “Serviceable” is the inspector’s way of passing something that probably shouldn’t pass. Get a bid from an actual contractor before you close. Not after.

“monitor”

I want to be honest with you: nobody ever monitors. The thing sits, gets worse, and becomes expensive. When an inspector writes “monitor,” they found something that concerned them and couldn’t fully diagnose it in a walkthrough. Treat it like a referral from your doctor that you’ve been putting off. It’s that.

“recommend evaluation by a specialist”

This is the one I always flag for clients. A generalist inspector stepping back and saying  "you need a structural engineer, an electrician, a roofer", means they found something outside their confidence level. Don’t skip it. Don’t let the seller’s timeline pressure you into skipping it. That's not to scare you away either, but it's pointing you at what to look through further.

“at or near end of service life”

The clock ran out. Budget for replacement and get that number before you remove any contingencies, not after.

the $15k list that became $60k

I’ve watched this play out more than once.

Buyer gets a repair list from their inspector — let’s say it totals around $15,000. They negotiate a $10k credit, close, and feel good about it. Then the contractors actually show up.

The minor flashing work turns into a full tear-off when the decking underneath is gone. The serviceable HVAC fails the first winter. The “evidence of previous water intrusion” in the crawlspace turns out to be current, active, and spreading. Each item in the report was technically accurate. None of it was explained in plain English.

Final bill: somewhere around $58,000. That $10k credit lands differently in hindsight.

Inspection reports are written to protect the inspector. That’s not a knock on inspectors, it’s just the reality of what that document is and isn’t. Learning to read between the lines is the difference between going into a home clear-eyed and getting a very expensive surprise six months after move-in.

If you're looking at a home and wondering what kind of inspections to get, that's where hiring a great realtor comes into play!