The home inspection checklist for buyers, rebuilt as questions

What a buyer's checklist is for

A buyer’s home inspection checklist is a tool for reading the inspection, not a substitute for it. The version worth carrying is made mostly of questions to ask rather than things to look at, because nearly everything a buyer can see from a doorway the inspector will see better, and almost nothing a buyer can see is a judgment about condition — which is the only thing an inspection produces.

So the checklist below is built backwards, from the document you will receive. Three published structures divide a house into sections: the ASHI standard of practice, the InterNACHI standard of practice, and the one report form a state genuinely prescribes, Texas’s REI 7-6. Build on one of them and every note you take lands in the same place as the inspector’s finding. Build on a generic list of 300 things and your notes will have nowhere to go.

Build it on the report you will actually get

The three structures are not the same shape, and the differences are worth knowing before you choose one.

Two cautions, because they are what published checklists get wrong. ASHI’s numbering moves between editions — Deck and Balcony stands alone as 5.0 in the version carrying approved changes as of 8 January 2026, where earlier editions folded decks into Exterior — so check the edition stamp before quoting a number. And REI 7-6 governs Texas inspections and nothing else: borrow the structure, but do not expect an Ohio report to use it. Which states prescribe what is a separate question.

The questions to ask before anyone is hired

These belong at the top of a buyer’s checklist and almost never appear on one. They are also the only items here that change the outcome, because once the inspection is booked the scope is set.

“Which standard of practice will you work to, and may I have a copy?” The highest-value question on the page, and not our idea: HUD’s required notice to FHA buyers, form HUD-92564-CN, tells buyers to ask inspectors for “their Standards of Practice (SOP) or for a sample home inspection report”. Read it before the day, because the standard is where the exclusions live and the exclusions are what surprise people.

“What is excluded, in writing?” Kentucky requires reports to state the standards being followed and to “list all other exclusions with specificity.” That is a reasonable thing to ask for in any state, and an inspector who cannot produce the list is working without one.

“What would I have to buy separately?” HUD’s notice names conditions needing separate specialist testing: “radon; air or water quality; presence of asbestos, lead paint, or urea formaldehyde insulation; or pest infestations.” Add the wastewater system — InterNACHI’s plumbing section expressly excludes septic systems.

“Will there be a signed written contract before the day?” The North Carolina licensure board’s most frequently cited compliance failure is that there was not.

“Will the lender’s appraisal cover any of this?” No. HUD puts it in capital letters on the same form: “Appraisals are NOT Home Inspections!”

Should you be there, and what the record actually says

Attendance is close to unregulated. Neither the ASHI standard nor any state standard of practice reviewed for this site addresses whether the client may attend. That scarcity is itself the finding, and two institutional documents are the whole of the evidence we could locate.

The Massachusetts Division of Occupational Licensure’s consumer fact sheet, which carries no date, says: “While not necessary, it is recommended that the buyer be present for the inspection.”

North Carolina Cooperative Extension publication FCS-436, Inspecting a House, by Sandy Zaslow and Glenda Herman — publication date 1 September 1995, reviewed and revised 31 August 2022 — says: “If you decide to hire a professional inspector, be there when the inspection is done. Follow him or her around. Ask questions. It is important to know what is being checked, why, and the condition of each area.” That is a 1995 consumer publication a land-grant extension service still stands behind, which is a different thing from current guidance. The advice has aged well; attribute it by its dates anyway.

How long to set aside has no sourced answer. We looked in the Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, Oregon, Massachusetts, Kentucky and Louisiana rules, in HUD’s buyer notice, in CPSC publications and in both national standards. None states a duration, and the two documents most likely to carry one give none. The only regulatory handle anywhere is Massachusetts, which requires every report to “Record the on-site Inspection start and finish times.” Treat any two-to-three-hour figure as common practice, not a measured fact.

The walking checklist, in report order

Six headings borrowed from the Texas form, because it is the only one a regulator wrote. Under each, the questions worth asking while the inspector is still standing there.

I. Structural systems. Foundations, grading and drainage, roof coverings, roof structures and attics, walls, ceilings and floors, doors, windows, stairways, fireplaces and chimneys, and porches, balconies, decks and carports. Ask: Did you walk the roof, or inspect it from a ladder, the eaves or the ground? The standard does not require walking any roof surface, so the method is a choice and you are entitled to know which was made. Did you get into the attic and the crawlspace, or inspect from the access opening? Anything you could not reach because of stored property? And at the fireplace: the flue and the chimney interior are outside your scope — correct? They are, by name.

II. Electrical systems. Ask: Did you remove the panel cover? Then: given that you may not probe the panel or measure amperage or voltage, is there anything here an electrician should measure? Two conditions the standard requires to be reported rather than merely noticed — the absence of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, and the presence of solid aluminum branch wiring. Either belongs in the report, not in conversation.

III. Heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Ask: Were both heating and cooling actually operated? If not, why, and what would it take to confirm them? Do not ask how many years the system has left — ASHI, InterNACHI, Texas and Arizona all exclude that determination.

IV. Plumbing systems. The most useful question of the day: where is the main water shut-off, and where is the main fuel shut-off? Both are on the required list, so the inspector has already found them. Then: was every toilet flushed, and every sink, tub and shower run and drained? The exclusions here are the standard’s longest: the water heater’s capacity, temperature, age, life expectancy and adequacy; exact flow rate, volume, pressure and temperature; potability; operating any valve; shower pans; and the wastewater system.

V. Appliances. Ask which were operated and which were not, with a reason for each that was not.

VI. Optional systems. On the Texas form this is where sprinklers, pools and outbuildings go. Elsewhere, ask what the equivalent bucket is called — it is where the add-ons you paid for land, and if it is empty, something you ordered did not happen.

The five things to write down before you leave

Everything above produces notes. These five still matter a week later.

1. Where the main water and fuel shut-offs are. Nobody will tell you again, and the day you need them is not a day for searching.
2. Every component nobody could reach, and what blocked it. Separate the reversible blocks — stored property, a locked door, utilities off — from the permanent scope exclusions. The reversible ones are a request you can still make while a deadline is running.
3. Every finding handed to another trade. Oregon prescribes four recommendations — monitor, evaluate, repair, replace — and evaluate means the inspection reached the edge of its scope. Those are open questions with unknown cost.
4. Anything the inspector said out loud and will not write down. Ask why. Usually the answer is a standards exclusion, which is the correct answer. Occasionally it is not.
5. The start and finish times. Only Massachusetts puts them in the report by rule.

What a buyer's checklist is not allowed to conclude

A checklist tempts its user into four conclusions no inspection may reach, and writing them down anyway is how a buyer ends up arguing a position the report will not support.

How long anything has left. ASHI’s exclusions relieve the inspector of determining “the age, life expectancy or remaining useful life of systems and components.” InterNACHI, Texas and Arizona do the same. There is a sharper version: InterNACHI’s own definition says a component “near, at or beyond the end of its normal useful life is not, in itself, a material defect” — while Wisconsin’s statutory definition of a defect is triggered by shortened service life. Those two cannot both be applied to the same water heater, which is why the vocabulary has to be read against the governing rule.

Whether the house meets code. Texas does not require the inspector to determine code compliance except where specifically required, and the Commission’s guidance states that it does not require inspectors to inspect to any of the various building codes. Arizona excludes it in nearly the same words.

What is behind the wall. Concealed conditions and latent defects sit outside every standard reviewed. Texas puts it plainly: nothing buried, hidden, latent or concealed.

Whether to buy it. Market value, marketability, insurability and the advisability of purchase are excluded by name in the InterNACHI standard and in ASHI’s. That is not modesty — it is the boundary of the product.

What to do next, in order

Read the standard your inspector works to, before the day. It is the only document that tells you what you are buying, and asking for it is advice from a federal form rather than from us.

Then go through what is required and what is excluded in each area of the house, organized the way you will walk the property rather than the way the report is filed. If you want something physical to carry, two free institutional checklists exist, with the caveat that neither is an inspection and both have a date problem.

After the report arrives, read it in the order that puts the not-inspected entries first. And before you ask a seller for anything, be clear about the gap between a box ticked present and a condition judged sound, because that gap is where the money is.

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