How Home Inspection Reports Got Long, Very Long

Home inspection reports have changed a bunch over the years. When I first started home inspecting back in the 1990’s pretty much everyone used pre-printed 3 part forms. We added our handwritten notes and built a summary for our clients right on the spot. Most home inspection reports ended up in the 15-20 page range.

It worked pretty well. Our clients got a clear and concise home inspection report. The report was delivered pretty much immediately.  The buyer could get on with the next step in the home buying process. The repair request.

Today there are quite a few home inspection reports that go over 100 pages and include over 200 photos. So what changed? 

Desktop Inspection Software

A little over 15 years ago the first desktop systems started coming out to help build home inspection reports. They are probably the single biggest reason home inspection reports have gotten so long. 

Essentially you would go to the inspection with a checklist. Just like we had done for years. Then you would go back home or to your office and start building the report. Today you can use a mobile companion app instead of the checklist but you still go back to finish up the report.

Just follow all the prompts. Drill down into the options and select the appropriate boxes. When something needed extra clarification you could write and save a narrative or comment to your library. Over time you expand and elaborate your narratives and comments.

After another hour or two you would have a nicely formatted electronic report you could email to your client.

The legacy software like HomeGauge and Home Inspector Pro made it super easy to add photos. So many home inspectors would take hundreds of photos of everything in the house. Just in case they may need one specific photo when they were writing the report hours later.

Many home inspectors today still follow this exact procedure today. Even after technology has changed they still do it the same way it was done 15-20 years ago.


Home Inspection Schools

Most new home inspectors that have just come out of school have one common trait. They tend to report on everything just to make sure they don’t miss that one super important thing. This gets drilled into them in the course of their schools or from their mentors.

“If you miss something you could get sued.” is what they are told. New inspectors still don’t quite know what is valuable information to their clients. So they fill the report with all the information they can collect just to make sure. 

Eventually these new inspectors become experienced and learn what is really valuable to the client and what is just CYA or fluff. But it is incredibly hard to change the way you have done things for years. Especially if you think that is the way it is supposed to be done.

Desktop home inspection software promotes a ‘follow the prompts’ mentality. Put that together with the need to record everything out of fear. You will always end up with a long report. A very long report. 

Want to Provide More Value at the Same Price

Other home inspectors feel the need to provide so much information to their clients to make sure they know the value they are getting. This is compared to another home inspector that may be delivering a more realistic report in the 35-50 page range.

These reports include everything. The belief seems to be too much information and photos are better than not enough. They want their clients to know they got their money’s worth and don’t want any questions after the job. I often see over 200 photos. Photos of every room and every area of the home to prove what they saw in addition to anything unusual.

I understand this is a business decision of standing out from the crowd. It is really like providing a Kobe beef hamburger at a McDonalds price. The amount of time and resources it takes to do this is pretty amazing.

How Much Information is Too Much

I honestly believe that everything I’ve discussed is meant to provide a better home inspection report. In many ways they do. But how much information is too much?

Our job as a home inspector is to help our clients understand what they are buying. What reasonable person could really digest and understand a 100 page technical document. Even if they actually read the whole thing.

Reports have gotten so long that now the summary has also gotten too long. When buyers and Realtors are asking for a summary of the the report summary you should know it has gone too far.

They are telling you, “The report is way too long that we are never going to read it so we have only looked at the report summary”. Then, “The report summary is so long and has so many items that we don’t now what is REALLY important. Can you give us a summary of the really important stuff?”


What Can Be Done About It

I was just working with a home inspector that had been in business about a year. He was getting complaints that his 109 page reports were too long.  As we talked he told me that all his clients complimented him on his detail so he was very scared to take anything out of his reports.

I asked him how many home inspection reports had his clients had or seen. What did they have to compare his level of detail to? Is it possible they would feel the same way if his reports were maybe 75 pages? What about 60 pages? Was his idea of a detailed home inspection report the same as their idea of a detailed report?

My suggestion was for him to make a copy of a recent report and remove everything that was not valuable information for his client the home buyer. If he had a comment that was 3 paragraphs could he say the same thing in one paragraph? Did he need a section for each individual bathroom? Could it just be one section for Bathrooms?

Then there were the photos. Could he show the same thing with 2 photos that he was trying to show with 4, 6 or 8 photos? Could he use photos to describe things that he was describing in his comments? Remove anything that was not valuable information for his client. 

After his first edit the report dropped from 109 pages to 69 pages. He still reported on all the same things. He still made all the same recommendations. Now he had a report that a client could read. More importantly he had a report the client could understand.

Add Comments to Items in Tap Inspect

Home inspection reports are all about the photos. No one reads long checklists of information. Nothing beats a comment of a few sentences and a couple of photos when you want a simple to read and an easy to understand home inspection report.

Up until now Comments could only be added to Sections like Roofing, Exterior or Electrical. Now comments can be added to Items like Roof Covering too. We hope this will let you get even faster at writing your reports.

Add Comment From the Item View

The first thing this update will do is to let you add a comment on the same screen you are recording the Description or the Condition. No more going back a screen to the Section to Add Comment.

Comment Displays in Report Under Item

Comments have been displayed after the items of a Section in the Report. Now an Item Comment will be displayed right under that items description. This should make it much easier to show a few photo even without



Comments Save Under Items in Your Library

Your comment library is what makes Tap Inspect so efficient to use and quick to build your reports. After you have saved a few dozen comments in your library under a section the list can get tough to manually read through. The Search bar works great unless you are not sure what to search for.


When you save you Item Comments to your library only the comments for that specific item will be listed. That will make it easier to browse your comments to find the one you want.

Tap Inspect’s Next Big Move

We don’t just run a home inspection software company. We’re working home inspectors who use our app in the field every single day. From doing our own inspections and listening to you, we know that our current comment library isn’t perfect. That’s why we’re dramatically revamping it.

Tap Inspect already provides multiple customizable checklists. No matter what you are inspecting, these checklists rarely provide a complete picture of what you want to communicate. There are always things that need more clarification in a specific report. That’s where comments and photos come in.

This simple task of recording comments can get complicated because every person has their take on what needs to be commented on and what the comment should say. Despite the individuality that complicates the design and coding of Tap Inspect, we believe in a few fundamental truths:

We all report in our own language and that language can change over time

Your choice of words, the way you explain things, your level of detail—these are the reasons clients choose you to do their inspections. As home inspectors learn and do more inspections, word choice can and does change. As professionals we are constantly learning and our comments reflect that.

Canned, default comments frequently cannot provide the personal touch that’s needed. They can provide a starting point, but they must adapt and change as we do.

Our new library notices when you change a word or add an entirely new comment and asks if you want to save it. It grows and changes as you use it.

We tend to report the same things over and over in the same places

As a general rule, we home inspectors tend to make the same handful of comments on almost every report we do and put them in the same sections. It’s just the nature of inspecting similar things over and over. These frequently used comments should be only a tap away since they are used so often.

Our new library remembers what comments you use in which section. Your most frequently used comments will always be at the top of the list in the section you use it.

It’s a hassle to find that one comment you only use once a year

We all run into some issue that is very unusual, but we know we have commented on it before. Where is it?

Keywords, comment codes and drop down lists typically don’t help because you have to remember where in you library it is saved and then scroll through long lists to find it. This usually takes longer than it does to type it again.

Just like with Google, Yahoo or Bing, our new library allows you to type in a word or phrase and search the entire database of comments. Is the list too long? Type in more words and the list gets shorter and shorter with the best matches nearest the top.

Stay tuned because we think what is coming soon from Tap Inspect will change your expectation of how comment libraries should work. We can’t wait.