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.

Deliver the Home Inspection Report Your Clients Really Want

Ask any home inspector and we almost always say the same thing: ‘My clients hire me because of my report’. After looking at hundreds of home inspection reports and talking with hundreds of home inspectors I just can not understand how this is the case. If clients love the 20 page, 3 part form checklist report just as much as the 175 page report with 5 photos of every room I must be missing something.

How do you deliver the home inspection report your clients really want? First thing to do is ask them. So that is what I did and this is what my clients told me.

Show Me What You are Talking About

A few sentences and a photo or two can explain way more than a page of text. Using photos makes much more sense and makes reports easier to read and to understand. Modern home inspection reports are all about the photos.

Don’t get tempted to just add a big block of Report Photos at the end of your reports though. Your clients will have to flip back and forth trying to understand where which photo goes with which statement. What a pain to read and to try to understand.

Give Me a Report I Can Actually Read

My times than not I have heard, “How do they expect me to read this thing! It’s over 100 pages long!’. If you have not heard this about your or one of your competitors reports you have not been listening.

Most of us became home inspectors to help teach people about their homes and to help them learn. That does not mean that our reports need to be a text book. Our clients want a report they can read and understand. If they want or need more information they will ask or more likely Google or You Tube the information.

Tell Me Why It’s Important and What to Do Next

After looking at homes every day and going to classes with other home inspectors it gets really easy to lose sight of what our clients know. We became home inspectors to help people and share our knowledge and experience. Is it fair to just tell our clients that something is wrong without going on to tell them why and where to go next.

I know we have been warned over and over about liability. You may not be comfortable telling your clients how soon something should be done or some ballpark of the costs. But we have a responsibility to help our clients. Take some time and ask them yourselves what they need from you.

Give Me a Summary I Can Understand

By far the biggest demand was for a summary of the home inspection. Not just a list of deficiencies, or several lists broken down by safety or maintenance. The clients I spoke with wanted a summary, an executive summary, of the home written in a way they could understand it.

This really makes sense. Most home inspection reports I’ve seen are written in a way that other home inspectors, most realtors, and even some home buyers can understand. But the average home buyer may not. After spending several hours with a home inspector looking at things they will not see again for years can get overwhelming. It was made pretty clear, they wanted a summary they they could understand.