Who Pays the Inspection When Buying a House

New homebuyers have a lot of questions - as they should!

Buying a home is something people only do a couple times in their life, and when you go through it the first time, you learn a lot!

One of the most common questions that new homebuyers ask is “who pays for the inspection when buying a house?”

It’s almost always the buyer – here’s why:

Why Homebuyers Pay the Inspection

As a buyer, when you have an inspection conducted on a home, your primary goal is to find out if there is anything wrong with the home. The seller wants the home to be sold as smoothly as possible and doesn’t want to deal with any issues that may arise during an inspection. This is why in a ‘Sellers' Market’; homebuyers will sometimes waive the inspection in their offer.

Having an inspection done on a home potentially gives the buyer an opportunity to renegotiate their offer price. If something drastic is found on the home, like the siding is completely rotted out, a homebuyer can use this to renegotiate their offer price. This doesn’t mean the seller will accept any new proposed price, but it does give the buyer a chance to start the conversation.

As a buyer, you should anticipate the inspection is going to find a few things wrong with the home – this is totally normal, especially with an older home! Nothing is perfect, and you shouldn’t expect it to be. But the inspection gives you insight on what might need to be repaired now, or what might need to be repaired in the future. For example, maybe you learn in your inspection that your fence gate doesn’t shut all the way - if you have a dog, you’d probably want that fixed as soon as possible.

Sometimes, an inspection can find good things about your home that you didn’t know about before. For example, maybe it finds that the property has better than expected drainage and grading, or that the roof is old, but it’s in immaculate condition.

Depending on your area and the size of the home, you could expect to pay anywhere from $300 - $1,500 for an inspection. After the inspection is complete, your inspector will send you a report of everything that they checked during the home inspection. You can even call your inspector and ask them to walk you through the report, which they’d be happy to do!

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