What Happens After the Home Inspection: A Step-by-Step Timeline for Buyers

When the clock starts

Your inspection contingency is the window in your contract that lets you back out of the deal — and keep your earnest money — based on what the inspection turns up. Most contracts give buyers 5 to 10 days from offer acceptance, though some are shorter and a few states use longer windows. The clock usually starts the day the offer is accepted, not the day the inspection happens.

That matters. By the time you get the report in your inbox, you've often already used 1 to 3 days of the window on scheduling and waiting for the inspector to write things up.

Confirm two things in your contract before you do anything else:

• The exact contingency expiration date and time
• Whether the contract counts calendar days or business days

Write the deadline somewhere you'll actually see it. Every step that follows works backward from that date.

Day 1: Read the report calmly

Most inspection reports arrive within 24 to 48 hours of the inspection. Open it the day it lands. Letting it sit in your inbox while you work up the courage to read it costs you days you can't get back.

Read it once to absorb the scope. Don't try to make decisions yet. Don't Google individual findings. Just see what's there.

Inspection reports can run 30 to 80 pages with photos, and most buyers find them overwhelming on the first pass. That's normal — inspectors flag everything, including items that are cosmetic or routine maintenance. If you want a head start on the language, our guide to reading the report without freaking out covers what the categories mean and which words signal urgency.

Day 2: Sort the findings by what actually matters

The second read is the one that matters. Go through the report and put every finding into one of six buckets:

• Safety — anything that could hurt someone (electrical hazards, missing handrails, gas leaks, carbon monoxide)
• Structural — foundation, framing, load-bearing walls
• Water — active leaks, water intrusion, drainage problems, moisture in the crawlspace
• Mechanical — HVAC, plumbing, electrical systems at end of life
• Maintenance — items that need attention but aren't urgent
• Cosmetic — anything that doesn't affect function or safety

The first three buckets are where your attention belongs. The bottom three usually don't drive a negotiation. Our guide to prioritizing inspection findings walks through this in more depth.

By the end of Day 2, you should have a short list of items that need a decision and a much longer list of items that don't.

Day 2–3: Schedule specialist evaluations if you need them

If the report flags something serious — foundation movement, an aging roof, an old electrical panel, water in the crawlspace — your inspector may have recommended further evaluation by a specialist. That's a generalist's way of saying I can see there's a problem but I'm not the right person to tell you how bad it is or what it costs to fix.

Book those evaluations as early as possible. A structural engineer or licensed roofer often has a 3 to 7 day lead time, and waiting until Day 6 of a 10-day contingency to make the call puts you in a panic spiral. Our guide on when to call a specialist covers who to call for which findings.

Day 3–5: Decide what to ask for

With the findings sorted and any specialist input on the way, it's time to figure out what you want from the seller. There are two main options:

• Repairs. The seller fixes specific items before closing.
• A credit. The seller gives you money at closing — typically applied to your closing costs — and you handle the work yourself after you own the house.

Most experienced buyers and agents lean toward credits for anything that isn't a safety or financing requirement. You control the contractor, the timeline, and the quality, and you don't end up living with a rushed handyman job that the seller paid the lowest bidder to do. Our repairs vs. credit guide walks through when each makes sense.

Whatever you ask for, keep the request focused. Two to five items, each tied to a specific finding in the report. A 14-item list almost always gets pushback. A focused request gets a serious response. What's reasonable to ask for after a home inspection covers the framing.

Day 5–7: Submit the request and wait

Your agent drafts the request — sometimes called an inspection response, repair addendum, or request for repairs — and submits it to the seller's agent. From there, the seller has a response window written into your contract, often 2 to 5 days.

Don't submit on Day 9 of a 10-day contingency. The seller needs time to respond, and you need time to react to whatever they say. Submitting by Day 6 or 7 leaves room for one or two rounds of back-and-forth before the deadline.

Day 7–10: Negotiate, decide, or walk

The seller will typically come back with one of three responses:

Yes. They accept your request as written or with minor changes. Sign the addendum and you're moving toward closing.

A counter. They offer some of what you asked for. This is the most common outcome. Decide whether the counter gets you to a place you can live with, push back once if it doesn't, and try to land somewhere both sides can sign.

No. They refuse to negotiate. This is the hardest moment of the process — and you usually have more leverage than you think. Our guide on what to do when the seller won't budge covers your options, including the lender-required repairs the seller can't actually refuse.

If the gap is too wide, the costs are too high, or you've lost confidence in the property, this is when you exercise the contingency, send a termination notice, and get your earnest money back. Our guide on when to walk away after a home inspection covers when that's the right call.

If you need a few more days to get a specialist opinion or a contractor bid, ask for an extension in writing. Sellers often agree if the request is reasonable and your reason is concrete.

After the contingency: appraisal and underwriting

Once you sign off on the inspection — either by removing the contingency or by reaching agreement on repairs and credits — the deal moves into the back half of the closing timeline. The appraisal happens, your lender finishes underwriting, and the title company prepares closing documents. None of that is your job to drive, but it can take 2 to 4 weeks.

This is also where lender-required repairs can resurface. If the appraiser flags items the loan program won't accept (a missing handrail on FHA, a roof past its useful life, peeling paint on a pre-1978 home), the seller may have to fix those regardless of what they told you during the inspection negotiation. Our lender-required repairs guide covers how that works.

Before closing: verify the work

If the seller agreed to make any repairs, you need to confirm they actually did them — and did them well — before you sign at closing.

You have three options:

• A re-inspection. Your original inspector comes back to check the agreed items. Usually $150 to $300. Worth it for anything structural, electrical, or that required a permit.
• The final walk-through. A 30 to 60 minute visit, usually 24 to 72 hours before closing, where you check the property's condition with your agent. Enough for cosmetic items but not enough for anything inside the walls.
• Receipts and contractor invoices. Reasonable as a supplement, never as a substitute for actually looking.

Once you sign at closing, the seller has zero motivation to come back and finish anything. Our guide on how to re-inspect after repairs covers when each option is enough and what to do if the work isn't right.

Closing day

You sign, you fund, you get the keys. The inspection contingency is long gone by this point — you closed it out the moment you accepted the seller's response or removed the contingency in writing.

Almost everything that goes wrong in the post-inspection window goes wrong for the same reason: someone ran out of time. The fix is always the same — read the report on Day 1, sort it on Day 2, schedule specialists on Day 2 or 3, submit the request by Day 6 or 7, and leave room for the seller to respond. If you do that, the rest of the timeline takes care of itself.

When InspectionTriage helps

InspectionTriage was built for exactly this window. We turn a long inspection report into a prioritized list of what matters, organized by system, with page references back to the report itself and clear next steps for each item. If you're in the contingency window and need to make decisions fast, that's what we do.