Deficiency or Routine: How to Read Your Inspection Report

The report is in your inbox, the inspection period is running, and you have to decide what to do about it this week. A report full of findings you cannot read is not much use in a five-day inspection period. So the first thing to understand about yours is that the findings are already sorted for you.

Three Colors, in Priority Order

Our reports are color-coded: red for hazards, orange for repair recommendations, blue for things worth knowing. A 14-year-old water heater near the end of its life is worth budgeting for. An open ground on a bedroom circuit is a different kind of problem. The report should never make you guess which is which.

Red: Safety Hazards

Red is the safety category. These are the findings we will always call out clearly, whatever else is happening in the house. A pool barrier is a good example: a gate that does not self-latch, or a barrier with a climbable gap, goes in the report as a safety item regardless of how well the pool itself is running.

Red does not mean the house is in trouble. It means this is the part of the list to read first.

Orange: Repair Recommendations

Orange is where most of a normal report lives. These are things we recommend repairing, described in terms you can take to a contractor or an agent. Some are small. Some are worth planning around. They are grouped together so that a long orange section does not bury a short red one.

Blue: Worth Knowing

Blue is information rather than a to-do item. It covers the conditions and details that are useful to have written down even though nobody is asking you to act on them today. Aging equipment you will replace eventually belongs here, and so does anything we could see but could not fully assess. Where something is shared, sits outside your unit boundary, or was not accessible on the day, we say so rather than guess.

What the Colors Do Not Decide

The color system sorts findings by priority. It does not sort them into a verdict, because an inspection is not a test. It is a description of the home's condition on the day we saw it, organized so you can decide what matters to you.

It also does not tell you what to do next. We explain what we saw and what it usually means. What you do with that information, whether that is a repair request, a price conversation, or nothing at all, is your decision to make with your agent. Two buyers can read an identical report and reasonably reach opposite conclusions, and neither one has read it wrong.

Working Through It on a Short Clock

Your report arrives within 24 hours, which is deliberate: inspection periods are short and you should not lose a day waiting on paperwork. Start with the red items, because they are the ones that change what you ask for. Move to orange and decide which of those you care about. Keep the blue section, because it is the closest thing you will have to an owner's manual for the house.

If repairs are agreed and completed, we can come back and verify. A re-inspection covers up to five individual items, or one full system, and produces updated documentation you can put in front of the other side before closing. We report what we find, including when a repair does not appear to have been completed properly.

For the wider picture of what was inspected in the first place, what the scope includes, what sits outside it, and how long the visit takes, see our guide to what a home inspection covers in Arizona. Inspection and add-on pricing is published in full on the pricing page.

Our job is to help you understand what you are buying. Your job is to decide if what you're buying is what you were hoping for.