Home inspection repairs

Home inspection repairs priced straight off your report, scoped against the addendum and finished before the deadline in the contract. You send the report, we mark it up line by line with what we can do and what belongs to another trade, and you get a quote that maps onto the document your agent is negotiating from.

Speed is the whole point. An inspection contingency runs on a clock, and the gap between a report landing and a response being due is usually measured in days. Our crews hold slots for this work precisely because it cannot wait behind a kitchen that has been booked since spring.

What typically lands in scope

• Minor plumbing at fixtures, including shut off valves, traps and hose connections
• Ground fault outlet corrections and smoke or carbon monoxide detector placement
• Door and window adjustments so they operate, latch and lock as they should
• Caulk and sealing at wet areas, exterior joints and around penetrations
• Small drywall repairs, patched, primed and blended into the existing wall

Those five cover the majority of what an addendum asks for in this market. Everything else gets sorted into work we can take, work that needs a licensed specialist, and items an inspector flagged for information rather than for repair. That sorting is usually the most useful hour of the process.

Reading a report the way a contractor reads it

Inspection reports are written to describe conditions, not to specify repairs, and the language is deliberately cautious. A line reading that a fixture is at the end of its serviceable life is an observation. A line reading that a handrail is loose is a defect with a 20 minute fix. Treating both as equal work is how sellers end up quoting themselves into a bad position.

We go through the document and mark each item plainly. What we will repair, what the correct trade is where it is not us, and what we believe needs nothing beyond a note. You are free to disagree with any of it, and the marked up report is yours to hand to your agent either way.

Where our line sits

Fixture level plumbing, device level electrical, carpentry, drywall and sealing are our work. Anything touching the panel, adding a circuit, correcting aluminum branch wiring, opening the main water line or the sewer, or servicing a gas appliance goes to a licensed specialist in that trade. We say so in writing rather than stretching a scope to look complete.

Roofs, furnaces, chimneys and structural engineering sit outside what we take on within an inspection window. Where a report raises one of those, the honest recommendation is a specialist assessment rather than a repair quote from us, and buyers are usually better served by that answer than by a contractor who will try anything.

The items that show up on almost every report

Ground fault protection missing at kitchen counters, bathrooms, the garage and exterior receptacles. Detectors absent from a bedroom or past their manufacture date. Reversed polarity at an outlet somebody replaced themselves. A missing handrail on a basement stair. Grading and downspouts discharging against the foundation. Those five appear so reliably that we quote them almost from memory.

Detector and outlet items are quick, and where a house needs the full sweep rather than three corrections, the fire and carbon monoxide package covers the whole building with a written placement record. Buyers often prefer that record to a line item, since it documents the entire house rather than the specific outlets the inspector happened to test.

Plumbing items cluster around valves and connections rather than pipes. Stops that will not close, supply lines at the end of their life, a toilet that rocks on a failed flange. The full version of that work, done properly rather than item by item, is the water damage prevention package, which is frequently the better value once three or four plumbing lines appear on an addendum.

Water, and the items worth taking seriously

Most report items are ordinary. A few are not, and the ones worth genuine attention almost always involve water arriving where it should not. A stain at a ceiling edge, efflorescence on a basement wall, a soft spot in a bathroom floor, or a sump discharge that ends beside the foundation.

We look for the cause rather than the evidence. A stain gets traced, and if we cannot find the source we say so plainly instead of painting it and moving on. That answer sometimes costs us the line item, and it is still the right answer, because the buyer inherits both the house and the problem.

Basement moisture is the one that generates the most argument in a transaction. Our position is consistent. We correct the outside causes, grade, downspouts and sump discharge, because those are real fixes. We do not sell foundation waterproofing systems, since it is not work our crews perform. For what a basement is telling you, our winter basement notes are a useful starting point.

Working to a deadline

Tell us the date on the contract at the first phone call. Everything else in the process is arranged around it, including whether we walk the property first or quote from the report and photographs. A quote that arrives after the response deadline is worth nothing to you, and we would rather say we cannot make a date than miss it.

Where the work has to happen before closing, occupancy is the practical constraint. An empty house is straightforward. A house where the seller is still living and packing takes coordination, and we schedule around that rather than assuming access. Where the repairs are agreed as a credit instead, the work often moves to after closing and the buyer becomes our client.

Buyers who take a credit and then do the work afterwards usually fold these items into the new homeowner package, which covers rekeying and the first round of small repairs at the same visit. It is one mobilization rather than two, and it lands in the week you get the keys.

Doors, windows and the operation items

Inspectors test every door and window in a house, which is why operation items fill so many pages of a report. A window that will not stay open, a door that does not latch, a sliding unit off its track, an egress window that a child could not climb through. Most of these are adjustments rather than replacements, and most take minutes.

Hardware is the usual cause. Sash balances fail, hinges pull out of soft framing, strike plates drift as a house settles. Our crews carry the parts for common systems and fix them on site rather than writing a line item for a return visit. Where a unit is genuinely finished, replacement is window replacement work and gets quoted honestly as such.

Basement bedroom egress is the one item in this category that is not cosmetic. A finished basement bedroom without a compliant opening is a real safety issue and a real obstacle in a sale. The requirements and what the work involves are set out in our egress window guide, and the installation itself is egress window work on a project timeline rather than an inspection one.

Exterior items and the weather window

Exterior caulk, deck fasteners, trim repair and grading all appear on reports year round, and some of them cannot be done well year round. Sealants and coatings need temperature to cure, and a bead laid in late November in Michigan does not perform the way the label promises.

When a deadline falls in the wrong month we will tell you which items can be done properly now and which are better handled in spring. Agents do not always love that answer, and it is still the one we give. Temporary work described as permanent is how a repair becomes somebody else’s problem two seasons later.

Deck items are the most common of these. Loose rails and missing fasteners are structural and can be corrected in any weather. Cleaning and coating cannot, and the reasoning is in our deck maintenance guide. Where the structure itself is the problem, that becomes work for our deck crews.

Grading and drainage sit in the same category. Moving soil away from a foundation is straightforward in October and impossible in January, so where the ground is frozen we say so and propose a date rather than pretending otherwise.

Investors and portfolio buyers

Buyers purchasing to rent have a different calculation, since the repairs and the turnover work overlap almost entirely. Rather than pricing an addendum and then pricing a make ready separately, most of these clients ask for both in one scope, which is faster and cheaper than two visits.

That combined scope usually looks like the inspection items plus the rental turnover package, done in the window between closing and the first tenant. Owners buying several properties in a year get the same crews and a known standard across the portfolio, which is worth more than it sounds at tax time.

Sellers, and getting ahead of the report

The cheapest version of this work happens before a house is listed, when nobody is negotiating and no deadline exists. Sellers who handle the predictable items in advance take them off the table entirely, which is what the pre listing package is built to do.

The arithmetic favors it. A buyer pricing an unknown defect prices it at worst case, and an agent negotiating a credit rarely negotiates the number down to what the repair actually costs. Handling five predictable items beforehand routinely saves more than the work costs, which is unusual in this business and worth saying plainly.

Houses, ages and what each one tends to produce

Pre war stock in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor generates knob and tube questions, ungrounded outlets, plaster cracking and windows painted shut. Most of it is age rather than defect, and an inspector is obliged to note all of it. Sorting the real items from the observations matters most in these houses.

Postwar ranches in Livonia and Westland produce panel questions, missing ground fault protection and original galvanized supply pipe. Subdivision homes in Canton and Novi produce grading, deck fasteners and builder grade items that have simply reached their age. We cover all six counties, listed on our service area page.

What we will not do

We will not write a quote designed to justify a number somebody has already agreed. We will not sign off on work we did not perform, and we will not describe a repair as complete when it is a temporary measure. Those requests arrive occasionally in transactions and the answer is the same every time.

We also will not comment on whether a house is a good purchase. That is your decision with your agent and your inspector. What we can do is tell you accurately what the repairs on the table cost and how long they take, which is usually the missing piece rather than an opinion.

Where an item points at a much larger project, we will say that too. A bathroom with a leaking shower pan is not a caulk line, it is a rebuild, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. That work runs through our bathroom remodeling side on a normal project timeline rather than an inspection clock. The wider permit picture sits in our permit guide.

Reinspection is the last piece and it is worth planning for. Some agreements require the inspector to return and confirm the work, others accept receipts and photographs. We document everything we touch either way, with before and after images and a plain description of what was done, because reconstructing that after the fact is far harder than capturing it on the day.

Where a permit is genuinely required for an item, we pull it rather than working around it. Unpermitted work discovered later is a problem that follows the property, and a transaction is the worst possible moment to create one. It slows a repair by days rather than weeks, and it is the difference between a repair that survives the next sale and one that raises a question at it.

What to send us

• The full inspection report as a file, not a photograph of a page
• The repair addendum or the list your agent has drafted
• The response deadline and the anticipated closing date
• Who currently occupies the property and how access works
• Whether you want a quote on everything or only on agreed items

That last question saves time. Some clients want the full picture including items they may never act on, others want only what is being negotiated. Both are reasonable and they produce very different documents, so it is worth deciding before we start rather than halfway through.

Booking it

This work sits on the repairs and service side of the company, which keeps its own calendar so short notice work is possible. Anything that grows past a repair moves onto our normal project process with the same crews and the same standards.

Completed work carries the coverage described in our workmanship warranty, which matters in a transaction where somebody may ask what happens if a repair fails after closing. To see the standard our crews hold on larger builds, View our Portfolio. With a deadline in hand, contact us now for a free quote and send the report over.