Short answer: a home inspection is a buyer's condition check — a trained inspector walks the home's major structures and systems, documents what is working and what is not, and delivers a written report before closing. It is the counterpart to this series' appraisal guide: the appraisal values the home for the lender, the inspection describes the home for the buyer, and neither does the other's job.
The buyer usually orders and pays for the inspection, and the inspector works for the buyer — including when the buyer found the home without an agent, as in a for-sale-by-owner purchase, where arranging an inspector is the buyer's own step. Inspectors are trained and certified through professional bodies such as the American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI) or InterNACHI, and licensed in the states that license them; each works to a written standard of practice that defines what is inspected and what is not. Ask for the standard, and a sample report, before you hire: the report's depth is the product, and two inspectors working to the same standard should hand you recognizably the same kind of document. The visit itself takes about two to four hours on an average home, and the buyer is normally welcome to attend the end of it for a walk-through of the findings.
The standard scope covers the visible, accessible home. Structure and foundation: visible movement, cracking and water entry. Roof: covering condition, flashing around chimneys and vents, gutters and drainage — from the roof or from the ground where walking it is unsafe. Exterior: siding, windows, doors, decks and grading that slopes water away from the foundation. Electrical: the service, panel, breakers and grounding, plus a sample of outlets and switches, with GFCI protection tested where water and electricity meet. Plumbing: fixtures, water pressure, drains, and the water heater. Heating and cooling: operation of the systems, weather permitting, and their apparent age and condition. Interior: walls, ceilings, floors, stairs and railings, and built-in appliances run through a basic cycle. Plus insulation and ventilation in accessible spaces, and safety items woven through all of it — detectors, handrails, and obvious hazards.
The limits surprise people more than the scope does. An inspection is non-invasive: nothing is opened, moved or dismantled, so a defect hidden inside a wall or under a floor is outside the job. The inspector does not certify code compliance, engineer the structure, quote repair prices, or test for environmental hazards — radon, mold, lead paint, asbestos, pests, septic and sewer lines are specialist add-ons, each arranged separately where they matter. And the report is not a verdict: there is no pass or fail. Items are reported as found — defective, marginal, or simply old — and what happens next is a contract question between buyer and seller under the inspection contingency, not an inspector's ruling.
For the buyer, the report is a negotiation and budgeting document: safety items and major defects first, then the honest list of what will need money in the first years — the roof's remaining life, the furnace's age, the water heater's date. Under the contract, the responses are some mix of repair requests, a credit, a price change, or accepting the home as it stands — and, inside the contingency window, walking away. For the seller, an inspection on their own home (a pre-listing inspection) trades surprise for control: findings can be fixed, priced in, or disclosed on the seller's schedule instead of the buyer's deadline. Either way, keep the report with the home's records: it is the most complete condition snapshot the home has, and the facts in it — system ages, update dates, the roof's state — are exactly the facts a value estimate and an appraiser's visit both lean on later.
A Homeowner HQ estimate is not an inspection, and it is not an appraisal. The value and equity tracked in HQ are built from records and sales data — they cannot see inside your home, which is exactly what an inspector does in person. If an inspection report corrects a fact your estimate leans on — a system's real age, a roof's real condition — that correction belongs in your record, where it keeps the estimate honest.
Your own agent sends a monthly value update from Homeowner HQ — the estimate, labeled as an estimate, with your equity beside it — and HQ runs on Amazon AWS. Realtors and lenders use the same HQ together: homeowners stay connected to their own agent, and the monthly trend is the honest way to watch what is moving the number. When a sale is on the table, that tracked value-and-equity line — and the corrected facts behind it, inspection reports included — is the starting point you and your agent bring to the pricing conversation.
Homeowners are always free. Realtors pay $25/mo to join and lenders join at the $5/mo founding rate, at any book size, with no setup fee; sending messages inside HQ is a $100/mo unlock ($125/mo total for realtors, $105/mo total for lenders). A lender-sponsored realtor joins for $0.
Homeowner HQ is an AI-powered marketing department for agents and lenders — a relationship and revenue engine, not a homeowner database. A homeowner's record routes them back to their own agent; it is never sold and never shown to lenders.