Home Inspection Tips for Buyers and Sellers - The Powers Playbook ep 20

What actually happens during a home inspection?

In this episode of The Powers Playbook, Aaron Powers breaks down the home inspection process from both the buyer and seller perspective.

Whether you’re buying a home, selling a home, or preparing to enter escrow, the inspection can be one of the most important parts of the real estate process. It helps buyers understand the condition of the property, gives sellers insight into potential concerns, and can play a major role in negotiations before closing.

Aaron explains what a home inspection is, why it matters, what inspectors typically look for, what buyers should expect in the report, and how inspection findings can impact the next steps of a transaction.

In This Episode

• What a home inspection is
 • Why inspections are common during the escrow process
 • What a licensed home inspector does
 • Why buyers usually hire the home inspector
 • What inspectors check inside and outside the property
 • Common inspection areas like roof, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, appliances, and water heater
 • Why inspection reports can feel overwhelming
 • What buyers should focus on after receiving the report
 • How sellers can prepare for inspection-related negotiations
 • What can happen after the inspection is complete

Why Home Inspections Matter

A home inspection gives the buyer a detailed look at the condition of the home before fully committing to the purchase.

The inspector goes through the property and reviews major systems, safety concerns, visible issues, cosmetic notes, and items that may need attention. The report can include both concerns and positives, along with explanations, photos, and recommendations.

For buyers, this information helps them decide whether to move forward, request repairs, negotiate credits, or ask for more information.

For sellers, the inspection can reveal items that may need to be addressed before the sale can move forward smoothly.

What Happens After the Inspection?

Once the inspection report is complete, the buyer and their real estate agent review the findings and decide how to proceed.

Depending on the situation, the buyer may:

✅ move forward as-is
 ✅ request repairs
 ✅ ask for a seller credit
 ✅ negotiate specific items
 ✅ request additional inspections
 ✅ or choose not to move forward if major issues are discovered

The key is understanding what matters most and not getting overwhelmed by every small item in the report.

Advice for Buyers & Sellers

For buyers, the inspection is not just about finding problems — it is about understanding what you are purchasing.

For sellers, preparation matters. Addressing obvious repair items ahead of time can help reduce surprises during escrow and make the transaction smoother.

A good inspection process helps both sides make informed decisions and avoid unnecessary confusion.

Thinking About Buying or Selling in Las Vegas?

If you have questions about:

🏡 buying a home
 🔍 home inspections
 📋 escrow timelines
 🛠 repair negotiations
 📍 Las Vegas or Henderson real estate

reach out anytime.

📧 info@powersre.com

About The Powers Playbook

The Powers Playbook is your guide to family, wealth, and real estate.

Each episode helps buyers, sellers, homeowners, and investors better understand the real estate process through practical conversations about strategy, negotiation, market trends, and long-term financial decisions.

Subscribe for more conversations about:

🏡 Las Vegas real estate
 💰 wealth building
 📈 real estate strategy
 🔍 buying and selling homes
 👨‍👩‍👧 family-focused financial decisions

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

You've opened the Powers Playbook. Your guide to family wealth and real estate. Hello and welcome back to the show, everybody. Welcome to the Powers Playbook. Today's episode, we're going to run the play on your home inspections. We're going to talk about it from the perspective of a home buyer or a home seller. And what we're going to do is we're going to kind of get pretty detailed. We're going to get down into the details of what a home inspection is, what it means, why it's done, what are the possible outcomes, what to look for, all of those things. So that's what that's what today's episode is going to be about. We are going to start just overall kind of explanation and then we'll get into the different uh specifics. So a home inspection is done on relatively 99% of home purchases. And what it is is the buyer is uh hiring a home inspector, a professional home inspector. There is a license for a home inspector. They are licensed individuals, and they're going to come in and they're going to inspect a property during the escrow process, meaning that they're going to come and take a look at you know fine-tooth comb basically, every part of a house before the buyer decides whether to purchase or not. So it's it's generally one of the first things that are done after a contract is accepted is we will do the home inspection. Okay, so what happens is a home inspector is hired, uh, it's scheduled with uh with both parties, uh hired by the buyer, and they are gonna come in and inspect the entire property. So that's every single thing from appliances, roof, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, um, even cosmetic items that they'll take note of, water heater, um, you know, you name it. They're gonna check every every part of the house basically. In doing so, they're the what they're looking for is is there anything that's not up to par, not up to building codes, or just isn't working properly, or items of concern that the buyer may want to know. Okay, they're also gonna cover things that are positives about the property, right? Things that are good, um, explanations, age of product, all kinds of different things. So the first thing I will say is when you get a home inspection done, the inspector is gonna provide a detailed report for the buyer. And it's gonna have explanations, it's gonna have photos, it's gonna have descriptions, it's gonna have worst-case scenarios, um, you name it. So, generally speaking, a home inspection can be as little as 20 pages. I've seen them as much as 80 pages. It really just depends on how much information there is to share and how thorough the home inspector is. In uh in most cases, they're gonna share all relevant information. Um, I would recommend read the entire thing. You know, actually go through and read the report because there are certain things that will be explained that will not have a photo that are positives, or you may want to know where your water shutoff is, or just different things about the house from an informational perspective. So definitely read what they send you, look through it all, look at the photos, look at the description. Also know who your home inspector is. If you have questions after the fact, they should be more than willing to answer them for you via phone call. Um, you can show up at the inspection. We do what's called a post-inspection walkthrough with a lot of our clients where the inspector will walk the property with the buyer after the home is inspected. This kind of allows them to hear things like in the home inspector's own words. And that's really helpful. So the inspection report is gonna be written in a way to basically remove as much liability from the inspector as possible. All right. So what this means is basically they're gonna write the descriptions in a way that's going to remove the fault of anything working or not working from themselves. And this is this is, you know, in order to basically like, I don't know if you guys have heard of CYA before, stands for cover your ass. Uh, that's basically what the home inspector is gonna do because they don't want to inspect a property and leave something out that they think doesn't matter. And then all of a sudden, two years later, the buyer finds that it's a major issue and now goes back to the home inspector and says, why didn't you ever tell us about this? So that the information that they're gonna share is going to be, you know, in abundance. It's gonna be every single thing about the home. Some of it's gonna be written in a way that's scary, you know, like, hey, if this thing isn't fixed, it could potentially uh cause a fire or blow up, or this is an electrical concern. So they're gonna write it as worst-case scenario. It doesn't automatically mean that this thing is going to happen. It's just in the way that the report is written. So that's the first thing is just take the information, you know, with a grain of salt, basically. Um, don't take it as, you know, factual that this is, you know, going to happen no matter what. It's just a a lot of it is what-ifs. Okay. So that's where we need to talk to the people involved. We need to talk to the home inspector, we need to talk to the real estate professionals, and we need to find out, you know, how big of an issue is this? Is this something that happens all the time? You know, do we see this in a lot of our home inspection reports? Is this something that's like super concerning, you know, not so concerning? And that's why you you you want to trust the people you're working with so you can ask them these types of questions. Because, you know, obviously we've been through this hundreds of times where you might be buying your first house and this is the first inspection report you've seen, and it's scary as hell. So we want to get the right advice. All right. So as the buyer, we're we're kind of coming from that perspective first. Um, we want to have good communication with everybody. We really want to focus on the things that are non-negotiables, meaning that we get a chance to ask the seller to correct these items. That's why we do the inspection. Much better to spend a few hundred dollars on an inspection report and cancel and walk away from the property than to spend, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars on something that you find out is going to be a big problem for you down the road. That's why we get the home inspection done. Highly recommend no matter what house you buy, when, where, who, always get a home inspection done. It's well worth a few hundred dollars to, you know, get you to feel confident in your purchase. But once we receive this report, we have an opportunity to ask the seller to correct these items. We also could ask for a credit for these items. Um, or we could just say, hey, we'll accept the house as it is. Let's move forward with the current deal. So it's kind of a chance to renegotiate after the home inspection in most cases. Um, we are you know running out of the Las Vegas, Nevada area, so I'm gonna give you our specifics. If you're in a different state, definitely contact you know the agent in your state or reach out to us and and we can refer somebody to you. Um, and so when we're when we're looking at it, we're we're worried about the big things, right? Like we're worried about safety, health, mechanical issues, things that you know are not the way that they should be. Obviously, if your air conditioning or heating system isn't working, that is concerning. If you have you know electrical breakers that are um, you know, uh that's tripping all the time, or something's wrong with the electrical problem. If there's an active leak in a property, you turn a sink on and all of a sudden it's leaking underneath the sink into the cabinet, probably a decent issue we want to take care of, right? We also want to be careful that we're not making a big deal about the little things, the cosmetic things. If you're buying a house that somebody else has lived in for 20 years, I guarantee you there are things that they've just been accepting that you may not be okay with, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the house is falling apart, right? So we just we want to be strategic, and I'll tell you why in just a second. But the things like, you know, an electrical switch plate on the wall that's cracked, or you know, a paint scuff on the wall, or or a tile that's cracked, or you know, a a door handle that has been, you know, a hand has been rubbing on it for the last 20 years and some of the paint is missing. We want to focus on um the the health and safety items, the the big ones, the ones that are really gonna cost you money, right? Like I could get you a new uh plug faceplate at at the uh hardware store for like 98 cents, right? So certain things we can we can do um and we don't want to make a big deal of. And the reason being is when you are buying, everything's a negotiation, right? If you really like this house and we want to keep moving forward, I I tell people if you ask for every single thing that's not perfect in this house, the likelihood of the seller saying yes to the full list of you know 20 something things is probably pretty low, right? If we're able to ask them for the five or six things that are important to us that are, you know, actually they probably should have taken care of ahead of time, anyways. I think both parties can kind of take that see eye to eye and have some common sense in the okay, yeah, maybe we maybe we should fix these items for the new buyer. Right. So I I think when we're when we're talking about negotiating, we we really want to stick to the things that are most important. And that's why I'm telling you, like, ask the home inspector, hey, I know you put this on the report. Is this you know just on here because it's not right? Is it actually can it can it become a problem? Is it actually a big deal? Right? You you also have certain things like you're gonna have building codes or electrical codes or certain things that are different now than they were 30 years ago. If you buy a house that was built 30 years ago and the person living there has been living there for 30 years, well, chances are that house isn't gonna be fully up to code unless they upgraded it uh to that. So just keep that in mind. Like it doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with the house or it's falling apart or there's major issues, it just means it was built in a different time. We can bring it up to standard if it's important to you and ask them to correct certain things. Okay. The other option you have when you're going into this negotiation is you could be handy, right? Like you could know how to take care of things, um, you can replace a couple of outlets, uh, you know, do do some cosmetic work, um, replace an appliance, like but and you're thinking, all right, I can do all that myself. I don't really need it to be fixed necessarily, or I want to control who does the fixing, maybe I'll ask them for a credit. Okay, so this is really your other more com, well, I shouldn't say more common, but other common option that you can do would be instead of asking for these six things to be repaired, maybe we ask the seller of the home to give us a credit of a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars. It just depends on what the items are, and then we will hire the people or correct them ourselves once we move into the house, right? These these are usually things that are not like something that's gonna stop you from buying the house, like an active leak or AC not working, or things like obviously those are probably gonna ask to be corrected. So, you know, but it could be something like getting the electrical up to code or replacing a sink or some faucets or you know, something more cosmetic or or smaller we can get a credit for. Okay. Now this just depends, right? You you're you, your lender, your agent, um working the transaction as a buyer, you need to know what's my situation. You know, would getting a credit really help me? Like am I am I up against it? Do I need a little bit more cash to make this deal work? Or, you know, I'm not I'm not really handy. I don't want to worry about all this stuff. I want it to be done when I move in, so I'm gonna ask for the actual repairs to be made. Okay, so that's kind of a bit of it in a nutshell on the buying perspective. Um you will want to a lot of times request photos to make sure it's done, request receipts potentially to show that the work was completed. Um, you know, just to double check, we're also gonna do a walkthrough at the end to make sure the repairs were made. So you'll have options here, but we definitely want to make sure that that things are done properly. If you go the credit route, you just get the credit at closing and we don't really have to recheck anything. Okay. Um on the seller side, preparing for a home inspection. Okay, most of the time it's your primary residence, right? You've been living in this house for a number of years, hopefully a long time, because then it's a better deal for you. Um if that's the case, bring tell tell your your real estate agent what's what's not working properly in my house, what's been an issue for me over the years. Maybe we can pre-correct some of that so that there are less things that show up on the inspection report. So I'll just basically tell you from a selling side, as the seller, the home inspection is the number one thing that will derail your transaction. Right? It is on the buyer's side too, but remember the buyer can buy any home. So if they inspect yours, they just walk away and buy another one, right? So it's not as big of a deal for them. On the seller side, you you're only selling that house, right? So you need that buyer to accept that house. So we want to be proactive. Like if you've if you've got something that has leaked over time or you know that it's leaking, let's fix it before we we put the property on the market, right? You got a crack in a window, let's fix it now. Your AC runs okay, but not great. Let's get somebody out to look at it. Let's do what we can to be proactive instead of reactive. If you are proactive, I guarantee you you are gonna have a smoother transaction and you're likely gonna make more money at the end of the sale because there aren't gonna be as many questionable items that come up about your property. The older the home, the more important this is. Okay, so just be aware that there are things we can do as homeowners to make this an easier uh step in the process. I would say home inspections are the number one reason that people cancel on real estate transactions. There are other various reasons as well, of course, but the home inspection is usually the most contentious part of back and forth, especially if the home is not in great condition or hasn't been kept up with as far as maintenance is concerned. Okay, so that is number one. If you really want to be proactive, ask your listing agent who they recommend as a home inspector, and you can have your home inspected before it even goes on the market and before the buyer hires their own home inspector. Okay, so this is a good tool for older homes or people that just like again, you know, maybe older, haven't really kept up with things. You can get a home inspection done for a few hundred dollars most of the time. Um, maybe four, maybe five, just depending on how big the home is, if it has a pool, there's various other things that go into it. Um, and I'm not really gonna quote prices just because I'm not a licensed home inspector. There's my uh uh lawyer disclosure coming out. I'm not a licensed home inspector. Um but what we can do if we want to be really proactive is let's get a home inspector in there to inspect the home and give this, give us the report as the seller. And now we know which items to correct. Now, when the buyer comes in with their home inspector, what are they gonna find? Maybe a couple very minimal things or anything that's happened since ours to theirs. Now, if you get a home inspection as a seller, it does not forego the buyer getting their own inspector. Most of the time, the buyer will still get their own home inspection done because they want to have the level of trust that it's their inspector doing the work. But that is the number one thing we can do as a seller is to uh be proactive and get somebody in there to look at things so that we know what the expectations will become once the buyers start to roll into the house. This is not really something I would recommend if you have really kept up with your house, if you know a lot about um, you know, handy, handy work, you're a handy person, you've you've kept things up to speed over the years, or you've redone your house in a major way, you know, in the last few years, so you know everything there is to know about it, then at that point, probably doesn't make sense for you to get it inspected because you have a really good idea of what's going on. But if you don't, you will save a lot of time, money, and energy by getting somebody in there to look at it ahead of time rather than being surprised at everything that comes uh at you once the buyer inspects the property. Because the more that they find wrong, the more likely they're going to be to ask you for a lot of things or just walk away entirely. And we we don't want that, right? Because we've already negotiated the deal, we've done the hard part, we've we've marketed the property, we've found the buyer, we've negotiated a price that they're willing to buy it for. You know, they've they've put their earnest money deposited, now all of a sudden we get to the inspection, they don't like it, we got to start all over again, right? We don't want to have to do that if we can help it. Now we can't always. So then the the first part comes into play, which is how can we negotiate? All right. So from the negotiating standpoint, as a seller, think about it this way: just you're you're wearing the opposite hat of what the buyer just did. They're gonna send you a report, they're gonna ask you for certain things to be fixed, andor some sort of credit amount. Now you have to decide based on what you know about the property or if you're even around it, what you want to do, meaning that sometimes you will sell a property where you don't live there. You don't live in that state anymore, right? It's it's it's not something where you can just come and hire somebody to fix it. You have to rely on the agent or vendor partners or somebody else to come in and do the repairs. And so in that case, you might say, you know what? I don't really want to fix anything. Will they take a credit? No, we can start negotiating on that. Or if you get a list of repairs and it's five or six things and you're thinking, hey, I can do these, or I have, you know, I have somebody that's licensed that I can hire to do these, then absolutely move forward and maybe the repairs of are an easier solution for you. Or maybe not, and the credit is just like a hey, you know what? I don't want to spend any time on this. I'm willing to give away a little bit more money. Let's just keep the ball rolling and move this process forward. All right. So that's really the home inspection in a nutshell uh from beginning to end from buyer and seller. Um, it's something that you should have some knowledge on before you go into it, right? If you don't already know about this process when you start shopping, please ask your real estate agent how it goes. What are your options here? Um, because if you've never done this before, it's a lot of back and forth. There's different decisions that come into play. You know, we're negotiating price or repairs, or sometimes both. And we want to make it an easier process. There's usually timelines on this, and so we we just want to understand, you know, what the pitfalls might be ahead of time. So like we we always sit down with our with our clients and explain this process in as much detail as we can. And you know, hey, here what kind of house are you looking for? Right? If it's an older home, what are you most concerned about? And then a lot of times too, once we get the report, we like to check in again with the client. Hey, did you have time to review it? Okay, great. What are the non-negotiables? Like, what are the most important things in this house? Or if X wasn't fixed, would you still buy this? Right? Because there's a different level of comfortability with all people, right? If I don't know what's what's non-negotiable or negotiable, I might negotiate the wrong deal for you. So I need to know, hey, you know, if they don't fix, you want four items fixed, okay, great. If they don't fix any of these four, would you still like to move forward and buy the house? Yeah, yeah, they're they're not that big of a deal. We'd still buy it. Okay, great. Now I know I'm not gonna put myself in the way of negotiating those four items to where the seller says no and we don't have a chance to do anything. Right? If I know that it's a huge deal, then I can say, hey, number one on this list, if it's not fixed, we're not moving forward. Right now I know how to position what's the most important thing to the client. Because realistically, like what I think is a big deal or what I care about might not be the same thing you care about, right? You may have a really good understanding of electrical and know nothing about plumbing. And I might think, oh, the plumbing stuff is all really easy. The electrical stuff, I wouldn't know what to do. So it's just a good understanding. Make sure that they have that you know what you're getting into, what your pitfalls are, what could happen, what could go wrong, and what are non-negotiables for you. But what I what I don't like to see is when we get a home inspection report back, and you know, they're all kind of minor things. Nothing is a big deal. We've seen them all before. And because we haven't relayed that to the client, that buyer is like, I'm done. The house is falling apart, I'm canceling, I can't do it, this is crazy. And you know, we're we're kind of off the deep end when we haven't really consulted uh with the home inspector, real estate agent, agent on the other side. Like we got to see what can be done before we we jump off the ship and start all over. So that's the big thing. Now, there definitely are home inspection reports we've gotten back where my advice is maybe we should buy a different house. Right? Because I know what the client wants, I know what they don't want. And so, because of that, maybe we will suggest that. But in most cases, there is a way to get through it, should they like the home enough to deal with the certain things that might not be perfect anymore. Right. Also, last thing I'll say is if you are buying a brand new house, and this is only buyer, you should still get a home inspection done. Okay, the builder will uh allow you to get a third-party home inspection. Usually the week that the walkthrough happens at the very end, I highly recommend you hire a professional home inspector for that. Even your home builders will miss things on the build. Doesn't mean that they're bad, it doesn't mean that that they're not reputable. They all are, they've been around for a long time. And like, we're not perfect. People are not perfect, they miss things from time to time. Let a different set of eyes go in there and and look at everything. And if there's anything that isn't done right, let's get it corrected for you. I mean, shoot, you spent how much money on the house. Um, so if it's brand new, I still recommend getting a home inspection. It's still a good idea to know what you're buying and what the opportunities could be or what could go wrong in the future. Also, it's just a really good way to learn the house because they'll walk through it all and explain it to you, and then the builder will then do the same thing. So then you all of a sudden you're an expert. All right. That is our detail on home inspections. I think we hit it all. Um, if you have any uh specific questions um or you know worries around the home inspection of who, what, how, uh please let us know. Um, you can reach out to us uh via email info at powersre.com and uh we will be happy to answer any questions or take care of any of your Las Vegas or Henderson real estate needs. All right, guys, we'll catch you on the next one.