The same day inspection report checklist

Before the truck leaves the driveway

• Confirm the signed agreement is in hand before you unlock the door.No agreement, no inspection, with no exceptions for an agent who promises it is coming. A signed pre inspection agreement is the document that defines your scope and your limits when a claim arrives two years later.
• Open the report shell for this address before you drive.Address, year built, square footage, foundation type, utilities status and weather at arrival. Filling this in cold at nine at night is where wrong addresses and wrong client names get into reports.
• Build the delivery list from the agreement, not from memory.Buyer email, buyer agent, and only the additional recipients the client authorized in writing. Sending a report to a listing agent the client never approved is an easy and avoidable problem.
• Check the ancillary services booked on this job.Radon placement, WDO, sewer scope or pool. Load the devices and forms before you leave, because a second trip across the metro erases the margin on the add on.
• Start with a charged phone and a cleared camera roll.One job at a time in the roll means no photos from yesterday leaking into tonight report. A dead phone at the halfway point costs you the entire evening.

Photo discipline on the walk

• Shoot wide, then medium, then tight on every defect.The wide shot proves the location, the medium shows the assembly, the tight shows the condition. A tight shot alone is the photograph that starts an argument about which wall you meant.
• Annotate while you are standing in front of it.Draw the arrow at the panel, not at the desk. The five seconds it costs at the moment of capture saves the ten minutes of scrolling and second guessing that arrive after dinner.
• Photograph every data plate you use to age a system.Furnace, water heater, condenser, panel label and the shingle stamp if you can reach it. When a buyer asks how you dated the equipment, the plate photo is the answer that ends the conversation.
• Take the photograph that proves how you inspected the roof.Walked, from the ladder at the eave, by drone, or from the ground with binoculars. That single image supports the limitation sentence you will write, and limitation sentences are where claims begin.
• Caption in plain condition language, not a diagnosis.Write what you observed and where. Rusted flue connector at the water heater is a caption. Improperly installed by an unlicensed contractor is a claim waiting to happen.
• Photograph what you could not access and why.The blocked crawlspace hatch, the stored boxes in front of the panel, the locked utility room. These images turn a vague limitation into a documented one.

The desk hour

• Sort every photograph into its section before writing a word.Ten minutes of sorting saves thirty minutes of hunting mid sentence. If your tool files photos by section at capture, this step is already done when you sit down.
• Write the body first and the summary last.The summary should be built from what the report actually says, not from what you remember on the drive home. Memory summaries are where items get promoted or quietly dropped.
• Run a wording pass on every should, must and recommend.Each one is a promise. Check that you observed what you claim to have observed, and that you are naming a condition and pointing at the right trade rather than prescribing a specific repair.
• Verify the client name, the address and the inspection date.Wrong details on a correct report undermine every page of it in front of an agent. Read them against the agreement, not against your own header.
• Attach ancillary results or state them as pending with a date.A radon result that is forty eight hours out should say so in the report with the date it will arrive. Silence on a paid service generates a phone call you do not have time for.

Delivery and the day after

• Send to the buyer and the authorized agents in one message.One send, one link, one version. Separate emails create version confusion and someone will eventually negotiate off the wrong copy.
• Lead with a summary the agent can read on a phone.The agent reads it in a car between showings. If the top of your delivery is readable on a phone screen, it gets forwarded instead of set aside for later.
• Log the delivery time in the client file.Time stamped delivery is your record when someone claims the report arrived after an inspection contingency deadline. Keep it where you can find it in three years.
• Call the buyer within a day of sending.Ten minutes on the phone prevents the panicked text thread about the polybutylene line and the crack in the slab. It is also where repeat referrals come from.
• Archive the report and the original photographs to your own storage.Keep them in a location you control, organized by address and date, for at least the statute of limitations in your state. Never let your only copy live inside a vendor account.