Send the seller the whole inspection report or just the items you want fixed

Question

This question comes up on nearly every purchase, and there are three reasonable approaches worth weighing. Sending the full report as an attachment with the repair request lets the seller see the whole picture. The ask looks reasonable next to every item not being raised, and it's harder to be accused of cherry-picking. The tradeoff is that a full report contains a lot of language a seller's side can use later, and depending on the state, it can end up in the seller's disclosure file for the next buyer if the deal falls through, which is worth confirming with a local attorney before deciding. Sending a short list of the items to be addressed with contractor bids attached keeps control of the narrative and limits what's on the record, but it can read as less transparent to a seller who wonders what else is in the report. A middle path is sending just the inspector's summary page, the significant findings list, along with bids on the two or three items being pursued. That tends to capture the good faith read of the full report while keeping the paper trail narrower, and it's often the most defensible default absent a strong reason to go one of the other two directions.

tylerbrooks9 · Accepted Answer

The short list tends to work better, and the reason isn't strategy, it's attention. Sellers rarely read a thirty eight page report closely. They read the first thing that makes them angry and stop. Send the full report and the seller's response often ends up litigating a minor note, a loose downspout, that was never part of the actual ask. That sets an adversarial tone for the whole negotiation and drags out items nobody cared about. Send four items instead, one paragraph each, with a bid attached to the two expensive ones, and a seller is far more likely to agree to most of them quickly. A seller can dispute an opinion about a furnace. They can't do much with a written quote from a licensed HVAC company. That is usually the piece that decides these negotiations, independent of how much paper gets sent. On the disclosure question, an attorney in the relevant state should weigh in. Some states treat what a seller learns from a buyer's report as something they now know, and that changes their incentive to negotiate at all.

stephen_ok9 · Answer

Verity's right about sellers not reading, but I'd note the full report has one use the short list doesn't. If you're asking for a big number, the seller's agent is going to tell them your ask is inflated. Handing over everything lets the agent do the arithmetic and land on "he's only asking about six of 29 items," which is a real argument in your favor and one you can't make yourself without looking defensive.

Depends how big your ask is relative to price.

derekj19 · Answer

Nobody's mentioned the inspector's view. Two I've talked to hate having their full report forwarded around, because it was written for one client under an agreement with one client, and once it's circulating they get calls from people who never hired them. One of them told me he now watermarks every page with the client name for exactly that reason. Doesn't answer tender's question but it's part of why some agents default to the summary page.

Send the seller the whole inspection report or just the items you want fixed

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