An inspection is not a pass or fail. On a financed sale it is the document your buyer uses to reopen the price after you thought the price was settled, and on older housing stock it always finds something.
The five that come back nearly every time
The roof
Age is what matters, not whether it leaks today. An inspector reports remaining life, and a buyer reads a short remaining life as a bill they are about to inherit. It is also the item most likely to affect which loan programs will fund the house at all.
The furnace and the water heater
Both have finite lives and both get flagged near the end of them, whether or not they are working the day of the inspection.
The electrical panel
Older panels, ungrounded outlets and knob-and-tube remnants show up constantly on housing built before the 1960s. Some insurers price around certain panel types, which turns an inspection note into a financing problem.
Plumbing
Galvanized supply lines and old cast iron drains. Functional until they are not, and inspectors report them either way.
Water in the basement
Toledo basements and grading. Efflorescence on a wall, a stain at the base, a sump pump that has clearly worked hard. Buyers read all of it as a foundation question even when it is a gutter question.
What the report actually does to your price
Rarely does the buyer ask for all of it. They pick the two or three biggest and ask for a credit, and the credit is negotiated from a position where you have already been off the market for weeks and have plans built around the closing date.
That is why repair credits are the line sellers never budget for and frequently the second largest deduction after commission. The full list is in what it costs to sell a house in Ohio.
Fixing it first does not always help
Two reasons. Most repairs return only part of their cost, and mechanical work returns the least of anything, which is exactly what this list is. And a buyer inspection will still find the next item, because on a house of this age there is always a next item.
Where fixing first does pay: a single big item on an otherwise sound house, particularly a roof, because it reopens loan programs and removes the largest objection at once. The arithmetic on that is in fix it up or sell as-is.
The version with no inspection in it
A cash sale has no lender, so there is no appraisal and no inspection contingency to renegotiate through. The condition is priced into the offer at the start, which is the entire reason the number holds.
- Any condition. Roof, furnace, panel, plumbing, water in the basement. None of it is a surprise and none of it reopens the price
- You fix nothing and clean nothing
- No agent commission. Zero
- Closing in 7 to 14 days, or a later date you choose
- Closing costs handled case by case and written into the offer before you sign
- Toledo, Maumee, Perrysburg and Sylvania only
What we do not buy: severe structural damage or condemned houses, and foreclosures with a sale date already set.
If your house is newer, well maintained and would inspect cleanly, list it, and we will tell you so. Send us the address either way.
General information, not financial advice. Repair costs and inspection findings vary by property.