What Repairs to Request (and What Not To) After Your Home Inspection

The home inspection report lands in your inbox, and it's 80 pages long. Forty items flagged. Your instinct is to ask the seller to fix everything. That instinct, if you follow it, will either blow up the deal or produce a counter-offer that says “fix nothing.” Repair requests are a negotiation, and like all negotiations, the right move is to ask for the things that actually matter and let the rest go.

Here's how to separate the things worth fighting for from the things you should quietly accept as the cost of owning a house.

What to Request: Health, Safety, and Major Systems

The rule of thumb is that repair requests should focus on items that affect your health, your safety, or the home's ability to function. That generally means:

Structural issues, foundation cracks, sagging beams, rot in load-bearing walls. These are expensive to fix later and often get worse over time. They are legitimate walk-away items if the seller refuses to address them.