How Long Does a Home Inspection Take?

Hagan Home Inspections is a full-service home inspection company in Raleigh, North Carolina. Owner John Hagan is an expert in the industry, with more than 10 years experience in custom home building. He has been featured in the show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and prides himself on his commitment to fulfilling his customers’ needs. Here, he tells us how long a homebuyer should allot for getting a home inspection.

From the time a homebuyer decides that he’ll buy a specific house — and therefore needs a home inspection — to the time in which the inspection is entirely completed, and the list of issues that the inspector has found during his inspection has been distributed to the home seller and realtor, is usually no more than one week.

Usually, my schedule is set up so that from the first phone call to the date when I arrive at a home for an inspection is no more than three to four working days. So if a person calls me and says that he needs to make an appointment, it should not take me longer than that amount of time to get to the site and look around.

Most homebuyers plan to call about a week in advance of when they need the appointment, and I would say that is just about right. Just to err on the side of caution, I would recommend that you call at least one week before you absolutely need the inspection to be completed.

As soon as I show up on the job site, the inspection itself should last around three hours. Obviously that depends on the size of the home. I have done home inspections on much larger homes that took up to six hours, but that is not a regular occurrence with most average-sized houses.

As soon as I am done inspecting the home, the homebuyer can expect to receive a full report from me in his email inbox within 24 hours. Usually it takes even less time than that, but once again, I advise people to err on the side of caution. So I say 24 hours at the most. (Usually I can get a full inspection report to the homebuyer by the evening after the inspection.)

Within the report will be detailed explanations of every issue that should be resolved, along with photos specifying exactly what is wrong. That report, then, can be forwarded to the realtor, the home seller, or vendor that will be handling the repairs so he/they can get started right away. The beauty of an email report is that it can be forwarded to as many people as needed instantly, without waiting or paying for multiple copies and faxes.

It is important that homebuyers schedule enough time for the home inspection. On average, I recommend that buyers plan around one week, from start to finish, for the inspection and final report to be complete.