Home inspection reports are not available in public records. Home inspection reports are confidential and owned by the client who hired the home inspector and paid the inspection fee. The customer can choose to share (or not share) a copy of the home inspection report with anyone of their choice. The report belongs to the person who paid it.
Unless you knew who that person was and that person agreed to share the report with you, the information belongs to the previous potential buyer. So, the end result for the customer. Your home inspection report is confidential information and you don't have to share it. Certainly, your inspector should never share it without you saying so.
Your State May Require You to Disclose Certain Information When Selling a Home. Your real estate agent will most likely need to report problems discovered during an inspection. Therefore, while a housing inspection report is not a publicly available document, it may be required to be disclosed during a lawsuit. See our blog post Should I Trust the Seller Property Disclosure Statement?.
During typical inspection negotiations, the buyer will ask the seller to repair specific defects or offer credit to remedy the problems identified in the report. Section 535,228 (c) (of the Standards of Practice) requires inspectors to report a tab of the initiation course other than sealed material as a deficiency. It is up to the inspector's “reasonable judgment” to determine whether or not the situation encountered during the inspection is a hazard to the inspector's client. Sometimes, after the inspection, the sale of the house falls apart for reasons not related to the inspection and there is an inspection report that may or may not reveal newly discovered defects in the property.
The lack of a damper clamp should be reported as a deficiency when there is a gas appliance or artificial gas logs (but not simply a log lighter tube). Therefore, it would violate Section 1102.303 for you to inspect any property that your agent has listed or in which you have personally participated. The inspector must use “reasonable judgment” to determine whether the emergency escape and rescue openings are sufficient for the intended purpose of the openings for the inspector's customer. Standards of Practice do not require double cylinder safety latches to be reported as deficient, unless such a lock prevents functional emergency escape from a bedroom.
That way, you can spend only what you owe and save yourself the worry of a bad inspection right before you close the deal. In fact, buyers are obliged to provide sellers with proof of any defects that an inspector discovers whether such defects need to be repaired prior to closure or if they may affect the purchase price. By pre-clear, I mean that I have a place in the Inspection Agreement where the customer can affirmatively check a box that gives me permission to release his inspection information to his agent. The Texas Occupations Code, Real Estate Inspectors, Chapter 1102, §1102,303 specifically prohibits an inspector from acting as an inspector and real estate agent in the same transaction.
Yes, double-tap grounded conductors (neutral) are a deficiency and should be declared as such, unless the manufacturer approves otherwise and mentions them. Before you demand to see him out of curiosity or out of a desire to control negotiations, listen to what long-time inspectors and real estate experts have to say about it. I would never give my inspection report to a seller or their agent unless I used it to pressure them to repair a problem. .
