What to Expect at the Home Inspection When Selling in Westside Los Angeles

After you accept an offer on your Westside LA home, the buyer has a window to inspect it. In California, the standard contract allows seventeen days from acceptance for investigations, though buyers and sellers can negotiate that window shorter. This is the stretch that makes most sellers anxious. You have a deal, but it is not final. The inspector walks your home and writes a report, and then you wait to see what the buyer asks for next.

Here is what actually happens, what to expect from the report, and how I walk my sellers through it.

The buyer hires and pays for their own inspector. You do not choose them. The inspection usually runs two to four hours depending on the size and age of the home. The inspector walks every accessible area: the roof, foundation, electrical panels, plumbing, HVAC systems, windows, doors, attic, and crawl space if there is one. They are documenting anything that is not functioning as intended or that represents a safety concern.

You do not need to be there. I am. I walk the inspection alongside the buyer's agent and note what the inspector is spending time on, so there are no surprises when the written report comes in.

Home inspection reports in California run anywhere from forty to over a hundred pages depending on the inspector and the age of the home. Most findings are maintenance items, disclosure items, or deferred work. Not all of them become negotiation points. Buyers often receive the report, see its length, and feel alarmed. I help you read it in context.

The findings that actually matter are safety items, major system failures, and structural concerns. The findings that rarely move a deal are cosmetic wear, normal aging, and items the buyer already knew about from your disclosures.

Westside Los Angeles has a wide range of housing stock, from postwar bungalows to newer construction. Common inspection findings in this area include older galvanized plumbing supply lines in homes from the 1950s and 1960s, roofs that are approaching end of useful life, weatherproofing gaps around windows and doors, electrical panels that predate modern grounding standards, and in hillside properties, drainage and retaining wall conditions.

None of these are deal-killers by default. Context matters. An aging roof on a home priced to account for it is a different conversation from the same roof on a home priced as if it needs nothing. The disclosures you provide at listing set the expectation baseline. For how disclosures work in California, read what California sellers must disclose.

After receiving the report, the buyer can ask for repairs, a price reduction, or a credit at closing. Or they can ask for nothing and accept the home in its current condition. In competitive markets, asking for nothing is common when a buyer is trying to win and does not want to risk the deal. In softer markets, buyers ask for more.

The buyer can also cancel within the contingency window if they find something they cannot accept, and their earnest money comes back. This is one reason pricing accurately matters from the start. An overpriced home that draws a weak offer and a long contingency period is a different negotiation than a well-priced home with multiple offers in hand.

For how to handle what comes back from the report, read how to negotiate repair requests after a home inspection. For thinking through what to fix before you list, read whether to sell as-is or make repairs first.

Some sellers choose to hire their own inspector before listing so they know what a buyer's inspector is likely to find. That is your call. The tradeoff: the report becomes a disclosure item, and anything it found that you chose not to fix must be disclosed to buyers.

My approach is the same on every listing. Before listing, we walk the home together and decide what is worth addressing, so nothing surprises a buyer. Under the Concierge Standard, I coordinate the repairs we agree on and the vendor scheduling before the home ever goes to market, and what we know goes into the disclosures before the buyer submits an offer. That reduces the renegotiation window and protects the sale price.

After the inspection and before you hear back from the buyer, keep the transaction moving. Make sure your paperwork is in order. Keep the home available for any follow-up specialists the buyer requests, whether that is a roofer, plumber, or structural engineer. Follow-up inspections are common and do not mean the deal is coming apart. Stay close to me during this window. I give my sellers a plain-English read on every item the buyer raises and a clear recommendation on how to respond, so you are not making a guess under pressure.

The inspection period does not have to be a waiting game. When you know your home's condition before you list, you go into the sale with real information. I handle all of it as part of the standard process. If you want to talk through what selling your home looks like from start to finish, book a consultation through my contact page or reach me at bobejo@firstkeypacific.com. No pressure, just real answers.

Every sale I take on starts the same way: I see the house, then we talk numbers. If you want to talk through your home's condition before you list, let me know. First Key Pacific handles the rest from there.