Are You Seeing More Buyers Asking for Repair Estimates ? and How Are You Handling It?

[Jason Boni]

Over the past year, I?ve noticed more and more realtors and buyers asking for repair cost estimates right after receiving their inspection reports. I?ve always held firm that inspectors shouldn?t be quoting repairs ? that?s not our lane and it opens a lot of liability.


That said, clients are clearly hungry for something that bridges the gap between our findings and what those findings mean financially.


I?ve seen a few third-party services ? and now even some AI-based tools ? that claim to read inspection reports and generate estimated repair ranges automatically. They say it helps buyers prioritize what to tackle first without us getting involved in the pricing.


Curious how others here are handling this:

• Are you getting more of these requests lately?
  
• Would you ever consider offering a report add-on through a third party?
  
• Anyone tested one of these newer ?AI? solutions yet?
  
  

I?m trying to gauge whether this is a passing trend or something we?ll all need to address soon.

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[david shapiro]

I'm in a slightly different position. I get called in after a HI sees there are more electrical problems than there's time to investigate. When I drill down, despite having an active electrical license I firewall so that whatever my recommendations may be, the customer knows I'm not making money by telling them their wiring is unsafe and needs work--I won't be getting that part of the job. While I can't tell them what they should expect to pay for remediation, I can and will give them specs. I can and will go over bids they receive, explain the differences between what the contractors offer, suggest tweaks. (I don't do this for free, of course.) Now I have a protege who gets called in all the time to evaluate iffy electrical systems before the utility will supply power, and also to bid on the work. Because these systems are indeed iffy, his bids usually are "To replace the whole [damned] system is going to cost you X." This doesn't win him friends, but at least he doesn't get caught up in spending days figuring out exactly what is still viable, and then giving the customer a detailed bid which gets shopped around to his competition.