Should You Waive the Home Inspection?

Faced with bidding wars for limited housing stock, some home buyers choose to forgo home inspection contingencies in order to make their offers appear hassle-free. But trying to be an easy-breezy buyer may compromise your peace of mind.

Contingencies are basically conditions you place on your offer to buy a home. For example, a financing contingency says that if you aren't able to get a mortgage to buy a home, the seller can put the home back on the market.

A standard home inspection can increase your confidence about a property’s condition before signing on the dotted line. Getting a professional opinion also allows you to negotiate repairs with the seller or back away entirely from buying a property with major issues, assuming you have an inspection contingency in place.

An inspection contingency allows the buyer to back out if there's a major issue with the home or request that the seller make repairs before closing. Inspections can be a headache for sellers but may save buyers from major heartache. Here's what you should know before agreeing to waive an inspection.

Why are buyers willing to waive?

Though the market's cooled down a bit, there's still plenty of competition for homes for sale. An estimated 31 million Americans plan to buy a home this year, according to NerdWallet's 2024 Home Buyer Report. But as of March 2024, the supply of available existing homes in the U.S. was just 1.11 million units, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.

Pickings have been slimmer — inventory bottomed out in early 2022 — but the number of homes for sale in any given month may be substantially lower than the number of folks looking. With multiple buyers vying for listings, the pressure to craft a compelling offer can be intense. In March 2024, 22% of buyers waived the inspection contingency, according to the NAR Realtors Confidence Index.

What's at risk if you waive the home inspection?

The home inspection has the buyer's back, making sure that there aren't major issues with the home that the purchaser doesn’t know about. It's completely separate from the appraisal, which reassures the lender that the home is correctly valued.

A home inspection will cover the property's main components, with the inspector looking over the home's systems, appliances and structure. An inspector will sweat the small stuff — for example, whether there are handrails next to stairs — but, most importantly, can tip you off to costly issues like moisture incursion or structural damage.

You're spending a few hundred dollars and adding a step to the closing process, but the home inspection lets you be more certain about your home purchase. You'll know what fixes will likely need to be made in the short and long term, and won't have to worry that there are major problems you've overlooked.

How much time does a home inspection actually take?

The home inspection is just one part of the closing process, which isn't especially speedy. In March 2024, the typical time from applying for a mortgage to the loan closing was about 40 days, according to real estate market data firm ICE. Even without an inspection, you're still waiting on the lender, the title company, the appraiser — it takes a lot of folks to buy a home.

Finding a home inspector you trust while you're still in the planning stages of your home search is one way to speed things up. That way, you aren't scrambling to find a pro at the last minute. The actual inspection itself should take a couple of hours. A home that's older or larger will take longer than a smaller, newer property.

In a few days, you'll get the home inspector's report. Don't expect even a brand-new home to be issue-free. It's the inspector's job to question everything, though it's up to you to decide what you want to take up with the seller. Going back and forth with the seller could prolong the closing, but if there are problems you want remedied, you might decide it's worth it.

One way you may be able to get a problem addressed and keep the sale moving is to ask to receive a credit at closing to cover the cost of a repair. That way, the seller is still footing the bill, but you'll wait to deal with the fix until after the sale's gone through.

» MORE: Home inspection dos and don't for buyers

How to make a strong offer without waiving the inspection

If you aren't comfortable cutting corners on the home inspection, know that there are other tactics you can use to make your offer more appealing to a seller.

• Be fully preapproved. Having a mortgage preapproval letter from a lender in hand demonstrates not only that you're serious but that you'll be able to get the financing to close the deal.

• Ask for an "informational inspection." This language lets the seller know you’ll get a full professional inspection but that it’s for your information only. You won’t be asking them to pay for issues it may uncover. 

• Specify a cap on what you would ask the seller to address. Alternatively, you can include language in your inspection contingency letting the seller know that you won't ask them to remedy any issues under a certain dollar amount.

• Make a larger down payment. Yes, this may mean saving up longer before trying to buy a home, but seeing more cash upfront can be alluring to sellers. It feels like more money in their pockets right away, signaling that your financing is solid and the deal will close. Another option: Look into cash-offer financing, which allows you to make a cash offer while behind the scenes you've actually got a mortgage. 

• Add an escalation clause. Sellers like this clause because it eliminates the need for back-and-forth negotiation between competing buyers. You could say that up to a certain dollar amount, you'll automatically bid $1,000 — or whatever amount works for you — over other offers.