After a home inspection, buyers almost always ask for the same handful of things: safety items, water problems, and the big systems. The 40-page report may list sixty findings, but the repair request that lands on the seller's desk usually contains five to fifteen, and they are predictable. Electrical hazards, active leaks, HVAC service, roof issues, rotten wood, and anything with the word "moisture" near it. Cosmetic findings almost never make the list, because buyers' agents know a seller will fight over scratched floors and fold on an open electrical splice. If you are selling, or you are an agent coaching a seller, knowing what actually gets requested lets you see the amendment coming before the inspector's truck leaves the driveway.
The requests that show up on almost every amendment
Electrical safety items. This is the most consistent category in Middle Tennessee's housing stock, where a lot of homes have had decades of amateur help. The usual suspects: missing GFCI protection in kitchens, baths, garages, and exteriors, double-tapped breakers, open junction boxes, reversed polarity on outlets, and exposed splices in attics and crawlspaces. Buyers ask for these because the inspector flags them in safety language, and safety language travels straight onto the request form. The good news for sellers is that most of these are quick, inexpensive fixes for a licensed electrician, and knocking out the whole electrical list usually costs less than the negotiation it prevents.
Plumbing leaks and drips. Any active leak, under a sink, at a supply valve, around a toilet base, at the water heater, gets requested, every time. So do slow drains and corroded shutoff valves. Water is the one word buyers never ignore.
The water heater's small stuff. Missing TPR discharge pipes, missing drain pans where required, flexible connectors past their prime. Small items, flagged as safety, always requested.
HVAC service and condition. A dirty system that has not been serviced reads as neglect, and "HVAC at or near the end of its useful life" in a report is the single line most likely to turn into a dollar figure during negotiation. Buyers commonly ask for a professional service and inspection, repairs the servicer identifies, or a credit against aging equipment. Sellers with an old but functioning system should decide before listing how they will answer this one, because it is coming.
Roof and flashing findings. Missing or damaged shingles, exposed nail heads, bad flashing at chimneys and walls, and any interior stain that suggests the roof let water in. Buyers rarely ask an aging roof to be replaced in a repair request, that fight happens in price, but they very often ask for specific repairs and documentation that leaks are resolved.
Rotten wood. Decayed trim, fascia, soffits, deck boards, and door jambs. Rot gets requested both because it is visible proof of water and because lenders on certain loan types require it fixed, which brings us to the next category.
Crawlspace and moisture findings. Standing water, missing vapor barrier, fungal growth on joists, and failed grading or gutters that dump water at the foundation. Middle Tennessee crawlspaces produce these findings constantly, and they are requested at a high rate because the inspector's language, moisture, fungal, microbial, alarms buyers more than almost anything else in the report.
Safety rail and step items. Missing handrails, loose deck rails, settled steps. Cheap to fix, flagged as safety, always on the list.
What buyers usually do not ask for
Worn flooring, dated fixtures, nail pops, fogged window seals in secondary rooms, sticking interior doors, fence condition, and general old-house character. Agents coach buyers to spend their negotiating capital on function and safety, and most do. When a request does come in loaded with cosmetics, it is usually a signal of a nervous buyer or an opening position, and it tends to get negotiated down to the functional core. Sellers should respond to the core seriously rather than letting the cosmetic padding sour the whole conversation.
One more category with its own logic: loan-driven repairs. FHA and VA appraisals carry their own condition requirements, peeling paint on older homes, broken glass, missing handrails, inoperable systems, and those are not really requests at all. If the loan requires it, it gets fixed or the deal changes shape.
Repair, credit, or price cut: how the ask arrives
Buyers can ask for the work itself, a closing credit, or a price reduction, and each has a logic. Repair requests give the buyer a fixed outcome but require trusting the seller's contractor. Credits keep the closing date safe and let the buyer control the work afterward. Price cuts are simplest but feel smaller against a 30-year mortgage than the same dollars feel as cash. Sellers generally do best agreeing to the safety and water items as actual repairs, done by licensed trades with receipts, and steering big-ticket aging systems toward credits, where the number is negotiable and the work is not on their critical path. What kills deals is not the list itself, it is slow responses and undocumented fixes, which is why the amendment deadline matters more than any single line item.
The step everyone forgets: the re-inspection
Agreed repairs are not finished when the contractor leaves, they are finished when the buyer accepts them. Many buyers schedule a re-inspection or a careful final walk-through specifically to verify the amendment items, and this is where sloppy closeouts unravel deals in the final week. The standard that survives scrutiny is simple: licensed trades for licensed work, receipts that match the amendment language line by line, and photos of each completed item. A seller who hands over that package at the walk-through turns the re-inspection into a formality. A seller whose handyman "took care of it" with nothing in writing is renegotiating at the closing table, which is the most expensive room in real estate to negotiate in.
If you are the seller: get ahead of the predictable list
Since the request list is this predictable, a seller can preempt most of it: service the HVAC, fix the drips, have an electrician clear the common safety items, and deal with visible rot before photos, not after inspection. We broke down which of these actually pay back in which repairs are worth doing before you list, and what the market charges for typical inspection findings in what home inspection repairs cost. The repairs you choose not to make are fine too, as long as you have decided in advance how you will answer when they are requested.
If you are the agent: the clock is the enemy
Repair negotiations die by deadline. The resolution period is short, sellers scramble for contractors, the one who answers cannot start for three weeks, and a deal wobbles over a $600 list. This is the exact gap we built our agent service for: we quote line by line from the inspection report itself, schedule against the closing date, and hand back photos and an itemized invoice that satisfies the amendment. The full workflow is on our inspection repairs for agents page, and agents who work with us repeatedly tend to send the report over the same day it lands. If you are an agent or a seller staring at a repair request with a deadline attached, here is how we work with agents, one intake, licensed and insured, documentation included.
The pattern to remember: inspection negotiations feel unpredictable, but the list is not. Safety, water, systems, rot. Handle those four categories, document the work, and the amendment becomes paperwork instead of a renegotiation.