What is a home inspection
and what happens after it?

A home inspection is a professional visual examination of a house: the roof, the foundation, the heating and cooling, the plumbing and the electrical. A licensed inspector walks the property and writes up what they find. In South Jersey a buyer usually schedules one shortly after going under contract, and the report that comes back is used to ask the seller for repairs or for a credit, or to step back under the inspection contingency.

Say an inspector on a house around $350,000 flags an aging water heater and some lifted shingles. The buyer does not have to take the house exactly as it is, and the seller does not have to fix everything on the list. A common landing spot is a credit at closing, where the buyer takes the money and handles the work on their own schedule instead of the seller arranging a repair in the days before settlement. Those numbers are an illustration, not an offer or a quote, and a seller can decline.

An inspector reports what can be seen and reached on the day. What sits behind a finished wall or below the ground is somebody else's call, which is why septic, well, radon and sewer scopes get booked as their own appointments when a house calls for one.

What to ask, and who answers it: your inspector is the one who explains what a finding means and how urgent it is. Your agent can tell you how a repair request tends to land with a particular seller, and whether a credit or a repair is the better ask. How the inspection contingency itself works is a question for your attorney.