Selling Your House: How to Clear the Inspection List After You Go Under Contract

You accepted an offer on your Fort Collins house, the buyer's inspector spent a few hours poking around, and now there's a report in your inbox with more pages than a short novel. It's easy to panic. Don't. Inspectors write down everything they see, from a failing furnace to a missing cover plate on a junction box, and the report doesn't rank those by how much they matter. Your job is to sort it. Home Improvement Express handles this situation all the time: its handyman service is commonly used to get a home ready to sell or to clear inspection items after a contract is signed.

Start by asking your agent what you owe

Before you spend a dollar, find out which items the buyer is actually asking you to address. That comes from the repair request your agent receives, not from the report itself, and it's governed by your contract. A handyman can't tell you what you're obligated to fix. Your agent and your contract set that, so get the request in writing and work from that list.

Read the report in three passes

Go through the report once for each category, with a highlighter. The first pass is safety. The second is water, which means active leaks, stains, and anything that suggests moisture. The third is everything else: wear, cosmetic damage, and small stuff. Doing it in passes keeps you from treating a loose cabinet knob with the same urgency as a leak under the sink.

• Safety: loose or missing handrails, guardrails with wide gaps, exposed wiring, missing outlet covers
• Water: dripping supply lines, failed caulk at tubs and showers, soft spots near fixtures, stained ceilings
• Wear and cosmetic: sticking doors, cracked trim, worn weatherstripping, nail pops, rotting deck boards

What a handyman can usually take care of

HIE's published handyman services line up well with the common report items: deck and fence repair, carpentry, doors and trim, drywall repair, tile work, basic plumbing and electrical, and vinyl or laminate flooring repair. Think of a loose stair rail that needs to be anchored properly, a bedroom door that won't latch, a cracked hearth tile, a toilet that runs, a worn outlet that needs replacing, or a fence gate that has dropped. Those are one-day problems when you hand them over as a clear list.

Put the report page number next to each item when you write it up. If the inspector wrote 'loose railing at rear deck, page 14,' put exactly that on your list. It saves the estimator from guessing which railing you mean.

What probably needs a specialist

Be honest with yourself about the items that aren't handyman work. Roofing, heating and cooling equipment, sewer lines, foundation movement, and anything an inspector flags as needing evaluation by a specialist belong with that specialist. Ask the estimator to tell you plainly which of your items fall outside their scope. A straight answer on day one is worth more than a hopeful guess that falls apart on day three. If a repair might involve a permit or a licensed trade, ask who is responsible for sorting that out before work begins.

Get photos and a description to the estimator fast

When the work fits inside a day, HIE asks for photos and a written description by email at estimates@hie-noco.com. Send the repair request, your numbered list, and a photo of each item, and note your contract deadlines so the schedule can be built around them. Estimates are free and there's no trip fee, so there's no cost to getting the numbers early and deciding afterward. Larger items, like a rotted deck section that needs rebuilding, go through an in-home estimate.

Keep the paper trail

Buyers and their agents like proof. Take a before photo and an after photo of each repaired item, from the same angle. Ask for an invoice that lists the work item by item, using the same wording as the repair request. Save receipts for anything you bought yourself. When your agent sends the buyer a packet showing that every requested item was handled, with photos and a line on the invoice, the conversation tends to stay short. HIE publishes a one-year warranty on its labor, and mentioning who did the work is a reasonable thing to include.

Don't fix what nobody asked you to fix

It's tempting to use the moment to repaint the whole house or replace every worn thing you've ever noticed. Resist that unless you already planned to. Spend on the items in the request and leave the rest. If there's a handful of nagging cosmetic items you'd have fixed anyway, bundling them into the same visit can make sense, since the hourly minimum is the same either way.

Call early

The calendar on an accepted contract moves faster than most sellers expect. If you'd like to talk through the report with someone who does this work, call 970-632-0138 or email the list and photos to estimates@hie-noco.com. Ask for the written estimate, check it against the buyer's request line by line, and hand the finished invoice to your agent when the work is done.