Requesting Repairs After the Home Inspection

Requesting Repairs

You’ve had your home inspection and you'd like to request a couple of repairs.

What’s the process? Let’s dive in!

As long as you are still within your inspection period, you have the right to request repairs. Once the inspection period ends, you cannot ask for any or additional repairs from the Seller.

Remember, all homes in Michigan are sold “as is”. This means the Seller has no obligation to agree to complete the requested repairs.

The easiest method to explain this process is to use an example:

Let’s say you receive the inspection report back and after discussion with your Realtor, you decide there are 3 repairs you’d like the Seller to address.

1. A broken door handle
2. A missing roof shingle
3. A leak under the kitchen faucet

Optionally, you can also indicate you are open to accepting a monetary credit instead of the repairs being fixed.

A quick note here…the credit you are requesting would go towards your closing costs. The purchase price of the home will not change. The credit would mean there is less money you have to bring to the closing table and therefore could be utilized for the repairs.

So once you’ve requested the repairs… the Seller can respond in a few different ways:

• “Yes”, and agree to fix everything.
• “No”, and agree to fixing nothing.
• Agree to fix some of the items…Say the faucet and door handle but not the window.
• Or, they agree to credit you for some or all of the requested repairs.

The great news here is that the decision comes back to you as the buyer on what you want to do:

You have the option to agree with the seller's response and move forward with the contract.

OR

You can reject the seller's response, cancel the contract and have your earnest money returned to you in full.

If you decide to cancel the contract, you would be out any inspection fees you have paid to individual vendors. At that point, we would start the process over and continue looking for homes. 

That’s a quick look at requesting repairs during the inspection period.