You've got the inspection report. It's 40 pages, half of it is photos of a slightly rusty hose bib, and somewhere in there is a $9,000 problem with the roof. Now what?

Here's the short version: ask for money, not a to-do list. Prioritize safety, structural, and major-systems issues over cosmetic ones. Frame the request as a narrow, specific ask backed by numbers, not a laundry list. And know that how much leverage you actually have depends less on how bad the report is and more on how many other buyers are circling the house — which, as of mid-2026, is fewer than it's been in years. We'll get into all of that, but that's the whole playbook in one paragraph. Now the details.

Sort the list before you touch the negotiation

The inspection report is not a shopping list. Every item on it "could" be fixed, but asking for all of it is how you turn a fixable negotiation into a dead deal. Before you write anything to the seller, sort every item into one of two buckets:

Worth asking for: - Safety hazards (exposed wiring, missing GFCI outlets near water, carbon monoxide risks, mold, active leaks) - Structural issues (foundation cracks, framing problems, roof structure) - Major systems at or past end of life (HVAC, water heater, electrical panel, plumbing) — especially anything the inspector flagged as non-functional, not just old - Anything that will block your loan from closing (some lenders and appraisers won't fund a loan on a home with an inoperable furnace or exposed electrical, for example)

Usually not worth asking for: - Cosmetic wear (scuffed paint, worn carpet, a cracked outlet cover) - Routine maintenance items a homeowner should expect to handle (a dirty HVAC filter, minor caulking, a sticky door) - Anything already priced into the deal — if you offered under asking because the listing photos showed a dated kitchen, don't also ask for a credit to fix the dated kitchen

Real estate and mortgage advisors describe roughly this same triage — safety, structural, and systems failures first, cosmetic stuff last — as the standard filter for what to actually put in front of a seller (Raleigh Realty). A useful gut check some agents recommend: set a dollar threshold, often somewhere around $500–$1,000, and only bring items that clear it. It keeps the request focused on real money instead of nickel-and-diming a seller over a loose cabinet hinge.

Ask for a credit, not a repair — almost always

Once you know what you're asking for, decide how. You generally have two options: get the seller to fix it themselves before closing (repair-in-kind), or get money knocked off what you owe at closing (a credit). In most cases, take the money.

Here's why credits usually win:

  • You control the contractor. If the seller handles the repair, they're paying, which means they have every incentive to hire the cheapest person available — not necessarily the best one. A credit lets you hire whoever you'd actually trust to fix your own house.
  • You control the quality and the timeline. A rushed pre-closing repair job, done by someone the seller found on short notice, is not a great foundation (sometimes literally) for the house you're about to own for the next several years.
  • Repairs have to be verified, and that adds friction. When a credit is explicitly earmarked for repairs in the contract, lenders typically require the work to be completed before closing and documented by an appraiser or licensed contractor before they'll fund the loan — which adds a real risk of closing delays if the work runs late (JVM Lending). A plain closing-cost credit doesn't carry that same paper trail.
  • You get to decide if you even fix it. Maybe that "repair" is actually something you were going to change anyway during a bigger renovation. Cash gives you the option to fold it into a larger project instead of paying twice.

There are exceptions. For a handful of things — a septic system, a well, a roof, anything where a permit, warranty, or licensed sign-off actually matters for insurability or resale — a completed, documented, seller-paid repair can be worth more than the cash equivalent, because you're also buying the paper trail. And if a lender or appraiser flags something as a condition of funding the loan at all (a non-functional furnace in winter, exposed wiring), that item may need to be resolved before close no matter which side pays for it. But for most of the list, cash at closing is cleaner, faster, and keeps you in control.

How much money is actually on the table

Seller credits aren't unlimited — they're capped as a percentage of the purchase price, and the cap depends on your loan type. As of 2026, the general limits are:

  • Conventional loans: 3% of price if you're putting down less than 10%, 6% if you're between 10–25% down, 9% if you're putting down 25% or more, and 2% on investment properties
  • FHA loans: 6% flat, regardless of down payment
  • VA loans: 4% for certain items (payoff of buyer debts, prepaid items, buyer's funding fee, and similar), on top of otherwise unlimited seller-paid standard closing costs — which is why VA buyers can often net more total credit than the 4% figure implies (Veterans United, Chase)
  • USDA loans: 6% flat

(Sourced from mortgage-info.com's 2026 breakdown and corroborated by MyMortgageInsider; confirm your exact figure with your loan officer since guideline overlays vary by lender —.)

Two catches worth knowing before you get greedy with the number:

  1. The cap is on total seller-paid costs, not just repair credits. If the seller is already covering some of your closing costs as part of the deal, an inspection credit stacks on top of that toward the same limit — it doesn't get its own separate bucket.
  2. The concession has to fit inside the appraisal. Lenders base the allowable credit on the lesser of the purchase price or the appraised value. If you and the seller agree to a credit that effectively lowers their net proceeds below what the house appraises for, that's usually fine — but a credit large enough to functionally disguise a price cut can draw scrutiny, since appraisers and underwriters both look at whether concessions are inflating the sale price artificially.

If you're already near your loan type's concession cap from earlier negotiations (rate buydown, closing cost help), there may not be room left for a large inspection credit — which is itself a reason to ask for it as a price reduction instead in that specific scenario, since price reductions aren't subject to the same cap.

How to frame the ask so the deal doesn't die

The words matter almost as much as the amount. A request that reads like a demand letter tends to get a defensive response; a request that reads like a reasonable person surfacing a real problem tends to get a real conversation.

A few things that consistently help:

  • Lead with the inspector's language, not your own. Attach the relevant excerpt or photo from the report rather than paraphrasing it into something scarier than it is.
  • Back real dollar items with a number. A contractor quote or a reasonable repair-cost estimate turns "the roof is bad" into "here's what fixing the roof actually costs," which is a much harder thing to argue with.
  • Ask for one thing, not everything. A tight, prioritized list signals you've actually thought about what matters. A twelve-item list that includes a torn window screen signals you're negotiating on vibes, and sellers (and their agents) can tell the difference.
  • Remember the seller is often just as surprised as you are. Sellers rarely commission their own pre-listing inspection, so hidden issues — old wiring behind a wall, a slow roof leak — can genuinely be news to them, not something they were hiding. Assuming bad faith by default tends to make the conversation worse than it needs to be, even when the seller absolutely should have known.
  • Say the quiet part: you're not obligated to close, and they're not obligated to say yes. You don't need to spell that out aggressively — the contingency deadline in your contract already does that for you — but writing the request like you're the only party with options usually backfires.

How sellers actually respond

There's a predictable range of seller reactions, and it's worth knowing the pattern going in so you're not shocked by any of them:

  • Reasonable middle ground: by far the most common outcome in a competitive-but-not-desperate market — a partial credit, or acceptance of the safety/structural items while declining the cosmetic ones.
  • Flat refusal: more common when the listing was already marketed "as-is," when there are backup offers waiting, or when the seller genuinely doesn't have the cash to fund concessions (a seller who's tight on proceeds may prefer to hold price over paying out a credit, even if it costs them the deal) (Compass Mortgage).
  • Silence or slow-walking: less a strategy than a sign the seller (or their agent) is disorganized — don't read too much into it, but don't let it eat into your contingency deadline either.
  • Counter with a different concession entirely: a home warranty instead of a credit, or a price cut instead of a credit — worth taking seriously since either can net out similarly depending on your loan type's concession cap (see above).

One pattern worth flagging from real buyer accounts: agreeing to purchase a home "as-is" at the offer stage, before you've even seen the inspection, can quietly gut your negotiating position later. Buyers describe finding real issues after signing an as-is offer and technically still having the right to walk — but having zero leverage to actually get money back, because they'd already waived it in writing. If you know the market is tight enough that you might feel pressure to write "as-is" into the initial offer, understand what you're giving up before you do it, not after the inspection report shows up.

The leverage question: it depends on the market, not the report

Here's the part a lot of advice skips: how much you can actually get has less to do with how bad the inspection report is and more to do with how many other buyers want this specific house.

As of May 2026, sellers gave concessions to buyers in 46.2% of U.S. home sales — the highest share on record for that month, up from 43.1% a year earlier (Redfin). Redfin attributes this to a national supply-demand imbalance: roughly 47% more sellers than buyers in the market. About 15.7% of May sales included both a concession and a price cut — also a record for that month.

That national number hides a lot of local variation, and local variation is what actually matters for your specific negotiation:

  • Buyer-favoring metros (as of May 2026): Nashville (75.5% of sales had concessions), Charlotte (71.4%), Atlanta (68.7%), Phoenix (65.6%) — all up sharply year over year.
  • Seller-favoring metros: New York (2.9%), San Jose (5.9%), San Francisco (14.9%) — concessions are rare here even now.

A separate April 2026 survey of agents found 41% now say buyers have more bargaining power nationally — a real shift — but with sharp regional splits, since the Midwest and Northeast still tilt toward sellers (Inman). The same survey found deals are falling through more often than usual (a 9% fallthrough rate reported by agents, versus 5% in NAR's own data) — a reminder that even in a buyer-favoring market, pushing too hard on a negotiation can still blow up a deal that would otherwise have closed.

Translating that into practice: check how many other offers are on the table (your agent can usually find out), how long the house has sat, and whether your metro looks more like Nashville or more like San Jose above. That tells you far more about how hard you can push than the size of the number in the inspection report does.

If they say no to everything

This article is about the negotiation itself, not about deciding whether to walk away — that's a separate call involving your contingency deadline, your inspector's read on severity, and how much you actually want the house. But the short version: your inspection contingency exists specifically so a flat "no" from the seller doesn't leave you stuck. Know your deadline, and don't let a slow-moving negotiation quietly eat the window where you still had the option to leave.

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