California Home Inspection Checklist
The five things to check in any report, plus nine checks that only exist because the house is in California.
This is the California add-on to our national inspection checklist, nine extra checks for natural hazard disclosure, wildfire insurance, Mello-Roos taxes, seismic retrofit, and termite licensing that don't exist anywhere else. See the general Home Inspection Report Checklist
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- The same five report checks that catch gaps between the walkthrough and the write-up
- Nine California-only checks covering the state's natural hazard disclosure report, wildfire insurance, Mello-Roos taxes, seismic retrofits, and termite licensing
- Built around California's own hazard-disclosure law and insurance market, not a generic list with the state name swapped in
What's inside
5 universal checks + 9 California-only checks. 14 total in the free PDF.
Section A: Universal checks
- Confirm every space you'd expect is actually in the report.Attic, crawl space, basement, electrical panel. If the listing or the inspector mentioned it out loud, it should show up in writing somewhere.
- Check whether the report's length matches how long the inspection took.A three-hour walkthrough that turns into two pages is a mismatch worth a phone call.
- Compare what the inspector said out loud to what ended up in writing.If you took notes during the walkthrough, pull them out and read both side by side.
Section A: Universal checks
Section B: California-only checks
“This gets you far enough to know when to ask a harder question, in California specifically. It won't tell you whether an NHD checkbox is a dealbreaker or a manageable risk, how to read a Section 2 termite finding against a Section 1 one, or what a finding is actually worth at the negotiating table. That's the difference between noticing a report was softened and knowing what it was softened from. That's Don't Use Their Inspector.”
Sources
- Home Inspection Requirements for California | ASHI
- Civil Code § 1103.2, Natural Hazard Disclosure | California Legislative Information
- California Earthquake Insurance Policies | California Earthquake Authority
- Governor Newsom Signs Bipartisan Package Reforming California's Insurer of Last Resort | Office of the Governor
- Mello-Roos | San Diego County Assessor
- Earthquake Brace + Bolt Retrofit Program | California Residential Mitigation Program
- Business and Professions Code § 8500, Structural Pest Control Act | Justia
- Civil Code § 1102, Transfer Disclosure Statement | Justia
Get the checklist, free
One click to download. The full Don't Use Their Inspector is also free if you want to go deeper.