A Buyer’s Report Should Never Be Shared Without Consent

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Ever wondered who truly owns a home inspection report? We pull back the curtain on a practice too many buyers don’t see coming: agents circulating a paid report to future buyers after a deal collapses. We explain why that report is the buyer’s property, what the purchase agreement actually requires, and how reusing a report exposes everyone to risk while stripping you of negotiating power.

We walk through the real legal framework—client confidentiality, inspector licensing rules, and why the client’s name stays on every page. You’ll hear how some agents try to justify sharing, why redacting a name doesn’t change ownership, and the narrow safety exceptions where notifying occupants is appropriate. Most importantly, we offer a practical playbook: use a targeted remedy or objection document, share only the specific findings tied to your decision, and put it in writing that your report is not to be distributed.

If you’re a buyer, this conversation shows how to protect your leverage and privacy while avoiding downstream liability. If you’re an agent, you’ll get a cleaner, safer process that respects contracts and keeps you out of harm’s way. And for sellers, the message is simple: encourage new buyers to order their own inspection, so everyone gets current, reliable findings with clear accountability.

Protect your investment and your options. Listen now, subscribe for more straight-talk on inspections and real estate, and share this with a friend who’s house hunting. Your report is yours—keep it that way.

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To learn more about Habitation Investigation, the Three-time Winner of the Best Home Inspection Company in the Midwest Plus the Winner of Consumer Choice Award for Columbus Ohio visit Home Inspection Columbus Ohio - Habitation Investigation (homeinspectionsinohio.com) 

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_02 (00:01):
Alright, Laura.
Alright, Jim.
If you are a home buyer and youhave, as you should, you hire a
home inspection company to do todo the inspection for you.
If you're in Ohio, hopefully youhired habitation investigation.

SPEAKER_01 (00:16):
The best company around.

SPEAKER_02 (00:18):
My buyers.
Well, we have won awards.
Yes, we have.
Multiple awards.
So we are multiple years in arow.
I think we're the most awardedhome inspection company in Ohio.
Maybe.
Maybe probably very soon.
There's probably some companythat's been, hey, we're the
number one Cleveland one forevery year.
We don't go to Cleveland, but wehave won Best of the Midwest

(00:39):
three times.
Consumer's Choice Award twice.
I think pretty impressive.
I think the only home inspectioncompany in Ohio has had consumer
choice awards.

SPEAKER_01 (00:50):
Yeah, I think we're the only one actually.

SPEAKER_02 (00:52):
Yeah, so anyway, so so that's nice.
But anyway, home buyer, you dida smart thing.
You had the home inspection.
What you may not realize Wellyou you know, as a home buyer,
that report is for your purpose.
Your use.
You pay it.

SPEAKER_01 (01:11):
You pay for it.

SPEAKER_02 (01:12):
You paid for it.
You're the one who signed theagreement regarding the scope
and limitations of thatinspection.
It's your report.
Your name is on that report andon the pages after that.
Like not just the title, it's onevery page after that.
Right.
So what you may not realize isthat some real estate agents

(01:36):
they say you decide not to gothrough the purchase.
It can be any reason.
The maybe there's issues foundduring the home inspection,
maybe a financing, maybe just achange in your mind.

SPEAKER_01 (01:48):
Whatever.
Sale doesn't go through.

SPEAKER_02 (01:50):
Yeah, it doesn't really does not matter.
You may not realize that someagents will take your report.

SPEAKER_01 (01:58):
Take your name off.

SPEAKER_02 (02:00):
Well, hold on.
They'll take your report andthen they'll send it to every
other person who wants to maybelook at that house or maybe a
potential uh buyer of the house.
And by and but you paid for it,and they're gonna try and use it
for every everybody else.
We had an agent the other day.

SPEAKER_01 (02:30):
According to this agent, the purchase contract for
the Columbus Board of Realtorsstates that you have to submit
the whole report without theclient's name on it.

SPEAKER_02 (02:44):
That is if you are canceling the contract for some
reason.

SPEAKER_01 (02:46):
If you're canceling the contract for some reason.

SPEAKER_02 (02:48):
First of all, is that true?

SPEAKER_01 (02:49):
No.
I pulled up the purchaseagreement report from the
Columbus Board of Realtors, andthe only thing it says is that
the so like you submit reportsand um like inspection findings,
things like that for the areathat is the cause for concern

(03:11):
and the cause for people backingout of it.
It says nothing that the nameshould be taken off.
And in fact, it almost looks asif the name needs to be on it
because it's part of thatpurchase contract.

SPEAKER_02 (03:24):
When I look wait a wait, a very specific purchase
contract.

SPEAKER_01 (03:27):
A very specific purchase contract for a very
specific address and client andclient.
And when I looked up the ORC forhome inspectors, we are mandated
by the ORC to have the clientname on it.
We cannot take that off.

SPEAKER_02 (03:46):
So and and just a double check, because we like to
do that.
We have friends who are realestate agents.
They have we we talked toseveral over the years, and then
that same day that this agentcontacted, and 100% is like, no,
you you cannot just scratch offthe the client's name and then

(04:08):
reuse it.
Because the agent that contactedthe other day, she wanted us to
edit the report to remove theclient's name and then go
through every page and take itoff the client's name after all
those because she it's toolabor-intensive for her to take
a black marker and black out thebuyer's name on every single

(04:31):
page.

SPEAKER_01 (04:32):
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (04:32):
Which you're not supposed to do in the first
place.

SPEAKER_01 (04:35):
And then she gave us the It would make my life so
much easier if you could just dothis for me.

SPEAKER_02 (04:39):
Well, and gave us a bullshit reason that that we're
required and it's required.
No, it is not required.

SPEAKER_01 (04:45):
No.

SPEAKER_02 (04:46):
At all.
So if you if you're a homebuyer, you need to be aware that
some agent will try and stealyour report and use it for other
other buyers.

SPEAKER_01 (04:57):
Well, the way to get around that, so if they do an
inspection with us, we have arequest to remedy writer in our
report system that basicallysays X, Y, and Z is wrong.
This is, you know, I want themfixed or whatever.
All you have to do is submitthat to get out of your
contract.

(05:17):
You don't have to submit thewhole report.
Don't let your agent submit thewhole report.
You paid for that.
If you're getting out of thecontract, they will use it for
the next inspection.

SPEAKER_02 (05:28):
You just have to send the section that you don't
like of the report.
Well, we'll say it was a causecause of the inspection.
You go, hey, foundation iscrack.
Here's here's here's theverification from this one
section in the report.
Do not send your whole report,they will use and abuse it, and
then uh it's it's yours.
They're basically stealing fromyou.

SPEAKER_01 (05:48):
Pretty much, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (05:49):
They're not supposed to do that.

SPEAKER_01 (05:50):
And there is a confidentiality clause, not only
for home inspectors, but forreal estate agents.
And I genuinely don't understandhow this is getting how how they
get around that.
Taking off the name doesn'tchange it.
It's still that client's report.
The client has not signed off onit.
Our laws specifically state Ican only give an inspection

(06:12):
report if I've got a subpoena orsomething in writing from the
client saying that I can.
Why is that any different for anagent?

SPEAKER_02 (06:20):
They I don't know why.
It shouldn't be any differentthan they they're
misinterpreting the rules andyeah, we need the whole report.
Well, if you do need the wholereport, which you don't, but if
you did need the whole entirereport, that report is not to be
used for other purchasers.

SPEAKER_00 (06:52):
From radon to mall to warranty.
For a great home inspection, youreally can't go.
Visit home inspections inOhio.com.

SPEAKER_01 (07:05):
Right.
They need to get their own.

SPEAKER_02 (07:07):
They need to get their own.

SPEAKER_01 (07:08):
Because that's also against the spirit of the home
inspector licensing law.
That law was created to protectclients.
That new client does not have asigned agreement with that home
inspection company.
Let's let's say that inspectioncompany did a terrible job and
maybe they missed a foundationissue.

SPEAKER_02 (07:26):
Which wouldn't be our company.

SPEAKER_01 (07:28):
Right.
No.
That's why I said that anothercompany.
So maybe they didn't miss anelectrical issue and the guy
client didn't want that.
So Joe Schmo comes in and maybehe's an electrician and he
doesn't care about that, but hedoesn't know about the
foundation issue.
If he buys that house on thatreport, he has no protection.
He has absolutely nothing signedwith that company that he can go

(07:52):
back on.
What he does have are twoagents, i.e., the listing and
the buyer's agents, that said,oh no, this is an okay report.
You can use that.
Who do you think he's going togo after?

SPEAKER_02 (08:04):
Well, we talked to an alert attorney about that.
Right.
And he said the attorneys, well,he said that the agent by giving
out that report to somebody whois not the original client for
that home special company, theyare taking it upon themselves to
um assuring that the report isaccurate and up to date.
That's that's gonna be theagent's problem.

(08:25):
And you know what?
And it's probably gonna continuehappening that they will share
these reports until they get inthe butt until they get sued.
And we've had well, it's been awhile.
We had a an agent call and go,hey, I'm I'm the I'm the new
agent for for your client.
Remember that?

SPEAKER_01 (08:44):
Yeah, I I need the report.

SPEAKER_02 (08:46):
So I need the report sent to me, so then we called
the client.
Because something wasn't right.
Well, it's just weird.
Why would the client just sendit if he has a new agent?
Anyway, so we called the client,he's like, and he was like, No,
absolutely, she is not my agent.
I walked away from that house.
So we've had agents flat out lieto us, and that wasn't the only

(09:10):
one.

SPEAKER_01 (09:10):
We've had another one very similar to that.
Couple a couple differentscenarios where like we were
flat out lied to by someonetrying to get the report.

SPEAKER_02 (09:20):
Yeah, yeah.
So this is it's going to is I'msure it was always happening on
some level.
Now, if somebody wants to go,hey, the home seller wants the
report so they can fix things.
That still sounds like bullshitto me.
Because sometimes they may, andI have talked to home sellers
regarding the report becausethey had a question about a
location of something to fix,and it was specific.

(09:43):
So I'm like, okay, so theyactually have been told about
the report and they know.
So I help them know what I'mlike specific areas.
He didn't understand us whatblock soften is.
So so I I help that way, buttypically, no, this is your the
client who hired the specialcompany, they're the one that
has to send the report.

SPEAKER_01 (10:02):
Well, in in our confidentiality law, it states
that we cannot share anything onour report unless it has
potential safety implicationsfor the people currently living
there.
So, like you know, like we wecan't just call up a seller and
go, hey, dude, this came back.

SPEAKER_02 (10:24):
Found a huge natural gas leak.
That we can do that.
Like little natural gas leak,it's not a big deal.
It's it's seriously, it's like25% of the houses have a little
bit of a leak there, but it's sosmall, it it would, it's not an
issue, really.
Right.
It's not gonna become a bigproblem.
But some people forget aboutthat.
But anyway, that report, ifyou're the home buyer, that is
your report.
And make sure your agent tellsthe listing agent, this is my

(10:49):
report.
You do not have permission tosell it, to send it to anybody.
And I would I would recommendthat you tell them just to send
sections.
Your agent, listen, do not sendthe whole report, only send this
portion of it.
In fact, we have buyers thattell us do not send the report
to my agent.

SPEAKER_01 (11:04):
Yeah, regularly.

SPEAKER_02 (11:06):
Which makes me wonder what kind of interaction
they had with their agent, whatwhy they don't fully trust their
agent in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 (11:12):
But we we've done given an agent's name.
Like they'll tell us flat out,don't worry about it, I'll just
send it to them.
Like, so we don't even know whotheir agent is.

SPEAKER_02 (11:20):
Correct, correct.
We do know the listing, so wecan get access to the house,
right?

SPEAKER_01 (11:24):
But but that's different than their own agent.

SPEAKER_02 (11:27):
There's no reason why a buyer, if they decide not
to go go to the house, they sendtheir agent just that one
section of the report that'sconcerning.
That's all that's all they needto do.
Don't don't let them tell youyou gotta send the whole report
to the listing agent or tobecause they it could be used
for potential future homebuyers.
And nine times out of ten, itprobably paid for the use that

(11:48):
the home snatch company ownsthat, but you have full access
to it.
And and is not, I mean, if youwant to share it, that's up to
you.
I wouldn't do that.

SPEAKER_01 (11:56):
Not after I paid all that money for it.

SPEAKER_02 (11:59):
Well, you also know the new buyer is not has no
protection.
They don't they if if we if ahome snatch company screwed up,
they get they're gonna go afterthat that agent.

SPEAKER_00 (12:09):
Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 (12:10):
Because I guarantee the the you know insurance is
go, nope.
You just you have where's yoursign where's your sign
agreement?
Nope, you don't have a singleleg to stand on.

SPEAKER_01 (12:20):
Right.

SPEAKER_02 (12:22):
Now what could happen, this let's say this the
agent sees the report, thelisting agent sees the report,
redacts sections of it, and thengives it out.
Well, now they're they're fullyliable for that.
Easily.
Easily.
Or they there's all kinds ofshady.

SPEAKER_01 (12:41):
I don't think they can with ours.
I think ours are protected.

SPEAKER_02 (12:46):
Correct.

SPEAKER_01 (12:47):
I think, if I recall correctly, ours are like a PDF
protection.

SPEAKER_02 (12:51):
Yeah, but if they scan it in, they put scan as a
PDF, you can edit the PDF.
You have a program that doesthat.
Yes, there are there are ways itcan be done.
So yeah, always get your wholeyour own home inspection report
and make sure your agents knowdo not share this whole report
to anybody.

SPEAKER_01 (13:09):
And if you have any questions, call us.

SPEAKER_02 (13:12):
Yep, that is it.
Thank you, everybody.
Bye bye.