A Bay Area inspection report lists dozens of problems. That's normal.

The first time you open a home inspection report, every page looks like a problem.

We read 22 Bay Area inspection reports the same way, start to finish. The median report listed about 32 findings. That is not a bad house. That is the median house.

The top row counts items. The bottom row is dollars: the median of each home’s estimated repair total, and the range the middle half falls in.

We count findings the way Insite extracts them: every item the inspector wrote up, from a cracked tile to a line saying the crawlspace was not entered. A report is not only a list of defects. Inspectors also write scope notes (what they could not reach or did not test), maintenance advice, and plain attributes such as the age of the water heater. Insite records those but does not price them, so the median count drops from about 32 to about 17 once you keep only the items with a cost.

Inspectors also differ in how finely they itemize, so a count on its own reflects the writer as well as the house.

The line is the median, $16,185: half the homes came in below it and half above. The left of the strip is crowded and the right is sparse. The cheapest quarter of homes sit close together near the low end; above the band the dots spread out, and 6 of 22 homes came in above twice the median. That tail pulls the average up to $21,095, which is why we quote the median.

The spread matters more than the median: $2,604 at one end, $61,765 at the other. In the typical home the three largest items carry 46% of the estimate, so a few lines carry nearly half the number. At the other end, 25% of the priced items in the median home are estimated under $300.

The Bay Area is not one housing market, so we split the set by region. Two regions have enough homes to show: Peninsula and South Bay. The callout shows the region with the most homes.

Bedroom combinations with fewer than three homes are hidden.

Use the picker to set expectations, not to price a repair. If your report lands inside the band for your region and size, it is in line with the reports we read. If it lands well outside, start with its largest items before you read anything into the total.

Does price, size or age change the count?

We also split the 22 reports by the price, the size in square feet, the number of bedrooms and the year the house was built, one at a time. The price is the asking price, or the sale price for the 2 homes where only that was published. The question is whether a home in one price band tends to have more findings or a larger estimate. A band is shown only when it holds at least three homes, and a home missing a fact is left out of that split.

The median count falls as the price rises, from about 74 findings (Under $2M) to about 24 findings ($4M and up). Taken home by home, the 19 homes with a price show a moderate relationship: a higher price tends to go with fewer findings.

The median estimate falls as the price rises, from $35,400 (Under $2M) to $4,200 ($4M and up). Taken home by home, the 19 homes with a price show a moderate relationship: a higher price tends to go with a smaller estimate.

There is no straight line from age to the estimate: the highest median is $21,900 (Built before 1960), the lowest $12,600 (Built 1960–1979). Taken home by home, the 18 homes with a known year built show no clear relationship between the age of the house and the estimate.

The medians by band fall as the size grows, but home by home there is no clear relationship: the medians run from $29,900 (Under 1,500 sq ft) to $6,300 (Over 2,500 sq ft). The home-by-home comparison covers the 21 homes with a known size. For bedrooms, use the picker above, which splits each region by bedroom count.

Treat gaps between bands as rough. Each band holds a handful of homes, between 4 and 9; prices follow region, and most of a region’s reports come from one inspection firm.

The usual suspects

Insite files each finding under a category: a system of the house, such as Electrical or Plumbing, or a theme, such as Safety Issues. A home counts toward a category when its report has at least one cost-bearing finding in it.

Safety Issues and Electrical lead together: each turns up in 20 of 22 homes (91%). Common is not the same as costly. Of the four shown, the largest median estimate per affected home is in Interior Finishes, $2,400. Beyond the four shown, the largest median estimate per affected home is in Exterior, $7,000 across 13 of 22 homes.

By item

These are the ten issues that came up most often, across all categories. The share is the fraction of the 22 reports that flag the issue at least once; it says how often, not how much. The most common, gas sediment trap / drip leg missing, appears in 13 of the 22 reports. Only one of the ten appears in more than half the homes. The list is led by small items that recur. The expensive items differ from house to house, which is why none of them makes the top ten.

A home with all ten at their typical estimates would add about $4,157, well under the median total of $16,185. The money is elsewhere. If your report has them, you are in good company.

What a yes on the hazard page means

The natural hazard disclosure is a short report in a California disclosure package, built from public maps rather than a visit to the house. It asks six yes/no questions about the parcel: is it in a FEMA flood hazard zone, a dam-inundation area, a very high fire hazard severity zone, a state wildland fire area, an earthquake fault zone, or a seismic hazard zone. A yes is a fact about the land, not the house.

Each square is one of the 22 Bay Area packages that included a natural hazard disclosure; a filled square is a yes.

7 of 22 homes sit in a dam-inundation area. A dam-inundation yes means the parcel is inside a state-mapped area that could flood if an upstream dam failed. It does not change the house; it is a question for your insurer and a line your seller must disclose.

6 of 22 homes sit in a seismic hazard zone. A seismic hazard zone yes usually means mapped liquefaction or landslide potential. It affects what a structural engineer looks at and, sometimes, what retrofits a lender or insurer asks about.

2 of 22 homes sit in a FEMA flood hazard zone. A FEMA flood zone yes means the parcel is in a Special Flood Hazard Area. Lenders generally require flood insurance there, so it is a cost of ownership, not a defect.

None of the 22 homes sits in a very high fire hazard severity zone, a state wildland fire area or an earthquake fault zone.

Three things to do with your own report

If you have a report in hand, here is how to read it against these numbers.

1. Count the conditions, not the pages. The median report had about 32 findings; the median count of cost-bearing conditions was about 17.
2. Budget for the usual suspects and spend your negotiation on the largest two or three items.
3. Compare to the band for your region and size, not to one number. The middle half here runs $5,162 to $37,395.