Free worksheet — for buyers reading a home inspection report
Free Home-Inspection Findings Triage Sheet
A home inspection report can run sixty pages, and none of it is written as a request. Deciding what to ask the seller to fix means prioritizing that list first, and this free home-inspection findings triage sheet does exactly that part: log a finding, record the inspector's severity, take your own call on what kind of problem it is, and a rule sorts it into Deal-breaker, Negotiable, or Cosmetic — the same three words, applied the same way every time, instead of whichever item annoyed you most at eleven at night. It opens on a fictional worked example so you can see the rule working before you clear it and enter your own report.
Take it with you — free, no signup
Direct download. No email, no account — just the files.
What it does
- Sorts each finding into Deal-breaker, Negotiable, or Cosmetic from two things you already know — the inspector's severity and the kind of problem it is — so the sort is a rule you can defend to a seller, not a mood.
- Reserves Deal-breaker for a safety, structural, or water-intrusion problem the inspector called a safety hazard or a major defect, so a loose cabinet hinge can never share a label with a settling foundation.
- Marks every finding Ask or Let it go from its tier, and lets you override any row — the override is a choice you make on purpose, and the sheet keeps count of both piles.
- Opens pre-filled with a fictional worked example: twelve findings from one inspection report, already sorted, so the rule is visible before you type anything.
- Ships as a workbook that computes — an .xlsx that opens in Excel and LibreOffice, or import it to Google Sheets — plus a printable PDF with the rule on one card and a blank grid to take to the walkthrough.
- Carries no cost data at all. It sorts findings; it does not price them.
Related reading
- Free Repair Request Letter & Quote Templates The wording for the ask itself, once the triage has told you what to ask for.
- Free Contractor Bid Comparison Worksheet For when a finding turns into quotes you have to compare.
- Fixer-Upper vs. Move-In-Ready: How to Score the Real Trade-Off
- Templates for Homeowners
Own it, don't rent it
Need to know what the ask is worth?
Three tiers here, four there — because the full worksheet knows what each finding costs. Pick a repair item from a built-in library of 126 curated repairs across 12 home systems and a wide low/typical/high planning band arrives on the row, scaled by a regional index you can overwrite, so "major cost" becomes a real number against your own dollar thresholds instead of a feeling. It then nets your total ask against the cash you actually have left after closing costs and against your lender's cap, counts down the inspection contingency, prices a credit at closing against a seller-arranged repair for each shortlisted finding, lists and totals every finding you are choosing to absorb, and assembles the shortlist into a repair-or-credit request you can send — an 8-tab workbook in Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice, with a one-click native Google Sheets copy and three PDF guides.
A one-time purchase you keep — fill it in for this house, keep it with the contract as the record of what you asked for and why, and use it again on the next one.
A decision aid, not contractor, legal, or real-estate advice. It does not replace a licensed home inspector's report or a licensed contractor's estimate, it does not tell you what your contract entitles you to ask for, and it does not predict what a seller will agree to. Your contract governs what you can ask for and by when — your agent, and where it matters your attorney, are the people to ask about that. Ardent Workshop is not affiliated with or endorsed by any inspector, lender, insurer, brokerage, or contractor. The worked example — the property, the inspection company, and every finding in it — is entirely fictional. Once you have filled it in, the sheet is an itemized list of one specific house's defects, tied to its address, alongside anything you noted from the seller's disclosure: send a contractor or an agent only the row they are actually quoting or acting on rather than forwarding the whole sheet, and clear it before you pass the file itself on. The blank sheet is free to keep and to share as-is; please don't resell it.