Ed 
Your Texas home inspection report is going to print the word Deficient next to a missing anti-tip bracket behind the oven and next to drainage failing at your foundation, and it is going to give both of them the exact same checkbox. That is not sloppy inspecting. The TREC Property Inspection Report Form says in plain type that the inspector is not required to “prioritize or emphasize the importance of one deficiency over another.” So the ranking is your job. Or your agent’s job, which is the part nobody tells you when you hand over the option fee. That seems like something somebody should mention up front right.
And look, “every report flags the same ten things” is me being loose with the word every. What is literally true is better than that. The Texas Real Estate Commission publishes lists of specific conditions an inspector shall report as Deficient, in the Standards of Practice at 22 TAC 535.227 through 535.233. The deficiency lists themselves live in 535.228 through 535.233. One rule per system, plus one for appliances and one for the optional stuff. And 535.227 is the scope, the definitions and the general limits. Ten of those items show up over and over in the reports I read on Central Texas houses, because the conditions are common here and the rule tells the inspector to report them as Deficient once they are present and visible. So it is not that inspectors all copy each other. It is that they are all reading from the same rulebook.
I have been doing this since 2009 and I still sit down with the report and a highlighter, right there in the option period, because a buyer who reads a long PDF cold is going to fixate on whatever sentence sounds scariest. Usually that sentence describes something a handyman clears in an afternoon.
What “Deficient” actually means on a Texas home inspection report
The definition lives in 535.227(b)(5), and it is broader than most buyers expect. A deficiency is a condition that, “in the reasonable judgment of the inspector,” either “adversely and materially affects the performance of a system, or component” or “constitutes a hazard to life, limb, or property as specified by these standards of practice.”
Two different tests, one checkbox. That is the whole problem in one sentence. (A thing that “adversely and materially affects the performance of a system” and a thing that is a “hazard to life, limb, or property” are not remotely the same size of problem, and yet here we are.)
Then there is the paragraph that generates more panicked phone calls to me than any other paragraph in the packet. The report form warns that conditions “may be present in your home that did not violate building codes or common practices in effect when the home was constructed but are considered hazardous by today’s standards,” and that when the inspector can reasonably determine those conditions are present, “the potential for injury or property loss from these conditions is significant enough to require inspectors to report them as Deficient (D).”
So there is the answer to the question I get every single time. No, your 1994 house is not falling apart. It is being measured against a standard that did not exist in 1994, and the inspector has no option to leave it out. The same form is blunt that the inspection is not “an inspection to verify compliance with any building codes.” So the report is not telling you the house is illegal. It is telling you the house is old.
One more line, and this is the one I want sellers to hear: items marked Deficient “DO NOT obligate any party to make repairs or take other actions.” Nobody has to fix anything. It is a negotiation, not a punch list.
The ten findings, and whether each one is worth your option period
Here is the table I wish somebody had handed me in 2009. It is the ten lines on a Texas home inspection report that I end up explaining most often, and every rule citation below came out of the current Standards of Practice text, all of which was last amended effective February 1, 2022.
| What the report flags | The rule that forces it | What it actually means | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grading and drainage at the foundation | 535.228(b)(1): “drainage around the foundation that is not performing,” “deficiencies in grade levels around the foundation,” and “deficiencies in installed gutter and downspout systems” | Water is being delivered to, or held against, the slab. On Central Texas clay this is the input to the expensive problem, not the problem itself | Matters most |
| The AC missing its temperature split | 535.230(b)(1)(B)(ii)(I): a cooling system that “fails to achieve a 15 degrees Fahrenheit to 22 degrees Fahrenheit temperature differential” | Supply air is not enough colder than return air. Could be a dying compressor, could be low charge, could be that it was 103 degrees outside during the inspection | Matters |
| Water in the auxiliary drain pan | 535.230(b)(1)(B)(vi): “water in the auxiliary/secondary drain pan” | The primary condensate drain is not keeping up and the backup is doing the work. In an attic that is a ceiling waiting to happen | Matters |
| Water pressure over 80 PSI | 535.231(a)(1)(B)(ii) and (iii): “water pressure exceeding 80 PSI” and “the lack of a pressure reducing valve when the water pressure exceeds 80 PSI” | Municipal pressure is hammering the supply lines, valves and appliances in the house. Cheap to fix, expensive to ignore | Matters |
| Water heater relief valve and discharge piping | 535.231(b)(1)(A)(ii)(XI) and (XII): “the absence of or visible deficiencies in the temperature and pressure relief valve and discharge piping,” and one “that failed to operate, when tested manually” | The safety device that lets a water heater bleed off pressure instead of building it. A plumber can replace one | Matters |
| No visible bonding on the gas system | 535.231(d)(1)(B)(vi): “lack of visible bonding on gas distribution system, including corrugated stainless steel tubing (CSST)” | That flexible yellow gas line needs to be bonded so a nearby lightning strike does not find it. Small dollar item, real hazard | Matters |
| Missing GFCI protection | 535.229(b)(1)(C)(i): “the absence of ground-fault circuit interrupter protection” in eleven listed locations, including bathrooms, garages, outdoors, kitchen countertops and anything “within six feet of the outside edge of a sink, shower, or bathtub” | Older houses were wired with GFCI in fewer places than the rule now lists, so they come up short. An electrician can add them | Routine |
| Missing AFCI protection | 535.229(b)(1)(C)(ii): “the absence of arc-fault protection” in thirteen listed locations, from kitchens and bedrooms all the way down to closets and hallways | Same story, breaker panel instead of outlets. Older houses generally do not have arc-fault breakers, so this line is routine on them | Routine |
| No anti-tip device on the range | 535.232(d)(4): “absence of an anti-tip device, if applicable” | A bracket that keeps the range from tipping forward when weight lands on the open oven door. A bracket and a screwdriver | Routine |
| Fogged insulated windows | 535.228(g)(1)(A): “insulated windows that are obviously fogged or display other evidence of broken seals” | The seal between the panes failed. It looks terrible and it costs real money at scale, but nothing is leaking into your house | Routine |
Drainage is the boring one, and the boring one is the expensive one
If I could get a buyer to care about exactly one line in the report, it would be grading and drainage. Not because it is dramatic. Because it is the opposite of dramatic.
Michael Lewis wrote a whole book, The Fifth Risk, about how the thing that actually gets you is almost never the thing on the front page. It is the boring, unglamorous risk that nobody assigned a person to manage. Foundation drainage in Central Texas is that risk. A downspout dumping at the corner of a slab, negative grade along one wall, a flower bed built up above the brick line. None of that reads scary on page 3.
But 535.228(a)(1)(A) also requires the inspector to “render a written opinion as to the performance of the foundation,” which is a genuinely unusual thing for a rule to demand. Not describe the cracks, not list the symptoms, actually commit to an opinion about how the foundation is performing. And 535.228(a)(1)(C) tells the inspector to “generally report present and visible indications used to render the opinion of adverse performance, such as” a set of things you would notice yourself if you were paying attention: “binding, out-of-square, non-latching doors,” “sloping floors,” “window, wall, floor, or ceiling cracks or separations,” “rotating, buckling, cracking, or deflecting masonry cladding.” That is an examples list, not a checklist. Two paragraphs later, 535.228(a)(2)(B) says the inspector is not required to “provide an exhaustive list of indicators of possible adverse performance.”
So when the drainage section is flagged and the foundation opinion is still fine, you have caught the problem upstream of the money. Fix the grade, extend the downspouts, and you have spent a weekend on the thing that would have become a slab bill. When both are flagged, that is when I stop reading the report and start calling a structural engineer, because 535.227(d)(3)(E) says the inspector is not required to determine “the cause or effect of deficiencies.” Our Texas foundation guide walks through what happens after that call.
The AC number that gets misread every August
The 15 to 22 degree split is the number buyers quote back to me more than any other line in the report, and it is also the one they misread the fastest. A system that fails the split in August is not automatically a system that is dying.
The rule accounts for this, and that is the part that gets skipped. 535.230(b)(1)(A)(iii) tells the inspector to “generally report extraneous factors or conditions, present on the day of the inspection, that would adversely impact the temperature differential of an otherwise performing unit.” Translation: if it was 104 outside, the attic was 140, and every door in the house had been standing open for the walkthrough, the inspector is supposed to say so.
So read the comment, not just the checkbox. If the comment mentions extraneous conditions, you have a maybe. If it does not, you have a compressor-sized maybe, and you want an HVAC contractor out during your option period, not after.
Water in the secondary pan is a different animal and I do not let it sit. That pan exists because the primary drain will eventually clog, and if there is water sitting in it right now the primary already has. In an Austin attic in July that is a slow leak directly above somebody’s ceiling (and the ceiling is always over the nice furniture, never over the garage). It is usually a cheap fix and it is almost never a cheap fix if you wait.
Older houses get longer reports, and here is how much older we actually are
Buyers ask me why their friend’s report ran 22 pages and theirs ran 61. Age. That is most of the answer, because four of these ten are strictly about something being absent and two more are partly, and older houses were built without devices that are on the reporting list today.
We pulled our own MLS data for every closed single-family sale in the five-county Austin metro over the trailing twelve months that carried a year built on the record. That is 25,637 closings.
| County | Closed single-family sales | Median year built | Share built before 2000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Travis | 11,032 | 2005 | 42.4% |
| Williamson | 9,374 | 2018 | 20.0% |
| Hays | 3,744 | 2021 | 11.6% |
| Bastrop | 1,129 | 2023 | 18.0% |
| Caldwell | 358 | 2025 | 25.7% |
| Five-county metro | 25,637 | 2014 | 28.4% |
Travis is the interesting row. Median year built 2005, but 42.4% of what sold was built before 2000, and 31.3% before 1990. That is a wildly split market inside one county, and it is why two buyers shopping the same week get completely different reports. Williamson at a 2018 median and Hays at 2021 are shopping mostly newer stock, so their GFCI and AFCI sections are shorter by default.
Ok, this is the part where I admit something. For years I would tell buyers “older house, longer report” and leave it there, like that explained anything. It does not explain anything. What explains it is that the missing-device findings are the ones that scale with age, and the performance findings, the AC split, the water in the pan, the drainage, do not care how old the house is at all. A 2021 house in Kyle can absolutely have water sitting in the auxiliary pan.
What the inspector is not doing, which matters more than what they are
A Texas real estate inspection is defined in 535.227(a)(3)(A) as “a limited visual survey and basic performance evaluation.” Limited and visual are load-bearing words there.
The rule then lists tools an inspection does not require, and the list is worth memorizing before you assume something was checked: thermal imaging equipment, moisture meters, “gas or carbon monoxide detection equipment,” environmental testing equipment, “elevation determination devices,” ladders that reach more than one story, “cameras or other tools used to inspect the interior of a drain or sewer line,” and drones. None of it is required. Not a sewer scope, not an elevation survey, not a thermal scan of the walls. A good inspector may well bring some of it anyway, and 535.227(a)(4) expressly does not prohibit them from exceeding the standard, so long as they are competent to do it. But do not assume.
Then there is 535.233, the optional systems section, and the report form is direct that the inspector is not required to inspect anything in it. That section covers landscape irrigation, swimming pools and spas, outbuildings, private water wells and private sewage disposal systems. If you are buying west of town on a well and septic, those two are optional under the rule and essential in reality. Ask for them by name. (I have watched a buyer assume the septic was covered because the inspector spent five hours at the house. It was not. That one hurt.)
This is also why I care so much about who does the inspection rather than what it costs. Our guide to choosing an Austin home inspector gets into how to tell the difference, and the Central Texas inspection checklist covers the regional risks by system rather than by rule.
How I actually read one of these with a client
Four passes, in this order, and it takes about forty minutes.
- Structural and drainage first. Foundation opinion, grading and drainage, roof covering. These are the ones most likely to change whether you buy the house at all, not just what you ask the seller for.
- Then anything with active water. Water in the secondary pan, “the presence of active leaks,” evidence of water penetration in the attic or at the exterior walls. Active water is a clock.
- Then the safety items with cheap fixes. Relief valve, gas bonding, GFCI, anti-tip, garage door auto-reverse. These almost never belong in a repair amendment, and I say that as somebody whose job is theoretically to win you concessions. Ask for them and you spend leverage you want back later, and you get a bracket out of it. Not a great trade right.
- Then everything else, which is where fogged windows live, and which is mostly a maintenance budget rather than a negotiation.
The one thing I do not do is count. A 61-page report and a 22-page report tell you almost nothing next to each other, because most of the length is missing devices and the one line that matters might be the slab. Lets not confuse volume with severity.
And whatever you decide, decide inside the option period. The report form itself recommends that any further evaluations “take place prior to the expiration of any contractual time limitations, such as option periods,” and that recommendation only works if the inspection happens early enough to leave room for the specialist. Same reason we push the insurance quote into the option period instead of leaving it for the week before closing. Our earnest money and option period guide covers the timing mechanics, and the full Austin home inspection guide covers everything this post did not.
Frequently Asked Questions
Bring me the report
Reading a Texas home inspection report is not the hard part. The ranking is the hard part, and TREC has told you in writing that the ranking is not the inspector’s job. So it falls to you, on day five of a seven-day option period, on a document whose format you have never seen before.
That is the part I actually do for a living. At Neuhaus Realty Group we sit down with the PDF, sort it into the four passes above, and tell you which items are worth spending negotiating leverage on and which ones you should just fix yourself in November. Sometimes the answer is walk. More often the answer is that the scariest page is the cheapest page.
If you are under contract right now and staring at one of these, send it over and lets go through it. And if you are not under contract yet, that is honestly the better time to talk, because half of this gets decided by which house you pick in the first place. Reach out to Ed Neuhaus or start with what is on the market in Austin.
Be safe, be good, and be nice to people.
