You've accepted an offer. The hard part feels finished — and then the buyer's condition period starts and an inspector spends three hours in your house with a flashlight. This is the stage where accepted offers most often get renegotiated, and it's also the stage most sellers do the least to prepare for.
Almost everything an inspector finds is knowable in advance. Here's what they actually look at, what tends to get flagged in Alberta homes, and the two paperwork issues — the Real Property Report and permits — that catch sellers out far more often than anything mechanical.
Alberta licenses its home inspectors
This isn't true everywhere in Canada, so it's worth knowing. Under Alberta's Consumer Protection Act and the Home Inspection Business Regulation, both the inspection business and the individual inspector doing the work must hold a licence from the Government of Alberta, and a business has to ensure inspections are only carried out by a licensed inspector.
Practically, that means the inspector walking through your home should be verifiable, and if you're hiring one yourself you can confirm the licence with Service Alberta before booking. It also means the report you're handed comes with a professional standard behind it.
What an inspector actually looks at
A home inspection is a visual, non-invasive examination of the accessible parts of the house. Inspectors don't open walls, move heavy furniture, or dismantle equipment. Broadly they cover the roof and exterior, the foundation and structure, grading and drainage, the attic, the heating and cooling systems, the water heater, the plumbing, the electrical system, insulation and ventilation, windows and doors, interior surfaces, and whatever safety items are visible.
What they generally don't cover, unless you arrange it separately, is anything below ground or behind a wall: sewer lines, buried tanks, and in rural properties the well and septic system — which are usually their own separate inspections and tests.
What gets flagged most often
The common findings are rarely dramatic. They're small, cumulative, and they add up into a list that looks alarming to a first-time buyer:
- Grading and drainage. Ground sloping toward the foundation, and downspouts discharging right at the wall. This is the single most common finding and among the cheapest to fix.
- Roofing near the end of its life, along with damaged or lifting shingles and failing flashing.
- Attic insulation and ventilation — thin or displaced insulation, blocked soffit vents, and bathroom fans venting into the attic instead of outside. That last one is common and causes real moisture problems in our climate.
- Water heaters and furnaces past their service life, or without a record of servicing.
- Electrical minor items: reversed outlet polarity, missing GFCI protection near sinks and in bathrooms, open junction boxes, and double-tapped breakers.
- Non-functioning smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Free to fix, and it's a safety flag on the report if you don't.
- Plumbing drips, running toilets, and slow drains.
- Window seal failure — the fogging between panes.
- Basement moisture: efflorescence, staining, or a musty smell, all of which get written up whether or not the problem is active.
The two Alberta paperwork issues
The Real Property Report
Under the standard Alberta Real Estate Association Residential Purchase Contract used in most residential sales in this province, the seller provides a current Real Property Report with evidence of municipal compliance, at the seller's expense, unless both parties agree otherwise in writing. It's a survey drawing showing where the buildings and improvements actually sit relative to the property lines, stamped by the municipality to confirm everything complies.
Two things routinely surprise sellers here. First, "current" doesn't mean recent — an old RPR is still current as long as nothing has been built or altered on the property since it was prepared. Second, and this is the expensive one: if you've added a deck, a shed, a garage, a fence, or a hot tub since the last RPR, you need a new one, and the municipality has to be satisfied that what you built complies before it will stamp it.
Getting an RPR done and through municipal compliance takes weeks, not days. Starting that process when you list — rather than after you've accepted an offer with a firm closing date — is one of the most useful things a seller can do.
Permits
Related, and just as common: work done without a permit. Developed basements, added bathrooms, decks, garages, and secondary suites all generally require permits, and a buyer's lawyer or the compliance process may well surface it if they weren't obtained. This is a solvable problem, but the solution is much easier before you're under contract. If you know of unpermitted work on your home, raise it early rather than hoping it goes unnoticed.
On disclosure: if you become aware of a material latent defect — a serious problem a buyer couldn't discover on a reasonable inspection — you generally have to disclose it. That's a real consideration in deciding whether to get your own inspection, and it's a question for your REALTOR® and your lawyer about your specific situation, not something to guess at.
What to do before the inspector arrives
Whether it's your inspection or the buyer's, the same preparation applies — and an inspector who can't reach something writes "not inspected," which reads to a buyer as a question mark.
- Clear access to everything mechanical: furnace, water heater, electrical panel, main water shut-off, sump pump. Move the storage that's accumulated around them.
- Clear the attic hatch and any crawlspace access, including whatever's in the closet underneath it.
- Unlock everything — garage, shed, gates, garage service door, electrical panel if it's locked.
- Make sure every utility is on. An inspector can't test a furnace, water heater, or stove that's shut off, and that becomes an unresolved item on the report.
- Replace every burnt-out bulb. A dead bulb gets written up as a fixture that didn't operate.
- Test the smoke and CO alarms and replace the batteries.
- Clear the perimeter of the house so the foundation, siding, and grading are visible all the way around.
- Gather your paperwork: furnace and roof invoices, warranties, permits, well and septic records, and any past inspection reports. Handing over a tidy maintenance history does more for buyer confidence than most sellers realise.
- Take the pets out and plan to be away for the inspection yourself. Buyers often attend, and it's awkward for everyone if you're following them around.
Should you get your own inspection first?
It's genuinely optional, and it isn't right for everyone.
The case for it: you find out what a buyer's inspector will find while you still have time and negotiating leverage, you can fix things on your own schedule and at your own cost rather than under a deadline, and you can price the home knowing what's in it. It's most worth considering on older homes, homes you've owned a long time, and rural properties with wells and septic systems.
The case against: it's a cost you may not need, no two inspectors write the same report so the buyer's inspector will find things yours didn't anyway, and what you learn may become something you have to disclose.
My honest take is that it's usually the paperwork — the RPR and permits — that's worth getting ahead of, more than the mechanical inspection. That's the piece with a weeks-long lead time and no way to rush it. If you want to talk through whether a pre-listing inspection makes sense for your particular house, that's a conversation I'm happy to have before you spend the money.
When the report comes back
Expect a long document. Inspection reports list everything observed, including normal wear and cosmetic items, and no house comes back with a blank page — an eighty-item report on a thirty-year-old home is ordinary, not a disaster.
What matters is a much shorter list: genuine safety issues, active water intrusion, structural concerns, and expensive systems at the end of their life. Those are what a buyer will actually negotiate on. The rest is the age of the home.
If the buyer comes back asking for something, you generally have options — repair it, credit an amount toward it, adjust the price, or hold firm — and which one is right depends on the item, the rest of the deal, and how the market is treating your particular home type and price band. That's the point where having someone who negotiates these regularly matters most.
Start earlier than you think
The theme running through all of this is lead time. An RPR through municipal compliance takes weeks. A roof or furnace quote takes days to arrange. A permit issue can take longer than either. None of it is difficult, but all of it is much harder once you're under contract with a closing date.
If a sale is somewhere on your horizon, the first two steps are the staging work and this paperwork — and the paperwork is the one that can't be done in a weekend.