Typically within 10 days of the final acceptance of the contract the buyers will come over to the house with their inspector, depending on how thorough they are, they will look over the whole house, take photos of different things, test every outlet for grounding, check the water heater/furnace for gas leaks, make notes about anything they find in the attic, and on and on.

They will then go back to their office and likely the next day present a 30ish page report to the buyers and their Realtor. The buyers will sit down with their Realtor and discuss what items they want to request from us. Do they want us to just give them money, do they want us to fix something, will they require it to be done by a licensed contractor and we have to produce invoices, are they just going to say "everything’s great" and not request anything, or are they going to say "ahh we saw something we don’t like, and we are running away let us out of this deal!!"

We have seen a lot of deals fall through at inspection, which is why, yes; we wait until after the inspection contingency is resolved to order your gas inspection (around $100) and to order the city inspection (around $70.00 depending on your municipality)

Once they submit this "Inspection Notice" to us with their requests, we then usually have 10 days to mull it over, get any contractors out to the house to get bids on the work they want done, and get back to them about what we are willing to do. Maybe we will say, "We won’t give you 1000, but you can have $200.00 and a home warranty" or maybe we will say something else, it all depends what they request. If we flat out agree to everything they ask, or if we "counter" and they flat out agree to everything we say, then the inspection contingency is resolved. We do this all officially on our special inspection forms.

At this point the only thing that is holding them back from buying the house is that it appraises for a high enough amounts, and that their lender will still approve them. Because they are already pre-approved, we just have to basically assume they will not walk away for financing purposes, and we order the Laclede gas inspection, and the city inspection at this time.