This is the machine-readable knowledge map for Buyer's Edge, published to the EntityMap v1.0 specification. It describes the site's key entities — the fourteen post-inspection instruments covered here, the financial and contractual concepts they depend on, and the categories and cost groupings that organize them — with evidence passages drawn from the pages themselves and links to the open knowledge graph.
View the EntityMap JSON → (41 entities · EntityMap v1.0)
The seller credit
The most common answer to an inspection report, and the one most often asked for wrongly. What a credit can and cannot pay for, and why the lender decides the ceiling.
Relations:
- PART_OF → Costs nothing but goodwill
A seller credit is a sum the seller agrees at closing to apply against costs that would otherwise be the buyer's. It is recorded on the Closing Disclosure and it reduces what the buyer has to bring to the table; it is not cash handed across. Sellers agree to credits routinely, which is why this is the most common answer to an inspection report. The request that gets cut is usually not cut by the seller at all. The ceiling is set by the loan program.
The seller credit | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
The seller concession
Credit and concession are used interchangeably by agents and distinguished precisely by lenders. The distinction is where a request gets cut at the closing table.
Relations:
- PART_OF → Costs nothing but goodwill
A seller concession is anything of value the seller puts into the transaction on the buyer's behalf — most often money applied at closing toward the buyer's costs. Sellers agree to them routinely. There is no single cap: the ceiling is set by the buyer's loan program, and in the conventional case it moves with the size of the down payment. The short version, with the conditions that make each number true.
The seller concession | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
The escrow holdback
The instrument for a repair that cannot be finished before closing. The lender sets the multiple and the deadline, and both are stricter than buyers expect.
Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escrow
Relations:
- PART_OF → Spends time you may not have
An escrow holdback is money withheld at closing and held by a third party until a named repair is finished. Escrow is the general arrangement — funds or documents held by a neutral party until an agreed condition is met — and a repair holdback is one narrow use of it. The buyer gets the keys, the seller gets the sale, and a defined sum sits in an account until the work is signed off.
The escrow holdback | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Seller-paid closing costs
Already negotiated in most contracts, and drawn from the same capped pool as anything the inspection produces. Asking twice from one allowance is the common mistake.
Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closing_costs
Relations:
- PART_OF → Costs nothing but goodwill
Seller-paid closing costs are costs the purchase contract assigns to the buyer that the seller agrees, at closing, to pay instead. Closing costs are the fees and prepaid items due when the sale completes — loan origination, title work, recording, the first year of hazard insurance, the tax and insurance escrow, points. Sellers agree to pay some of them routinely; it is the single most common seller incentive in the market.
Seller-paid closing costs | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
The price reduction
Uncapped, simple, and worse for the buyer's cash position than a credit of the same size. When the difference favors you, and when it does not.
Relations:
- PART_OF → Costs nothing but goodwill
A price reduction is the seller agreeing to lower the sales price rather than pay anything toward the buyer's costs. It is the only instrument on this site that no loan program caps, and it is still, for most buyers, the weaker of the two obvious choices: a reduction moves the money into the mortgage, while a credit of the same size moves it onto the closing table. That trade decides which instrument a reader should reach for.
The price reduction | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
The lender credit
Not a seller instrument at all, and the one buyers forget exists. What it costs over the life of the loan, and the rule that stops a quoted credit shrinking.
Relations:
- PART_OF → Costs nothing but goodwill
A lender credit is money the lender itself puts toward the buyer's closing costs, in exchange for a higher interest rate on the loan. After an inspection it is the instrument buyers forget exists: when a repair request turns into a cash problem, three parties can pay — the seller, whose help is capped by the loan program, the buyer, and the lender. The lender is the only one of the three whose contribution no seller-concession ceiling touches. It is also the only one that bills you later. A lender credit is not a discount, it is a purchase.
The lender credit | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Repairs completed by the seller
The thing most buyers ask for first and the thing that most often disappoints. Who chooses the contractor, what standard applies, and what you can do about the result.
Relations:
- PART_OF → Spends time you may not have
Repairs completed by the seller means the seller correcting the defect at the seller's expense before closing. It is the default instrument, the baseline every other one is measured against, and the one that most often disappoints — for a structural reason rather than a moral one. The buyer agrees to an outcome. The seller chooses who performs the work, how quickly, and to what standard. Which makes the most useful sentence on this page the uncomfortable one.
Repairs completed by the seller | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
The inspection contingency
Not one thing: states write it as an option, a due diligence period or an investigation contingency, and the differences decide what you can do and what it costs.
Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_estate_contract
Relations:
- PART_OF → Costs nothing but goodwill
An inspection contingency is the term in a purchase contract that lets the buyer investigate the house and get out of the deal if what the investigation turns up is not acceptable. That is as far as one description can honestly go, because the term is not one thing: three states' standard forms write the right three structurally different ways, with different costs, different acts required of the buyer, and different outcomes if the buyer does nothing.
The inspection contingency | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
The option period
The purest version of the instrument: an unrestricted right to walk, paid for in cash up front. What the fee buys, what it does not, and what happens if it is not delivered.
Relations:
- PART_OF → Costs you money up front
An option period is a stated number of days, bought with a separate fee, during which a home buyer may terminate the purchase contract for any reason at all and have the earnest money returned. It is not a contingency and it is not conditioned on the inspection finding anything: the buyer is paying for an exit and may use it because the report was alarming, because the commute felt long, or because they changed their mind. The term is Texas usage, and that matters more than it sounds.
The option period | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Earnest money
Rarely the thing a buyer loses, and routinely the thing a buyer fears losing. When it is genuinely at risk, and the clause that releases it.
Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnest_payment
Relations:
- PART_OF → Costs you money up front
Earnest money is the deposit a buyer hands to a neutral third party when a purchase contract is signed, and it is credited toward the purchase at closing. Buyers lose it less often than the dread around it suggests, for one structural reason: nearly every exit a contract actually gives a buyer is an exit with the deposit intact, and the ones that are not are the exits a buyer takes without a right to take them.
Earnest money | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
The repair amendment
Everything agreed after the inspection is worth exactly what the amendment says. The boxes on it, and the one that waives the right you were relying on.
Relations:
- PART_OF → Costs nothing but goodwill
A repair amendment is the written instrument that converts what a buyer and seller agreed after the inspection into a term of the contract. Until it is signed, the agreement is a conversation: an email from an agent saying the seller will take care of the roof creates no obligation anyone can enforce at closing, and everything a reader thinks they negotiated is worth exactly what the amendment says and nothing more. By instrument this site means a named mechanism a buyer can use once the report exists.
The repair amendment | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Terminating the contract
There is more than one way out and they do not cost the same. Which right you terminate under decides whether the deposit comes back.
Relations:
- PART_OF → Risks the deal itself
Terminating the contract means ending a signed purchase agreement before closing, so that neither side has to perform: the buyer does not have to buy and the seller does not have to sell. The contract here is the written purchase agreement both parties signed, in most states a standard form produced by a state commission or a trade association rather than a document drafted for the occasion. Termination is not a negotiation and it is not an announcement.
Terminating the contract | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Backing out after the inspection
The outcome every buyer contemplates and few examine. What share of contracts end this way, what it costs, and the point after which the option disappears.
Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_estate_contract
Relations:
- PART_OF → Risks the deal itself
Backing out after the inspection means deciding, once the report is in hand, not to complete the purchase. It is either the exercise of a right the contract gives you, in which case the deposit usually comes back, or a refusal to perform a contract you are still bound by, in which case it usually does not. Those two things look identical from the outside and cost completely different amounts. On frequency, there is one nationally representative measure and this is it.
Backing out after the inspection | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Finding a problem after closing
The hardest position in the transaction. What the inspector was and was not required to find, what the seller was required to disclose, and the narrow gap between them.
Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_defect
Relations:
- PART_OF → Risks the deal itself
Usually very little, and nothing quickly. Every instrument covered on the rest of this site — a credit, a price reduction, a repair amendment, a holdback, a termination — is a contract right that expired when the deed was recorded. After closing you are not negotiating a transaction any more. You are making a claim, against a seller or against an inspector, and that is a slower, narrower and more expensive thing.
Finding a problem after closing | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Post-Inspection Instruments That Move Money
The instruments through which a seller, or in one case a lender, pays for something an inspection report disclosed — credits, concessions, escrow holdbacks, seller-paid closing costs, price reductions and repairs the seller completes — and the loan-program ceilings that decide how much of each actually reaches the buyer.
Relations:
- INCLUDES → The seller credit
- INCLUDES → The seller concession
- INCLUDES → The escrow holdback
- INCLUDES → Seller-paid closing costs
- INCLUDES → The price reduction
- INCLUDES → The lender credit
- INCLUDES → Repairs completed by the seller
The instruments through which a seller, or in one case a lender, pays for something an inspection report disclosed — credits, concessions, escrow holdbacks, seller-paid closing costs, price reductions and repairs the seller completes — and the loan-program ceilings that decide how much of each actually reaches the buyer.
Seller Credits and Concessions After an Inspection | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Post-Inspection Instruments That Move the Deal
The contractual instruments a buyer can use after an inspection — the inspection contingency, the option period, earnest money, the repair amendment, termination, backing out, and the position once the sale has closed — each of which stops working on a date fixed before the inspector arrived.
Relations:
- INCLUDES → The inspection contingency
- INCLUDES → The option period
- INCLUDES → Earnest money
- INCLUDES → The repair amendment
- INCLUDES → Terminating the contract
- INCLUDES → Backing out after the inspection
- INCLUDES → Finding a problem after closing
The contractual instruments a buyer can use after an inspection — the inspection contingency, the option period, earnest money, the repair amendment, termination, backing out, and the position once the sale has closed — each of which stops working on a date fixed before the inspector arrived.
What the Contract Lets You Do | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Costs nothing but goodwill
Instruments you can reach for without spending money, time or leverage you may need later — one of the four groupings by what reaching for an instrument costs the buyer who reaches for it.
Relations:
- INCLUDES → The seller credit
- INCLUDES → The seller concession
- INCLUDES → Seller-paid closing costs
- INCLUDES → The price reduction
- INCLUDES → The lender credit
- INCLUDES → The inspection contingency
- INCLUDES → The repair amendment
Instruments you can reach for without spending money, time or leverage you may need later — one of the four groupings by what reaching for an instrument costs the buyer who reaches for it.
What Each Instrument Costs a Buyer to Use | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Spends time you may not have
Instruments that consume the window, on a clock the contract has already started — one of the four groupings by what reaching for an instrument costs the buyer who reaches for it.
Relations:
- INCLUDES → The escrow holdback
- INCLUDES → Repairs completed by the seller
Instruments that consume the window, on a clock the contract has already started — one of the four groupings by what reaching for an instrument costs the buyer who reaches for it.
What Each Instrument Costs a Buyer to Use | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Costs you money up front
Instruments you pay for before you know whether the purchase will complete — one of the four groupings by what reaching for an instrument costs the buyer who reaches for it.
Relations:
- INCLUDES → The option period
- INCLUDES → Earnest money
Instruments you pay for before you know whether the purchase will complete — one of the four groupings by what reaching for an instrument costs the buyer who reaches for it.
What Each Instrument Costs a Buyer to Use | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Risks the deal itself
Instruments that put the sale in play, and the ones a seller can refuse outright — one of the four groupings by what reaching for an instrument costs the buyer who reaches for it.
Relations:
- INCLUDES → Terminating the contract
- INCLUDES → Backing out after the inspection
- INCLUDES → Finding a problem after closing
Instruments that put the sale in play, and the ones a seller can refuse outright — one of the four groupings by what reaching for an instrument costs the buyer who reaches for it.
What Each Instrument Costs a Buyer to Use | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
What to Do With Home Inspection Findings
What a home buyer can actually ask for after an inspection report: 14 credit, escrow and contract instruments, how often each is granted, and what each costs.
An inspection report is a list of conditions, not a list of remedies. What a buyer can do about those conditions comes down to 14 named instruments — a credit, a concession, a holdback, a contingency, an option, an amendment, an exit — and they are not interchangeable. Each one has its own ceiling, its own deadline, its own paperwork, and its own record of how often sellers and lenders actually say yes.
What to Do With Home Inspection Findings — published by Buyer's Edge
Every Instrument a Buyer Can Use After the Report
All 14 instruments a home buyer can use after an inspection report, each with how often it is granted and what reaching for it costs.
All 14 instruments on this site, each with its verdict stated up front: commonly agreed, negotiable, or rarely granted. Start with the table if you already know what you want to ask for; browse by what each one costs you if you do not.
Every Instrument a Buyer Can Use After the Report — published by Buyer's Edge
Post-Inspection Guides for Home Buyers
Guides to the buyer's position after a home inspection: reading the report, negotiating at the table, and what is left when the deal goes wrong.
The instrument pages answer what each mechanism is and how often it is granted. These guides answer the situations around them: what the report's language is actually doing before you choose anything, how sellers and lenders decide once you have asked, and what is left when the seller refuses, the repair comes back badly done, or the problem surfaces after closing. Three sections, each headed by a pillar page worth reading before the guides beneath it.
Post-Inspection Guides for Home Buyers — published by Buyer's Edge
How to Read a Home Inspection Report
What a home inspection report is, what its language is doing, and the gap between what it says and what buyers hear. Read it before you ask for anything.
The report is one person's opinion about what could be seen on one day, and reading it that way changes what you ask for.
How to Read a Home Inspection Report | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Negotiating After a Home Inspection
What a repair negotiation actually is, how a seller decides what to grant, and why the instrument you pick matters more than the amount you ask for.
Most buyers lose this negotiation by asking for a sensible amount through the wrong instrument.
Negotiating After a Home Inspection | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
When the Deal Goes Wrong After an Inspection
What recourse a home buyer actually has when a deal fails: the exits before closing, the narrow gap after it, and how fast the options close.
Your position is strongest while the contract still gives you a way out, and it narrows faster than most buyers expect.
When the Deal Goes Wrong After an Inspection | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
What Further Evaluation Means in a Report
Recommend further evaluation is not a finding of a defect. It is the inspector saying this is outside what the standards require them to determine.
The gravest-sounding line in most reports is not a finding at all. It is the edge of the inspector's scope, and it is now your problem.
What Further Evaluation Means in a Report | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Major vs Minor Defects in an Inspection Report
No standard of practice defines a major defect. Contracts and lenders draw the only real lines, and that is what gives a finding negotiating weight.
Nobody who wrote your report or your contract agreed on what major means, which is why arguing about the word is the losing move.
Major vs Minor Defects in an Inspection Report | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
The Summary Page Is Not the Report
The summary page is a convenience the inspector assembled, not the report. What it selects for, and why the body is where the leverage usually is.
Acting on the summary alone is how buyers build a request out of somebody else's severity tags and miss the thing that mattered.
The Summary Page Is Not the Report | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
What a Home Inspection Report Does Not Say
Visual, non-invasive, readily accessible: the standards of practice state what an inspection never covered. The honest limits of the document in hand.
This is the counterweight to every other page here. The document everything else assumes is narrower than it looks.
What a Home Inspection Report Does Not Say | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Seller Credit vs Price Reduction
Same dollars, different outcomes. What a seller credit does for your cash at closing, what a price reduction does for the loan, and which to ask for when.
The two instruments cost the seller the same amount and do completely different things for you.
Seller Credit vs Price Reduction | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
Lender Limits on Seller Credits
The conventional 3/6/9 ladder, FHA's flat 6%, VA's 4% and USDA's 6%, with the carve-outs and the reason an over-cap credit does not simply get trimmed.
The seller's willingness is not the binding constraint on a credit. Your loan program is.
Lender Limits on Seller Credits | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
What Sellers Actually Agree To
NAR's seller survey data on incentives, what the 7% repair-credit figure does and does not measure, and why no source gives a grant rate for requests.
The published data says less than buyers want it to, and what it does say is not encouraging about large requests.
What Sellers Actually Agree To | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
What Repairs Are Sellers Required to Make
Almost none by default. Where an obligation does arise: the contract you signed, lender-required repairs, FHA habitability, and what As Is really does.
No inspection report obliges a seller to fix anything. A loan sometimes does, and that is a different kind of pressure.
What Repairs Are Sellers Required to Make | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
How Often Do Buyers Back Out?
One contract in fifteen is terminated, per NAR's August 2026 survey. What that number measures, what it does not, and why nobody can say what caused it.
Seven percent of contracts were terminated in NAR's August 2026 survey, and no current source says why.
How Often Do Buyers Back Out? | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
When the Seller Refuses to Repair
The seller is usually within their rights to say no. What a buyer can actually do next: take the credit, reprice, terminate inside the window, or close.
A refusal is usually lawful, which makes this a decision about instruments rather than a grievance.
When the Seller Refuses to Repair | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
When the Seller's Repairs Are Done Badly
What completion standard applies to seller repairs, what a re-inspection can establish, and how much leverage survives the closing date.
The contract, not the inspection report, sets the standard the work has to meet, and most of your leverage expires at closing.
When the Seller's Repairs Are Done Badly | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
When You Find a Problem After Closing
Seller disclosure duties under the Texas and California statutes, what an inspection was never required to find, and the narrow gap between them.
This is the hardest position a buyer can be in, and the honest account of it starts with what the disclosure notice did not promise.
When You Find a Problem After Closing | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
When the Inspector Missed Something
The standards of practice define a visual, non-invasive, point-in-time examination with named exclusions. What that means for a missed defect.
Many of the items a report is accused of missing were never within the scope the standards of practice set.
When the Inspector Missed Something | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge
About Buyer's Edge — An Independent Reference
An independent reference on what a US home buyer does with inspection findings. Compiled from primary sources. No inspections, no negotiating, no referrals.
buyersedgehome.com is an independent reference on one narrow question: what a home buyer in the United States can actually do once an inspection report exists. It covers fourteen named instruments — a seller credit, a concession, an escrow holdback, seller-paid closing costs, a price reduction, a lender credit, repairs completed by the seller, the inspection contingency, the option period, earnest money, the repair amendment, termination, backing out, and the position after closing — and for each one it states how often it is granted, what it costs the
About Buyer's Edge — An Independent Reference — published by Buyer's Edge
Contact
Send a correction or a question about the reference material on buyersedgehome.com. No reports reviewed, no referrals, no advice on your deal.
Corrections are the main reason to write to this site, and they are genuinely welcome. If a page here contradicts a primary source, cites a contract provision that has been renumbered, describes a form that has been reissued, or states a loan program limit that is no longer the limit, telling us is the most useful thing a reader can do. It is better fixed than defended.
Contact | Buyer's Edge — published by Buyer's Edge