Almost none, by default
By default, a seller is required to make no repairs at all. An inspection report creates no duty on anybody. It is not a contract document, it binds nobody, and a seller who reads it and does nothing has broken no rule. Obligations in a home sale come from two places only: the words of the purchase contract the two sides already signed, and the requirements a lender imposes as a condition of making the loan. The report is evidence that may persuade a seller to take on an obligation. It is not itself an obligation.
That is the whole answer, and buyers resist it because it sounds like a technicality. It is not a technicality, it is the architecture. There is no statute in general use that requires a seller to repair a condition for a buyer's benefit, no licensing rule that converts an inspector's finding into a repair order, and no professional standard that gives a report that effect. Many states require a seller to disclose conditions they know about, which is a duty to tell rather than a duty to fix.
So the useful question is not what sellers are required to do. It is where an obligation can actually come from, and there are three places. The rest of this page is those three.
The first source: the contract you already signed
If your contract says the seller will do specific work, the seller will do specific work, and that is an enforceable obligation with remedies attached. The point is that it has to be specific and it has to be in the contract or in a written amendment to it.
Promulgated forms are prescriptive about how this works, and the Texas Real Estate Commission's resale contract is the most prescriptive of them. TREC No. 20-19, Paragraph 7F, says that unless the parties agree otherwise in writing, the seller must complete all agreed repairs and treatments before the closing date and obtain any required permits; that the work "must be performed by persons who are licensed to provide such repairs or treatments or, if no license is required by law, are commercially engaged in the trade"; that the seller must give the buyer documentation from the repair person showing the scope of work and payment; and that the seller must arrange at their own expense for the transfer of any transferable warranties to the buyer at closing. If the seller fails to finish, the buyer may use the contract's default remedies or extend closing by up to five days.
Four protections, a remedy and an extension, all from a paragraph nobody reads. Notice what they are protections against: not the seller refusing, but the seller agreeing and then doing the work badly, cheaply, without a permit, or through a brother-in-law. If your own state's form is thinner here - and most are - that is the standard to measure it against and the gap you may want to close in your amendment.
The word treatments in that paragraph covers work for wood-destroying insects and similar infestations, which these contracts handle alongside ordinary repairs rather than separately.
The second source: the lender, and this one is not yours
The strongest repair obligation in a home sale usually has nothing to do with the buyer's wishes. If an appraiser or an underwriter requires a condition corrected before the loan can close, the pressure on the seller is real, immediate, and not something you had to create.
This is a separate category from your inspection negotiation, and conflating the two is the most common mistake on this subject. The same TREC form handles it in its own paragraph, 7E: unless the parties agree otherwise in writing, "neither party is obligated to pay for lender required repairs, which includes treatment for wood destroying insects." Nobody is obliged - so if the parties do not agree on who pays, "this contract will terminate and the earnest money will be refunded to Buyer." And if the cost of the lender-required work exceeds 5% of the sales price, the buyer may terminate and the earnest money is refunded.
Read what that does for a buyer whose option period has already lapsed. It is a second exit, operating on a different trigger, usually available later in the timeline than the inspection right, and it does not depend on the seller agreeing to anything. The seller's incentive changes accordingly: they are not choosing between paying for a repair and keeping their money, they are choosing between paying for a repair and losing the deal by the contract's own terms.
Two cautions. This paragraph is Texas-specific and other states' forms are far thinner here, so read your own. And the lever only exists if the lender actually requires the repair - which is the lender's judgment about the collateral, not yours about the house, and asking for it is not a move you control.
The third source: FHA, and the habitability test
Government-insured lending adds a layer, because the property itself has to qualify. FHA's framework is the clearest example and the one most buyers encounter.
The mechanism worth knowing is the test FHA applies to deferring work. Handbook 4000.1 allows certain repairs to be escrowed and completed after closing, but conditions that on the house being habitable and safe for occupancy at the time of loan closing. Conditions that fail that test cannot be deferred into an escrow and cannot be papered over with a credit. They have to be cured before the loan closes, or the loan does not close.
That is not a repair obligation on the seller in the ordinary sense - FHA is not ordering anybody to do anything, it is declining to insure. But the practical effect on a seller who wants this sale to complete is the same, and it is stronger than any argument a buyer can construct from a report. A seller can tell you no. They cannot tell the insurer no and keep the buyer.
What this page deliberately will not do is list which conditions fail the test. That is a catalog of property conditions and it belongs elsewhere; the point here is the rule, not the inventory. If something in your report looks like it might reach habitability, the person to ask is your loan officer, and the answer arrives through the appraisal rather than through the negotiation.
What an As Is clause does, and what it does not
Buyers see "sold as is" and conclude they have no standing to ask for anything. On a promulgated form, that conclusion is wrong, and the form says so in terms.
TREC No. 20-19, Paragraph 7D, defines the phrase and then limits it: "'As Is' means the present condition of the Property with any and all defects and without warranty except for the warranties of title and the warranties in this contract." And then, in the same paragraph: "Buyer's agreement to accept the Property As Is ... does not preclude Buyer from inspecting the Property under Paragraph 7A, from negotiating repairs or treatments in a subsequent amendment, or from terminating this contract during the Option Period, if any."
So what As Is does is allocate the risk of condition to the buyer and strip the implied warranties. What it does not do is remove your inspection, your right to negotiate in an amendment, or your right to terminate inside the window you bought. Those three survive the clause intact. A listing agent who tells you an as-is listing means you cannot ask is describing a negotiating position, not the contract.
The same paragraph also shows how a repair obligation gets created inside an as-is sale. One of its options is the buyer accepting the property as is "provided Seller, at Seller's expense, shall complete the following specific repairs and treatments" - and then the form instructs, in its own parenthesis: "(Do not insert general phrases, such as 'subject to inspections' that do not identify specific repairs and treatments.)" That is the whole discipline of this subject in one line. Named work binds a seller. A reference to the report binds nobody, and the promulgated form forbids writing it that way.
One further right in that neighborhood, from Paragraph 7A: the seller must permit access at reasonable times and must, at the seller's expense, immediately cause existing utilities to be turned on and keep them on while the contract is in effect. A buyer cannot evaluate what they cannot test, and that obligation is the seller's.
How to use an answer this unhelpful
Knowing that nothing is required changes what you should ask for, and mostly it makes you more selective rather than less ambitious.
- Sort your findings by who else cares. Anything the lender or the appraiser is likely to require goes in one pile and you spend none of your own leverage on it. Everything else is a pure negotiation where the answer may simply be no.
- Ask for money on the items where you can tolerate the seller's contractor choice, and named work on the ones where you cannot. Money is cleaner and faster. Named work is for the things where who did it and whether it was permitted will matter to you in five years.
- If you ask for work, borrow the Texas language even if you are not in Texas. Licensed or trade-engaged persons, permits obtained, scope-and-payment documentation delivered, transferable warranties assigned at closing. Those four clauses are the difference between a repair and a story about a repair.
- Do not write "all items in the inspection report." The most prescriptive form in the country instructs against it, and a seller who signs it has agreed to a figure nobody has calculated.
- Keep one eye on the instrument. If the answer to repairs is no, the question becomes whether money, a holdback or an exit is the better move - which is the subject of negotiating after a home inspection.
And the thing worth saying plainly, because a reference that only flatters is no use: if the house is being sold as is by a seller with multiple offers and your findings are ordinary wear, the honest answer is that asking for repairs will cost you goodwill and return nothing. That is not always true. It is true often enough that you should decide which case you are in before you send a list.