What repairs can I ask for after a St. George inspection?

No. Almost nothing on an inspection report is automatically required.

An inspection report is a list of observations, not a list of obligations. A seller in St. George is generally under no duty to repair the items on it, and a buyer is generally under no duty to accept the house as-is. What happens next is a negotiation, and treating the report as a repair invoice is the fastest way to lose one.

What the report actually is

An inspector’s job is to look at the house and write down what is observed. A thorough inspector on a well-maintained home will still produce pages of findings, because the job is to report condition, not to grade the house.

That length is what causes the trouble. Buyers receive a long document, read it as a catalog of problems, and hand the whole thing to the seller. Sellers receive a long document, read it as an attack, and dig in. Both reactions come from the same mistake — treating a description of a house as a demand.

Every house has findings. A twenty-year-old house in Washington County with a page of observations is normal. The question is never how many items there are. It is which of them change what the house is worth or whether it is safe to live in.

What is worth pursuing, and what is not

Generally worth raising	Usually not worth raising
Structural movement or foundation concerns	Cosmetic cracks, scuffs, worn paint
Roof at end of life, active leaks	Normal wear on finishes and fixtures
Cooling or heating system failing or at end of life	A system that is aging but working
Electrical hazards, panel problems, unsafe wiring	Missing outlet covers, minor trim issues
Active plumbing leaks, sewer line defects	Slow drains, a dripping faucet
Drainage directing water toward the house	Landscaping preferences
Water intrusion or evidence of past intrusion	Deferred maintenance you can do in an afternoon
Anything unsafe: gas, structural, egress	Items already visible and priced in when you offered

The line is roughly this: raise the items that are expensive, unsafe, or that you could not have seen when you made the offer. Let go of the items that are cheap, cosmetic, or that were obvious on the walkthrough.

Asking for everything is not a stronger position. It is a weaker one. A seller facing a list of forty items, most of them minor, learns that the buyer is unreasonable and starts weighing how much they care about closing. A seller facing four substantial items understands they have a real problem to solve.

How the negotiation actually works

The general shape in Utah is straightforward, though your specific contract governs the details and deadlines.

The buyer inspects during an agreed period, then raises objections in writing before that period ends. The seller can agree to some or all of it, offer something else, or decline entirely. The buyer can then accept the response, keep negotiating, or cancel within the terms of the contract.

Two things matter more than most people realize.

Deadlines are real. The right to object expires. Miss it and you have generally accepted the condition of the property, whatever the report says. The overall timeline moves faster than out-of-state buyers expect, and inspection deadlines are early in it.

Money often beats repairs. A credit or a price reduction lets you choose your own contractor and confirm the work is done properly. A seller repair, made in a hurry by whoever was available, frequently produces a worse result. There are exceptions — lender-required work, and anything you genuinely cannot manage yourself — but as a default, take the money.

The real exception: lender-required repairs

This is where “you don’t have to fix anything” stops being true.

Certain loan programs require that specific health and safety conditions be resolved before the lender will fund. Where an appraiser flags something of that kind, it stops being a negotiation and becomes a condition of closing. Somebody has to do the work, or the loan does not happen.

Which items trigger this depends on the loan program, and it is worth asking your lender directly rather than assuming. It is also a reason to identify serious safety findings early rather than at the end.

Separately, sellers have disclosure obligations. Learning about a material defect through an inspection generally means it is now a known defect, and that has consequences beyond this transaction. A seller who declines to repair something is entitled to decline. A seller who declines and then does not disclose it to the next buyer has a different and larger problem.

What matters most on a southern Utah house

The report will list everything. These are the ones that carry real cost here.

The cooling system. Air conditioning in this climate is closer to infrastructure than comfort. Age, condition and capacity are worth serious attention, and a system at the end of its life is a legitimate negotiating item rather than a nuisance.

The roof and sun-facing surfaces. Sun exposure here is punishing and it ages materials on the south and west elevations faster than a buyer from a milder climate expects.

Drainage and grading. Rain arrives rarely and heavily. Ground sloping toward the structure is a genuine problem in a place with infrequent, intense storms.

Anything involving water. Water is the defining constraint in southern Utah, and plumbing, irrigation and drainage issues deserve more weight than the same findings would get elsewhere.

The full southern Utah inspection list is worth reading before your inspection rather than after, so you know what you are looking for while there is still time to act.

What I actually see happen

I am Kelsey Earl, a Realtor with Keller Williams South Valley, and inspection negotiations go wrong in the same two ways.

The first is the buyer who submits the entire report. It reads as a demand for a new house, the seller stops cooperating, and the buyer ends up with less than they would have got by asking for four things. I have watched a reasonable request for a failing cooling system get refused because it arrived buried in thirty-six other items.

The second is the buyer who is so worried about upsetting the seller that they raise nothing at all, then spend the first year paying for things they could have negotiated. Being agreeable is not the same as being smart, and sellers are rarely as fragile as nervous buyers imagine.

The most common regret I hear is not about a repair that was refused. It is from people who never got the inspection, or who got one and skimmed it. The report is the most useful document in the transaction and it is the one most often read in a hurry.

If you are the seller

You do not have to fix everything, and you should not agree to.

Address what is unsafe, what is genuinely broken, and what a lender will require, because those items will come back on the next buyer too. Push back on cosmetic requests. Consider a credit rather than doing the work yourself, which is often cheaper and always faster.

The best defense is earlier than this. Getting your own read on the house — and a realistic view of what it is worth in its current condition — turns a stressful negotiation into a short one, because nothing in the buyer’s report is a surprise to you.

What to do next

Get the inspection. Read the whole thing, including the parts that are not alarming. Then sit down with your agent and separate the report into three lists: unsafe, expensive, and everything else.

Negotiate the first two. Let the third go.

Send me the report and I will tell you honestly which items are worth pursuing on that specific house and which ones are ordinary for a home of that age here.

Note: General information, not legal advice. Contract terms, deadlines and disclosure obligations vary — consult your agent and, where appropriate, an attorney about your specific transaction.