Three steps

1. Send the package

The seller’s disclosure, the inspection report, the pest and roof reports, the HOA documents, the preliminary title report, anything else that came with the sale. More is better: a finding that appears in two documents and is contradicted by a third is exactly the kind of thing worth knowing, and we cannot see the contradiction if we only have one of them.

You do not need to sort, rename or summarise anything. Packages arrive as a disorganised pile and that is the normal case.

2. We read all of it

Every document, every page. We pull out each finding, note which document and which page it came from, and remove the duplicates where three reports describe the same crack in three different ways.

Then each finding gets three separate marks: how soon it needs doing, how much it is likely to cost, and how well established it is. They stay separate, because a serious-sounding word and an expensive repair are not the same thing and collapsing them into one label is where buyers get it wrong.

Anything nobody priced is marked as unpriced rather than left blank, because a blank reads as nothing to pay.

3. You get the report

What the property looks worth given its condition, a range to offer, a monthly cost of owning it, and what to hold back for the things nobody could check.

Every part of the house is listed, including the parts no document covered. If nobody went under the house, the report says nobody went under the house, and what that leaves unanswered.