The Attic Discovery
A nineteen-twenty-four Craftsman bungalow in Cooper-Young. "Okay," the inspector calls down. "We've got knob-and-tube up here."
"Is that bad?" the buyer asks.
"It's original wiring. Porcelain knobs holding individual conductors apart. Some insurance carriers won't write policies on it."
The buyer pulls up the electrical estimator on his phone. "Full rewire for a medium pre-1980 house shows $14,580 to $20,250. Partial rewire, keeping knob-and-tube on two circuits and updating everything else, $7,790 to $10,830."
"That's not as bad as I thought. I was imagining forty."
The buyer made an offer that week. Final cost came in at $9,000.
Suburban Systems
The inspector is standing in the kitchen of a 1985 colonial in Germantown. "The HVAC is original. Forty years old. The water heater is from oh-nine. And the windows are original single-pane."
The husband leans against the counter. "If we had to do all three, what are we looking at?"
"I can't quote prices. But I can show you what these items typically cost in this market."
They ran the estimators. HVAC replacement for a 2,000 to 2,500 square foot house with a high-efficiency premium brand: $10,927 to $14,784. Water heater, 50-gallon tank in the crawlspace: around $2,000. Windows depended on what they chose. Fifteen vinyl retrofit replacements: $7,000 to $9,330. Twenty fiberglass full-frame replacements: $15,894 to $21,193.
"So realistic case with vinyl windows, we're looking at around twenty to twenty-six thousand. Full-frame fiberglass pushes it to twenty-nine to thirty-eight."
The buyers made an offer that evening. They replaced the HVAC the first winter. They knew the math before they signed.
The Foundation Question
A 1972 split-foyer in Bartlett. The inspector is running his hand along a diagonal crack in the slab. "It looks like settling. Quarter inch at the widest point. No displacement."
The buyer takes a photo. "What would it cost to fix? I was imagining thirty thousand."
He pulled up the foundation estimator. Minor repair on a small area ran $2,200 to $3,400. Moderate stabilization on a medium crawlspace house: $11,450 to $17,500.
"So if the engineer says it's cosmetic, I'm looking at the low end. If it's structural, I know the ceiling."
He made an offer that afternoon. The engineer confirmed cosmetic settling. He handled it himself with hardware store epoxy.
The Email That Changed Things
An inspector in Midtown got an email from a past client. "I wish someone had told me what things cost. I thought the electrical would be fifty thousand. The full rewire came in at $16,000 for a medium pre-1980 house. I spent six months terrified of my own house because I had no frame of reference."
Last fall, he started sending clients to the estimators after every inspection. Not as his opinion. As a resource.
"I can't tell you what the electrical will cost," he told a buyer. "But this will show you what rewiring typically runs for a house this size in Memphis."
The inspector still can't quote prices. He doesn't have to. He just points people toward the numbers and lets them do the math.
The Follow-Up Call
An inspector in East Memphis got a call regarding a house with polybutylene plumbing. "I looked up the plumbing estimator you linked," the buyer said. "It shows $11,460 to $15,910 to repipe a medium house with PEX through the crawlspace. Is that accurate?"
"For a house that size, that range is consistent."
"Okay. So we're not talking forty thousand. This is the first inspection I've had where I didn't feel completely lost afterward."
She made an offer that afternoon. The plumber came in at $14,000. She'd budgeted fifteen.
After the Inspection
A buyer in Collierville sat down with her inspection report. Nineteen items flagged. She opened the estimators and started working through the list.
Large deck repair: budgeted $4,200. Electrical panel upgrade, 100 to 200 amp: budgeted $2,800. HVAC replacement, high-efficiency: budgeted $13,000.
She fixed eleven items the first six months. Every project came in inside the ranges she'd seen. She texted her inspector: "I never felt like I was guessing."