The Buyer and the Seller Both Want Your Report

Why this matters

You did an evaluation for one side of a sale, and now the other side wants it. The listing agent calls, friendly and reasonable: the seller just wants to see what you found. Hand it over and you may have given away your client's negotiating position, handed the seller a document they now have to disclose to every future buyer, and widened the list of people who can claim they relied on you. Refuse clumsily and you lose an agent who sends work. This is a genuine fork, and the right branch depends on facts you can check in five minutes.

The situation, precisely

You were engaged by one party, usually the buyer during the inspection period, occasionally the seller before or during listing. A second party, usually the other side's agent, asks for your findings, photos or video. You have three possible answers:

• A. Release with your client's permission.
• B. Release on request, because the person asking seems to have a good reason and nobody said not to.
• C. Decline, and send the request to your client.

These do not converge. Each puts a different document in a different set of hands, and in a sale that changes what people are obliged to do next.

The criteria that decide it

Run these in order. The first two override everything below them; the last three decide the ordinary case.

1. Is there an imminent hazard to the people living there? If your evaluation found something that endangers the occupants now (combustion products in living space, a gas leak, an energized fault on an accessible surface), the occupants and the owner are told immediately, whoever hired you. That is not releasing a report; it is a safety notification, made on site, verbally and then in a short written notice, and the appliance is shut off or the hazard isolated per your shop's procedure. Your client's confidentiality does not extend to letting a household sleep beside a hazard you found.

2. Is the request legal process? A subpoena or a written demand from a lawyer is not a request you answer from the office. Do not release and do not ignore it; send it to your own attorney the same day.

3. Who engaged you? The findings were prepared for that person. Your job record should already say so. See related: Who Is Your Customer in a Real Estate Deal.

4. Do you have that person's permission in writing? A text or email from the client, or from their agent stating the client has agreed, is enough for the shop's purposes. A verbal "sure, go ahead" relayed by the other side's agent is not.

5. Does the purchase contract require the report to be shared? Some standard forms and many negotiated contracts require the buyer to give the seller copies of inspection reports, on request or if the buyer cancels. That is an obligation between buyer and seller. It is the buyer's to perform, through their own agent, not yours to perform on their behalf, and the buyer's agent knows whether the clause exists.

If criteria 1 and 2 do not apply and you have no written permission, the answer is C, whatever criterion 5 says.

Branch A: release with permission

When. Your client has agreed in writing, usually because sharing helps them: a seller is more likely to accept a repair request backed by a licensed contractor's findings than one backed by an inspector's deferral.

How. Send the same document your client received, unchanged, with a cover line: "Shared at the request of [client], with their written permission of [date]. Prepared for [client]; not prepared for or to be relied on by any other party." Whether that line limits who can rely on you is a state-law question for your own attorney, but it puts on record who the work was for. Send it to the people the client named and no one else.

What it changes. The seller now knows what you found. In states with broad seller disclosure laws, that knowledge generally has to go on the disclosure given to the next buyer if this deal fails. See related: Your Findings and the Seller Disclosure Obligation. Your client should make this decision knowing that, which is their agent's job to explain, not yours.

What it costs you. Nothing, if the document was scoped and factual. If it was sloppy, you have doubled the readership of the sloppiness.

Branch B: release on request, without permission

When. In practice, never for findings you prepared for someone else. Every reason a shop gives for taking this branch ("it's the seller's house," "the deal fell through anyway," "the listing agent sends us half our work") is a reason it feels harmless, not a reason it is.

What it actually does. It discloses your client's confidential information to the party they are negotiating against. If the buyer is still in the deal, you may have weakened their position while they were relying on you. If the buyer has already cancelled, you have given the seller a document they did not commission and now cannot unknow, which in a broad-disclosure state can follow the house through every future sale. Either way the person harmed is your customer, and they will find out, because the seller's agent will mention it.

The one exception that looks like this branch and is not: criterion 1. A hazard notice goes to whoever needs it without waiting for anyone's permission.

Branch C: decline and route

When. Any request from a non-client with no written permission from the client.

How. Keep it short and make it the client's decision, not your refusal:

• "Those findings were prepared for the buyer, so I can't send them without their OK. I'll pass your request to their agent today."
• Then do it, in writing, so the buyer's side cannot later say you sat on it.

What it costs you. Occasionally an irritated listing agent. Much less often than shops fear, because agents work both sides of the table and want their own buyers' reports protected the same way. The shop that declines politely is the one an agent trusts with their next buyer.

Doing new work for the other side. The seller may then ask you to evaluate the same item for them. Many shops decline to work for both sides of one transaction, because you cannot unknow what you found for the buyer and the seller will reasonably assume you are bringing it with you. If you do take it, it is a new engagement with new findings, and nothing from the buyer's job is reused or referred to.

Worked case: one plumber, two requests, opposite answers

A plumbing shop runs a sewer camera for a buyer on a 1950s house. The video shows an offset joint at about 30 ft and roots at 48 ft. Findings go to the buyer on day 5 of a 10-day option period.

Request 1, day 6. The buyer's agent emails: "Buyer is asking the seller to replace the lateral. Can you send the video and findings straight to the listing agent so they see it's real?" The email says the buyer agreed. Run the criteria: no hazard, no legal process, engaged by the buyer, written permission from the buyer's agent stating the buyer agreed. Branch A. The shop sends the original findings and video to the listing agent with the shared-with-permission cover line, and logs the email on the job.

Request 2, day 12. The seller refused to replace the lateral, the buyer walked, and the listing agent calls the shop: "The buyer's gone. The seller would like a copy of the video and your estimate so he knows what he's dealing with." The listing agent already received the findings on day 6 under Branch A, so this request is really for the estimate the shop gave the buyer, plus a fresh copy. Run the criteria again: engaged by the buyer, no new permission. The day-6 permission covered sharing the findings to support a repair request, not handing the buyer's estimate to the seller after the buyer left. Branch C. The office routes the request to the buyer's agent, who says the buyer has no objection; the shop sends the estimate with the same cover line.

Two requests from the same person about the same house resolved differently because the facts changed between them: what was being asked for, and whether permission covered it. A shop with a standing rule of "the listing agent can always have it" gets request 2 wrong, and a shop with "never share anything" gets request 1 wrong and costs its own client a stronger repair request.

What would have flipped request 2. If the purchase contract had required the buyer to deliver all inspection reports to the seller on cancellation, the buyer would have owed the seller the findings anyway, but through the buyer's agent. The shop's answer is still C: route it. If the camera had found sewage backing into the basement, criterion 1 applies to the people living there now, and the seller hears about it on site the day it is found, regardless of the rest.

What gets written down

For every release or refusal, the job record holds the request (who, when, what), the permission or its absence, what was sent, to whom, and the cover line used. When a buyer later asks how the seller got their report, or a seller's next buyer asks what the seller knew and when, this is the record that answers.

This article describes how a shop can handle requests in practice; it is not legal advice. Where a request comes with a lawyer's letterhead, or a client disputes what they permitted, take the job record to your own attorney.

References

• The purchase contract's provisions on inspection reports and their delivery to the seller, as drafted by the parties
• State seller disclosure statutes, for what a seller must disclose once they know of a material defect
• See related: Who Is Your Customer in a Real Estate Deal, Your Findings and the Seller Disclosure Obligation
• See related: Writing a Findings Letter Buyers, Sellers and Lenders Can Use, The Sale Fell Through After the Work Was Done