An app for home inspection is judged by the report that comes out of it.
The checklist is the easy part. An app for home inspection is judged on what comes out at the end: a document a buyer reads, an agent forwards and, if the sale goes wrong, a lawyer reads back to you two years later. That separates it from the wider family of property inspection apps. There the output is often a status in somebody else's system, not a document with your licence number on it.
This page covers the four states every row can be in and what the standards make you write about each one. Then the form you may not be allowed to redesign, and what no signal does to the build.
See what each state owes the reportThe short version
Four states per item, and three of them need words.
Every line on an inspection report resolves to one of four things. The item was inspected, it was not inspected, it is not present, or it is deficient. Ticking the box is the fast part. Three of those four states are not finished until somebody writes a sentence explaining them.
Build around that sentence and the rest follows: a photo belongs to a row, a recommendation belongs to a defect, and the report is not ready while any state is unexplained. A house inspection checklist app that stops at the ticks leaves the expensive half undone.
In Texas the form is not yours to design
Before you design a screen, check whether your state has already designed it. Texas is explicit. An inspection for a prospective buyer or seller of substantially complete one-to-four family residential property has to be reported on Form REI 7-6. That is the form adopted by the Commission.
The rule reaches past the content and into the layout. If you produce the report with software, you must reproduce the text of the standard form verbatim. The spacing, borders and placement of text must be identical. The permitted changes are listed, down to a typeface no smaller than 10 point and the use of legal sized paper. What is not on the list is not allowed.
The same rule hands you the data model. The inspector checks whether each item was inspected, not inspected, not present or deficient, and explains the findings in the corresponding section of the form. If more than one box is checked, the report has to say why. That is a four value status and a mandatory comment field, set by rule rather than chosen by you. Other states leave the form open, so read your own before assuming a blank page.
22 Texas Administrative Code 535.223, standard inspection report form
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What each state owes the report
Every row on the form lands in one of four states. Pick one and see what the app has to capture before that row is finished.
5 fields before the row is done
- Item name
- Box ticked
- Written comment naming the defect
- Photo attached to this row
- Recommendation to correct or monitor
A ticked box with no written comment is the most common way a report fails review.
What the written report owes a defect
Where no form is mandated, the standards of practice still decide the content. The ASHI Standard of Practice sets what the written report has to state. First, the systems and components inspected that, in the professional judgment of the inspector, are not functioning properly, are significantly deficient, are unsafe, or are near the end of their service lives.
Then three more things. Recommendations to correct the deficiencies or to monitor them for future correction. An explanation where the nature of a deficiency is not self evident. And the components that were present at the inspection but were not inspected, with the reasons why.
Turn those four requirements into fields and the screen writes itself. A defect row wants a plain description, a judgement of how serious it is, a recommendation and a photo. A skipped row wants one thing: why. A single free text box at the bottom will not do it. Nobody filling it in at five in the afternoon remembers what is still missing.
One thing the standard does not ask for is worth naming, because people build it anyway. The inspector is not required to determine methods, materials and costs of corrections. A repair estimate invites a number that gets quoted back at you. The same restraint pays off in any field inspection app: record the condition, leave the quote to whoever does the work.
Photos, and a phone with no signal
A photo that is not attached to a row is a photo nobody can use. The camera roll from a three hour inspection is two hundred pictures of brown things in the dark. Take the photo from inside the row, store the row identifier with the file, and the report assembles itself in order. A caption written on site takes four seconds and settles an argument later.
Then there is the building. Vacant houses rarely have working wifi, and a basement or a crawlspace drops the mobile signal, so assume every capture happens offline and syncs afterwards. That is an architecture decision, not a setting. Read what an empty house with no signal does to an app before you choose how to store anything.
On the output side, check rather than assume. We looked at what a Newly project starts from. The starter ships an image picker for camera and library photos, and no PDF library at all. The one PDF package on its native list needs a simulator build rather than the instant preview. We did not run a build that produced a finished PDF report with photos embedded, so treat that as unverified. Ask for the PDF explicitly and open the file before you depend on it.
The report goes out, and then the work starts
The moment a report is delivered it has to stop changing. Keep the delivered document as its own record: the file that was sent, who it went to, and when. A correction belongs in a new version with its own date, beside the old one rather than on top of it. Two years later the only question anybody asks is what the buyer was holding.
A re-inspection is a new record, not an edit. Texas puts a re-inspection for the same client outside the mandated form rule, which tells you how differently it is treated. In the app it wants the original findings on one side and today's status on the other. It has to know which are now fixed.
After that the deficiency list stops being yours. It becomes a work list for a contractor, a landlord or a property manager. That is the job of a maintenance management app rather than an inspection tool. Handing the defects over as rows, one per item with its photo, is the most useful thing your last screen can do.
What each way of writing up an inspection gives you
| Approach | Works with no signal | Photo tied to the row | Fits a mandated state form | Report out the same day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paper checklist plus a camera | Yes | matched up afterwards | only if you print it | rarely |
| Notes app and the camera roll | Yes | No | No | after retyping it |
| Spreadsheet on a tablet | Yes | No | No | after a rebuild at the desk |
| Inspection software subscription | depends on the product | Yes | in the states it supports | Yes |
| An app you build | Yes | Yes | if you reproduce the form exactly | Yes |
Building one around the way you actually inspect
Inspection software is sold per inspector per month and shaped around its own template library, which is fine until your work is not. The cases that push people out are specific: a comment library in your own words, two inspectors on one job, a state form reproduced exactly, an agreement signed on the doorstep, a fee based on square footage and year built.
Newly is an AI app builder. You describe the app, including the four states, the photo rules and what the finished report looks like. It writes a real React Native project you own, and runs it on a cloud simulator while it builds. Plans start at $25 a month and there is no free plan. iOS ships through TestFlight using your own Apple Developer account. The Deploy tab builds and uploads an Android app to Google Play internal testing. It also produces a standalone release APK you can install on a phone directly.
Start with one inspection type and the document it produces. An app that handles a single family house properly beats one that half covers houses, small commercial and new construction and gets the comments wrong in all three.
Questions people ask about home inspection apps
Produce the report. A checklist records ticks. An inspection report has to state which items were inspected, which were not and why, which are not present, and which are deficient, with a comment and a recommendation for each defect. A property inspection report app is a document tool with a checklist inside it.
Describe the report you have to hand over
Write down the four states, what a defect row has to contain, and the form you are required to reproduce. Then build the app backwards from the document.
Start building