We work through buyer inspection reports, WDO reports and listing agents' punch lists for sellers in Beaverton, Cedar Mill, Bethany and nearby. You send the report, and we price it using the report's own item numbers. A list like this usually lands between $500 and $4,000 in the Portland market, labour only (market data, November 2026) .
Most report items are the kind of work on our small jobs page: a door, a rail, a patch, a soft board. Slava's own background is 7 years of doing repairs like these himself.
Who fixes the items on a home inspection report?
The inspector writes down what they saw; the repair price comes from whoever picks up the tools. A typical report holds a few big trade items (roof, furnace, sewer line, panel) and a long tail of small ones. That tail is ours.
Sellers call before listing or after the buyer's repair request, and sometimes the listing agent calls for them. We can work straight from an agent's list as long as the seller is on board .
What's usually on a pre-sale punch list?
These are common home inspection issues on older west-side houses.
| What the report says | What we do | More on it |
|---|---|---|
| Soft trim, sills, fascia or deck boards | Cut out the bad wood, fit new, prime | Wood rot and siding |
| Door sticks, won't latch, worn weatherstrip | Adjust hinges, plane, new strip | Door repair |
| Loose or missing handrail at the steps | Re-anchor it or put one in | Stairs and railings |
| Smoke or CO alarms missing or past date, if listed | Mount and test new alarms | Smoke and CO alarms |
| Water heater with no seismic straps, if listed | Fit a strap kit | Water heater work |
| Gaps in caulk along a tub or the siding | Strip and re-caulk | Wood rot and siding |
| Holes or old water stains in drywall (leak already fixed) | Patch, prime, paint | Drywall repair |
| Gutters spilling over, downspouts dumping by the foundation | Clean them, add extensions | Gutter cleaning |
Roofs, furnaces, sewer lines, garage doors and rekeying go to other trades; see jobs we leave to others.
Which repairs are worth doing before you list?
From the repair side: fix first whatever a buyer's inspector will call a defect, like soft wood, a wobbly rail, a door that won't latch or missing alarms. Those come back as a repair request or a credit anyway. We won't push a remodel right before a sale.
The curb appeal bundle covers front door paint, house numbers, a porch light and a mailbox. More than that is an exterior painting job.
Age matters: Cedar Hills is mostly 1950s-60s, Cedar Mill 1960s-70s, much of Beaverton 1960s-90s. Oregon treats any pre-1978 house as having lead paint until testing proves it doesn't, and scraping or sanding past 20 square feet on the outside, or 6 square feet in any one room, counts as renovation. Lead paint work isn't something we offer, so on those houses paint jobs stay below those limits or get referred out .
What does a WDO report mean, and what do you repair?
WDO stands for wood destroying organism: the inspection looks for damage from rot fungi and wood-boring insects. Our part is repairing the wood the report points to.
If the report finds live insects, a pest company treats first (we apply no pesticides), and we replace the wood after . With water rot, the water has to stop too, so we also fix the source we can reach: failed caulk, trim flashing, a gutter spilling onto a sill.
Where tall firs drip all winter in Cedar Mill, and on the sloped lots of West Slope, the usual spots are porch and deck posts at grade, the bottom edge of siding, door thresholds and what you can see from the crawl space hatch . Rotten thresholds and jambs have their own door frame repair page.
The state permit page says a like-for-like repair needs no permit unless it removes or cuts a beam or other load-bearing member, cuts away walls, or changes required exits. If the damage goes that deep, we stop and tell the seller before opening anything more .
How much do inspection repairs cost before closing?
| Job | Low | Typical | High | Unit, basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agent or seller punch list | $500 | $1,500 | $4,000 | per list, labour only |
| WDO repairs: rot and damage from the report | $600 | $2,000 | $5,000 | per job, labour only |
| Curb appeal refresh: door paint, numbers, light, mailbox | $600 | $1,500 | $3,500 | per house, labour only |
All three rows are November 2026 estimates for the Portland market, built from what local handymen charge per hour, and none of them is a bill we've sent . Materials come on top .
The price climbs with item count, trades involved, rot deeper than the inspector could see, ladder height, crawl space access and a tight closing date. In Oregon any construction agreement above $2,000 has to be written down, and plenty of lists pass that mark. What that paper should cover is in our Oregon contract guide.
Can you quote straight from the inspection report?
Yes. Send the PDF or photos of the pages, and we mark each numbered line as ours, another trade's, or one that needs a look in person . Your agent can use that sheet in repair talks; the negotiating is theirs.
Afterwards you get a dated, itemized invoice and before and after photos the buyer's side can check . Tell us the closing date when you first get in touch .
What do Oregon sellers need to know about alarms and the seismic question?
ORS 479.260 makes the seller responsible for smoke alarms that meet the state building code and the fire marshal's rules. OAR 837-047-0120 says a house with any carbon monoxide source must have working CO alarms before the sale, and houses built from 2011 on need one no matter what. See the alarm installation page.
The state's seller disclosure form also has a seismic section: was the house built before 1974, and if so, is it bolted to its foundation? Many older west-side houses predate that line. We don't fill in the form for anyone, but some sellers bolt the house before listing; see the seismic retrofit page.