Home Inspection vs. Four-Point Inspection: What’s the Difference?
Written for Erwin Insurance Agency
Before an insurance company can give you a homeowner’s policy, they’re going to want to make sure your house isn’t already in shambles. To do that, insurance companies require a home inspection to ensure there’s nothing majorly wrong with your house.
There are two main types of home inspections that insurance companies might request:
- Four-point inspection
- Full home inspection
Both types of inspections have the same goal: to snoop out anything that might be wrong with your house. The only difference between the two is the scope.
Here’s what you need to know about the difference between home inspections and four-point inspections, and how to determine which one is right for you.
What’s a Home Inspection?
A full-home inspection is the most thorough inspection you can get for your house. A professional will come to your house and go through everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) with a fine-toothed comb.
They’ll cover any areas that could pose a problem down the road:
- Heating and cooling systems
- Appliances
- Plumbing system
- Basement or crawlspace
- Roof, fireplace, and chimney
- Electrical system, including receptacles and breakers
- Structural integrity
- Interior and exterior surfaces
- Landscape grading
- Mold and mildew
- And possibly more depending on the inspector
If there’s something that might cost money later, a full-home inspection will find it. The inspector will detail all of their findings in the final report. If they’re good, they’ll also include pictures of problem areas.
Considering how much the inspector has to look over, home inspections can take hours to complete and will make the most impact on your wallet. They’re not the cheapest, but they’ll give you the most insight into your property.
For most insurance companies, a full-home inspection is overkill. Many prefer homeowners to get a four-point inspection instead.
What’s a Four-Point Inspection?
A four-point inspection is like the abridged version of a full-home inspection. Instead of covering every minute detail of the home, they focus on the four most important (expensive) parts of your home:
- HVAC
- Plumbing
- Electrical
- Roof
These four systems carry the biggest risk to your home, so it makes sense that these are what an insurance company would be most interested in.
If your roof isn’t prepared to handle harsh weather, wind and rain will get into your house and make a giant, expensive mess. Some electrical panels are known to be a safety hazard. If you have a certain brand or type of breaker box, you might not be able to find coverage. A four-point inspection will look over these risky systems to see if there’s an issue.
Since they cover much fewer areas, four-point inspections are much quicker and cheaper compared to full home inspections. They’re also much simpler to read, which is why insurance companies prefer four-point inspections.
Five-Point Home Inspections
Sometimes, insurance companies will request an extra “point” during the home inspection. A five-point inspection includes all the same elements of a four-point inspection, but it also includes the doors and windows.
Most of the time, five-point inspections are required for older homes. The insurance company wants to make sure there aren’t any leaks or drafts that could cause mold or structural damage.
Which Home Inspection Do You Need for Insurance?
In a grand majority of cases, insurance companies prefer four-point inspections over traditional full home inspections. They’re quicker, cheaper, and have much fewer pages to read through. Full home inspections cover a lot of areas that insurance companies aren’t entirely interested in. They’d rather get the abridged version of the report and just “get to the good stuff.”
If the four-point inspection finds some issues, the insurance company might request a five-point or even a full home inspection to get to the bottom of the problem, but they’ll typically start with the four-point inspection first.
If you’re not sure where to start with a home inspection, contact the experts at Erwin. With over half a century of insurance experience, we can point you in the right direction to get the coverage you need. We’ll get you in contact with a trustworthy inspector who can look through your home and find anything that might cause an issue in the future—making the insurance process a breeze.