Final walkthrough checklist
Updated September 10, 2026
The final walkthrough is a verification, not a second inspection. You are checking three things: that the repairs you were promised got done, that nothing broke between the inspection and today, and that what was supposed to stay in the house is still in it.
Most walkthroughs run 30 to 60 minutes, the day before closing or the morning of. That is not enough time to inspect a house. It is enough time to check a list, which is why you bring one.
Turn everything on in the first five minutes
Systems need time to fail in front of you, and you do not have much of it. Before you look at a single room, walk the house switching things on.
Set the thermostat to heat and leave it. Run the hot water at the kitchen sink and leave that too. Turn on the oven. Start the dishwasher on the shortest cycle it has. Flush every toilet on your way past.
By the time you finish the rooms, all of it has had half an hour to misbehave. Checking the furnace at minute 55 tells you it turns on. It does not tell you it heats.
Three documents, or it is a tour
The checklist is not generic. You assemble it from paperwork you already have.
The purchase contract lists what conveys: appliances, window treatments, the shed, the mounted brackets, the second garage remote. Print the inclusions and read them in the house rather than from memory, because memory is generous about what was promised.
The inspection report and any repair addendum name the specific items the seller agreed to fix, in the language you negotiated. Bring the receipts if they were sent ahead.
Your own photos from the day you went under contract are the third document, and the one buyers skip. Condition disputes come down to what the room looked like in June, and nobody remembers June. A phone full of dated photos from the first showing settles it in ten seconds.
Walk the rooms in a fixed order
| Room | What to check | What a fail looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Every room | Lights, switches, outlets you plan to use, windows opened and shut again, doors latched, the floor where furniture stood | A switch that controls nothing, a window painted shut, a gouge revealed when the dresser left |
| Kitchen | Every burner, oven up to temperature, dishwasher through a cycle, disposal, fridge cold with the ice maker running, dry under the sink | A supply line weeping at the shutoff, an ice maker never plumbed |
| Bathrooms | Hot at every tap, drain speed, toilet refills and stops, exhaust fan, tub and shower run three minutes | A slow drain, a fan that hums without pulling, a fill valve that never stops |
| Laundry | Hookups present and capped, washer and dryer if they convey, dryer vent still connected | A vent left disconnected behind the machine that just moved out |
| Basement or crawl | Dry floor, sump pump lifts and runs when you raise the float by hand, no new staining at the slab edge | Water where the boxes used to be |
| Mechanical | Water heater lit, nothing dripping into the pan, panel cover on, no scorching or fresh rust | A pilot the seller shut off along with the utilities |
| Garage | Door up and down on the opener, safety reverse tested with a roll of paper towel, every remote and the keypad code | An opener that does not reverse |
| Exterior | Gutters attached, hose bibs on, gates latched, nothing left that you would have to pay to remove | A stack of paint cans, a dead mower, a pile in the side yard |
Walk the same order every time. A fixed order is what lets you notice in the driveway that you never went into the laundry room.
Check the addendum line by line, standing in front of the thing
Read each repair item aloud off the paperwork and go stand where it happened. Agreed repairs get verified one at a time. Surveying the room and deciding it looks fine is how they get missed.
Two failures are common. The repair was done, but by someone the addendum said would not do it, and the work shows: a GFCI outlet swapped by hand where the language said licensed electrician. Or the repair was done to the symptom and not the cause, so the ceiling stain is painted over and the roof is exactly as it was.
Ask for a receipt carrying a company name, a license number, a date and a description of the work. Asking before closing is normal. Asking after closing is a favor.
Most of what you find came from the move, not the inspection
Scraped drywall in the stairwell, a gouged floor where a piano got slid, a door casing split by a dresser corner, a missing screen, a dent in the garage door where the truck backed in. None of it is in the inspection report, because none of it existed then, and it is the bulk of what a walkthrough turns up.
Photograph each one as you find it, tight enough that the damage is unmistakable and wide enough that somebody who has never been in the house can find the spot. Say which room and which wall in the caption. A caption that locates the scrape is worth more three days later than a perfect photograph of a scrape nobody can place.
A filled example, from a closing that never happened
| # | Location | What was found | Asked for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Primary bath | Addendum item 3, reset the toilet and replace the wax ring. Done, receipt from Kerr Plumbing dated 09-02. Floor dry after a 15 minute run. | Nothing, verified |
| 2 | Upstairs hall | Scrape through the paint at the stairwell corner, about 14 inches, drywall paper torn. Not present in the June 14 showing photos. | Patch and paint, or a credit |
| 3 | Kitchen | Ice maker line not connected. The contract lists the refrigerator as conveying. | Connected before closing, or the plumber's cost |
| 4 | Garage | Opener does not reverse on an obstruction. Safety item, absent from the inspection report. | Service call before closing |
| 5 | Side yard | Roughly 20 paint cans and a broken grill left behind. Contract requires the property clear of debris. | Removed before closing |
Item 1 is the one worth copying, because the finding is that there is no finding. Write down what passed as well as what failed. A list showing only four problems reads as though four things were the only things you looked at.
A failed item is usually not a delay
The common outcomes are a credit at closing, an escrow holdback that funds the repair afterward, or the seller sending somebody that afternoon. Which of those is available depends on your contract and where you are, so the call goes to your agent or the closing attorney while you are still in the house.
What makes any of them workable is arriving at the phone call with the finding already written down, photographed and roughly priced. A walkthrough problem raised at 4pm on closing eve with no photo and no number gets settled by whoever is more tired.
On iPhone and iPad, Sitewise handles the capture half of this. Photograph the damage, dictate the room and the wall while you are standing in front of it (the voice note transcribes on the phone), sketch an arrow onto the photo when the problem is hard to see, and every capture carries a timestamp and, with location on, a GPS pin. On a Pro iPhone or Pro iPad with a LiDAR scanner, two taps in the camera measure the scrape and print the dimension on the photo. Basements and garages have no signal, so capture works offline and syncs when the phone is back on Wi-Fi. The finished set exports as a PDF or DOCX you can send from the driveway. It is not real estate software: no contract forms, no e-signature, no closing checklist, no scheduling, and it does not run on Android or in a browser.
For the inspection that happens weeks earlier and produces the repair list you are checking here, see the home inspection report template. For the items a builder still owes on a new build, which is a longer list with a different audience, use the punch list template.
Nobody gets a second walkthrough. Anything you do not check today becomes yours to pay for tomorrow.
Questions people ask
- What should I check during a final walkthrough?
- Three things, in this order. That every repair named in the addendum was actually done, checked item by item against the paperwork rather than surveyed. That the house is in the condition it was in when you went under contract, which mostly means looking for damage the move caused. And that everything the contract says conveys is still there and works, from the appliances to the second garage remote. Anything past those three is a bonus, because the hour you have is not enough time to inspect a house.
- How long before closing is the final walkthrough?
- Usually the day before or the morning of, and that timing is the point. The walkthrough exists to catch what changed between the inspection and the closing table, so doing it a week early leaves a week of moving trucks and disconnected utilities uncovered. Schedule it after the sellers have moved out and taken their last load, not while boxes are still stacked against the walls hiding the floor.
- What happens if something is wrong at the final walkthrough?
- It rarely moves the closing date. The usual outcomes are a credit at closing, an escrow holdback that funds the repair afterward, or the seller fixing it that afternoon. Which of those is available depends on your contract and your state, so call your agent or the closing attorney while you are still standing in the house, with the photo already taken and a rough number in mind.
Related guides
- Home inspection report template
A home inspection report template built for a buyer on a contract clock: the header fields, the system order, one entry per defect, and a filled example.
- Punch list template
A punch list template built to close items, not collect them: the six columns worth keeping, how to word an item so a sub can act on it, and a filled example.
Write this report on site, not in the truck.
Sitewise turns photos, voice notes, sketches, and typed observations into a PDF or DOCX before you leave. iPhone and iPad, iOS 26 or later.
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