Insurance property inspection report template

An insurance property inspection report records the damage from a loss so that someone who was not there can price it and decide whether it is covered. That reader is usually an adjuster, sometimes days later, and the template below is built so every entry answers their two questions: what is damaged, and what caused it.

The format suits a contractor, a property manager or an owner documenting a loss before the adjuster arrives. An underwriting inspection, where an insurer surveys a building before writing cover, is a different document with its own checklist, and this is not that.

The header pins the claim down

Keep the reported cause in quotation marks. Your own reading of the cause goes into the entries, against the evidence for it, and the gap between the two is often the most useful thing an adjuster reads.

Note whether the date of loss is when it happened or when it was found. Policies treat those differently, and a report that blurs them invites a question you cannot answer from memory.

One entry per damaged area

Every room or surface with damage gets its own numbered entry.

Extent is the field adjusters lean on, because it is the one they can price. "Water damage to ceiling" cannot be costed. "Stain about 4 ft by 3 ft, plaster soft to the touch across 2 ft by 2 ft at the center" can.

Evidence of cause is not the same as cause. Write what you saw that points at it. Whether the policy covers that cause is the insurer's call, and a report that argues coverage reads as advocacy.

Photograph before anything moves

Take them in this order.

1. A wide shot of the property from the street, showing the address.
2. A wide shot of each affected room from the doorway.
3. Each damaged area, close, with a tape or a known object for scale.
4. The source, if you can see it: the failed fitting, the opening in the roof, the tree limb.
5. Undamaged areas next to damaged ones, so the boundary is clear.
6. Damaged contents in place, before they are carried out.
7. Mitigation in progress, then complete.

Every frame needs its date and time, and a location helps. An adjuster checking whether damage happened before or after the date of loss will look at the capture time first, and a photo with a stamped time and place is harder to question than one whose date somebody remembers.

Mitigation, pre-existing, not inspected

Three short sections close the report.

Mitigation lists what was done to stop the damage getting worse: water shut off, extraction, drying equipment set, a roof tarped. Give times and who did it. Policies commonly expect reasonable steps to limit the loss, and this section shows they were taken.

Pre-existing conditions are anything you saw that predates the loss: old staining, a sagging gutter, rot below the new wet line. Recording it yourself is better than leaving an adjuster to find it, because an unmentioned old defect makes the whole report look selective.

Not inspected names every area you could not reach and why. A ceiling void you did not open, a roof you could not safely walk, a locked storage room. An empty section here reads as a claim that you saw everything.

A filled example, from a loss that never happened

17 Marlow Street, unit 3. Discovered September 29, 2026, 07:30, by the tenant of unit 3. Inspected 09:10 to 10:25 by D. Farrow, Farrow Restoration, with the owner and building manager present. Cause as reported: "Water coming through the kitchen ceiling."

Mitigation: water shut off in unit 5 at 07:50 by the building manager. Standing water extracted and two dehumidifiers set in unit 3 at 10:30 by Farrow Restoration. Photos 15 to 17.

Pre-existing: old ring stain, dry, on the kitchen ceiling near the light fitting, separate from entry 1. Photo 18.

Not inspected: the ceiling void between units 3 and 5. Not opened pending the adjuster's visit.

Entry 5 is the one people leave out. Recording a dry hall ceiling sets the edge of the loss, which is what keeps the scope from being argued about later in either direction.

Capture it on the phone, send it from the site

Sitewise runs on iPhone and iPad. Each photo, dictated note, sketch and typed observation is stamped with the time and, with location on, a GPS pin. Notes dictated with wet gloves on transcribe on the device. On a Pro iPhone or iPad with a LiDAR scanner, two taps in the camera measure a dimension, such as the width of a stain or the height of a tide line, and print it on the photo and in the report. It works in a basement with no signal and syncs later, and the visit exports as a PDF or DOCX you can send to the adjuster that day.

It does not estimate repair costs, file the claim, or connect to an insurer's system, and it does not do e-signature. A restoration company still prices the work in its estimating software.

For the general shape of a damage entry outside an insurance claim, see the defect report template. Storm and hail losses usually start on the roof, and the roof inspection report template covers how to locate findings there.