Home inspectors: price every inspection from square footage, age, and add-ons. Free, no signup.
Everything is measured against this rate. Count every hour: on site, writing the report, driving.
Set these to your own market. The defaults are editable starting points, not industry standards.
Lab fees, sewer-scope sub, radon canisters. Subtracted before your verdict rate.
The report hours are the silent killer. A 2,000 sqft house rarely takes only one hour to write up.
Set your bar: the minimum dollars per hour you will work for ($100 default), counting every hour, on site, writing the report, driving. Pick the property preset, Condo to Historic. Each fills square footage and age, and the tool auto-estimates on-site and report hours from those numbers plus the crawlspace toggle. Edit the hours afterward; the note says report hours are the silent killer. Set your base price rules: base fee, included square footage, dollars per square foot over base, and the fee for homes 50 years and older. Defaults are editable starting points, not industry standards. The add-on card has eight checkboxes, radon, sewer scope, mold, thermal, termite, 4-point, lead paint, well water, each with an editable fee, plus a vendor-costs line for lab fees and subs. Enter drive miles, cost per mile, and drive time. Results show the line-item price breakdown, the recommended price rounded up to the nearest $5, your effective hourly rate, and a PRICED RIGHT, CLOSE BUT LEAKING, or UNDERPRICED verdict with the exact price that hits your rate. The gut check compares your would-have quote against the math, and the monthly volume card shows profit per inspection and how many inspections hit your goal.
Example only, not typical pricing. Load the Ranch preset against a $100 bar: 2,400 sqft, 51-year-old home. The base price rules give $325 base plus $40 square-foot overage plus the $75 older-home fee: $440. Travel is 40 miles at $0.70, or $28, so the recommended price is $468 rounded up to $470. The tool estimates 4.1 hours on site plus 3.0 report hours plus 0.75 drive: 7.85 total hours. Profit per inspection is $470 minus $40 vendor minus $28 travel, or $402, so the effective rate is $51.21 per hour: UNDERPRICED, and the verdict says $855 to hit your rate. A gut quote of $450 would have left $20 on the table. At 20 inspections a month the volume card shows $8,040, and it takes 20 inspections to hit an $8,000 goal.
**How does the tool estimate inspection hours?**
From the square footage and age you enter plus the crawlspace toggle: on site is 2 plus sqft over 1,500 plus 0.5 for crawlspace and 0.5 for homes 50 years or older, and report time is 1.5 plus sqft over 2,500 plus 0.5 for older homes. Both stay editable.
**Why is report time called the silent killer?**
Because flat-fee quotes remember the on-site visit and forget the write-up. A 2,000 sqft house rarely takes only one hour to write up, and those hours drag the effective rate down.
**What goes in add-on vendor costs?**
Lab fees, a sewer-scope sub, radon canisters: third-party costs behind the add-ons. They are subtracted before the verdict rate, so the rate reflects what you actually keep.
**What does the gut check card do?**
You enter what you would have quoted and it shows the difference against the recommended price: dollars left on the table, or confirmation when your gut was above the math.
**Are the base price rules industry standards?**
No. The note says to set them to your own market, and the footer says estimates are for planning only.