How long does a home inspection take?

For most apartments, about an hour and a half. For most houses, two to four hours. Those are not industry averages: they are the time between the first and the last photograph on 20 of Lou's own inspections from December 2025 to August 2026, read from the time his camera prints on every picture.

Co-op and condominium apartments ran from under an hour to about two and a half hours, most of them close to an hour and a half. A unit in a high-rise was the quick end of that range.

A house inspection ran from under two hours to just over three and a half. One- and two-storey houses mostly took between two and three hours. Three-storey houses, duplexes and townhouses took more than three hours in five cases out of six. Age matters as much as size: an older building almost always takes longer than its square footage suggests, because there is more to look at and more of it has been altered.

Those times come from the photographs, so anything before the first picture or after the last one is not counted, and the visit itself runs somewhat longer.

Lou gives you a realistic estimate when you call, based on the actual property rather than an average. He would rather tell you three hours and take three hours than quote you ninety minutes and rush.

The report is a separate step. Of Lou's 23 reports from 2023 onward, 20 were published the same day as the inspection and the other three the next day.

A real photograph from one of Lou’s own inspections, chosen because it shows a building component and nothing that identifies a property or an owner.