How Much Is a Home Inspection in Ohio? $370, and $530 in Add-Ons

The general inspection is $370. The add-ons are another $530. The bill is $900.

No markup, no upsell. That gap is what happens when you take the add-ons the national articles call optional and check them against the houses that sell here. I took the published fee sheet of one Central Ohio inspection company and ran it against every single family and condo resale that closed in the seven Central Ohio counties in the first eight months of 2026, 15,129 of them with documented square footage. Radon only where the house has a basement. Sewer scope only where it was built before 2001. Median bill, $900. Of those 15,129 houses, 53.9 percent came in at $900 or more and only 8.8 percent paid the general inspection by itself.

So a buyer who budgeted $400 has the price about right and the invoice about half short.

How much is a home inspection in Ohio?

Home & Commercial Inspections, out of Dublin, publishes its whole sheet. I used it because it is a named Central Ohio company that puts list prices in public, not a national average scraped off a lead-gen site. One company's list price is not the market, and your quote will differ. It is still a published number with an address behind it.

Documented square feet	Published general inspection
0 to 1,000	$360
1,000 to 2,000	$370
2,000 to 3,000	$380
3,001 to 3,500	$410
3,501 to 4,000	$425
4,001 to 4,500	$525
4,501 to 5,000	$600
5,001 to 5,500	$625
5,501 to 6,000	$700

Add-ons on the same sheet: radon $180, or $230 over 1,000 square feet. Sewer camera scope $300. Well water quality test $180. Septic inspection $230. VA approved termite inspection $95. Mold air sampling $359. Travel $60 past forty miles from 43017.

Now look at the house. The median Central Ohio resale that closed between January and August of 2026 was 1,614 square feet, built in 1984, and sold for $350,000. Half this market sits between 1,254 and 2,191 square feet. That puts 42.5 percent of closings in the first two tiers and 49.0 percent in the third and fourth, so 91.5 percent of the houses that sell here price out between $360 and $410 on the general inspection. Square footage is almost never what moves your number.

Why does the bill come to $900 and not $400?

Because the three add-ons everybody treats as discretionary are address questions, and the MLS answers them before you call anybody.

There are three triggers. Lead, if the house was built before 1978. Radon, if it has a basement. Sewer scope, if it was built before 2001. Every one of those is a field on the listing, not a judgment call, and all three are populated on all 15,159 closings in this universe.

What the house trips	Closings	Share
All three	5,460	36.0%
Radon and sewer	3,522	23.2%
Radon only	2,743	18.1%
Lead and sewer	1,342	8.9%
None of the three	1,322	8.7%
Sewer only	753	5.0%

Two or more triggers: 68.2 percent of the market. All three: 36.0 percent. Nothing at all: 8.7 percent.

Run the sheet across all of it and the bill lands at a median $900, a mean of $774, a quarter of houses at $655 or less and a quarter at $900 or more. The cheapest possible invoice in the data is $360 and the most expensive is $1,430. The single most common exact bill is $900, and 5,638 houses, 37.3 percent of everything that closed, price out at precisely that: $370 general, $230 radon, $300 sewer.

One honest gap. Lead is in the trigger count and it is not in the dollar arithmetic, because the sheet I read does not publish a price for a lead risk assessment. A number nobody published does not get invented here, so the $900 understates the bill on the 45.0 percent of this market that was built before 1978.

Does a home inspection include radon?

No, and the reason this question keeps getting asked is that in Central Ohio it may as well. Radon is a separate order, a separate fee, and in Ohio a separate license.

Of the 15,159 resales that closed here in 2026, 11,734 have a basement. That is 77.4 percent. Another 2,456 have a crawl space, so 80.8 percent of this market is a house with something under the floor. The federal government's own position is already in the FHA packet: HUD-92564-CN tells every FHA borrower that "The Environmental Protection Agency and the Surgeon General recommend that all houses be tested for radon." EPA's Map of Radon Zones carries the same line on its face, "All homes should be tested, regardless of zone designation," and defines its highest category, Zone 1, as counties with a predicted average indoor screening level greater than 4 picocuries per liter.

Watch what happens as the price climbs. Under $200,000 the basement share is 66.3 percent. Between $450,000 and $700,000 it is 92.0 percent. Over $700,000 it is 95.0 percent. Buying the expensive house does not buy you out of the radon test, it buys you into it. If you want to know what you are looking at down there before the inspector gets to it, I wrote the basement walkthrough I actually use.

Radon testing in Ohio is also licensed work. ORC 3723.02 says no individual shall perform radon testing, or hold himself out as performing radon testing, without a valid radon tester or mitigation specialist license. The statute exempts testing on property you own or lease, which is why a seller can run a kit on their own house and anyone you hire has to hold the license.

What does the inspection bill look like in your town?

Nobody publishes this table, and it is the one that answers the question you came here with. Median closed price, median documented square feet, median year built, the pre-1978 share, the basement share, and the median billed package from that published sheet. Towns with at least 100 closings.

Town	Closings	Median price	Median sq ft	Median year built	Built pre-1978	Has a basement	Median billed package
Columbus	5,439	$285,000	1,368	1962	69.8%	78.3%	$900
Westerville	893	$439,900	1,892	1993	31.2%	72.9%	$840
Dublin	677	$545,000	2,224	1997	7.4%	77.7%	$900
Grove City	640	$340,750	1,683	1996	30.6%	70.6%	$680
Hilliard	552	$375,000	1,542	1992	18.5%	76.1%	$900
Delaware	511	$409,800	1,856	2001	23.9%	80.4%	$660
Lancaster	492	$268,950	1,440	1959	70.7%	80.7%	$900
Newark	468	$255,000	1,428	1961	68.6%	83.5%	$900
Powell	426	$546,000	2,318	2001	5.4%	83.8%	$670
Pickerington	394	$418,500	2,259	1996	16.2%	91.6%	$900
Reynoldsburg	370	$294,450	1,519	1982	41.4%	68.1%	$900
Canal Winchester	361	$329,000	1,680	2000	15.8%	64.0%	$670
New Albany	282	$600,000	2,416	2004	4.3%	76.2%	$610
Blacklick	281	$358,000	1,841	2002	6.0%	87.2%	$610
Marysville	276	$380,000	1,872	1999	25.4%	80.4%	$670
Lewis Center	246	$518,950	2,214	2002	3.3%	81.7%	$640

A $285,000 house inside the City of Columbus and a $545,000 house in Dublin bill the same $900 package. A $600,000 house in New Albany bills $610. The inspection prices off the age and the footprint, never off your purchase price, and a 1962 house costs more to check than a 2004 one no matter what either one sold for. In Westerville the median lands at $840, because the median year built there is 1993: old enough to scope, new enough to miss the lead rule.

The previous version of this post told you a full package on a $450,000 Westerville house would run $700 to $900. That was in the right neighborhood and it got there without a source. The measured number on a published sheet is $840, and the reason is a year built, not a price tag.

Does your lender require a home inspection?

Your lender requires an appraisal. Not an inspection. Those are two different documents answering two different questions and most buyers conflate them until somebody slows down and explains it.

FHA states it more plainly than I could. The notice every FHA borrower gets, HUD form 92564-CN, says it in a headline: "Appraisals are NOT Home Inspections!" Then, in the body: "An appraisal is required to estimate the home's value for your lender and does not replace a home inspection." Then, flatly, "FHA does not guarantee the value or condition of your new home," and "If you find problems with your home after closing, FHA cannot give or lend you money for repairs, and FHA cannot buy the home back from you." And the line buyers should actually act on: "If you request an inspection early in the process, you may be able to make your purchase contract contingent on its results."

FHA was 10.6 percent of Central Ohio resale closings in 2026 and VA another 5.2 percent, so about one closing in six here comes with that federal handout in the file. The other five get the same appraisal with none of the plain language attached to it. If you want the appraisal side of this on its own, it is how the appraisal actually works here.

Cash buyers were 19.2 percent of closings. No lender, no appraisal, nobody in the transaction whose job is to look at the house except the inspector you hire. That is the group with the most reason to spend the $900 and the group most likely to skip it.

What is the lead paint rule on a house built before 1978?

This one is a right, and it runs separately from your inspection contingency. 40 CFR 745.110 reads: "Before a purchaser is obligated under any contract to purchase target housing, the seller shall permit the purchaser a 10-day period (unless the parties mutually agree, in writing, upon a different period of time) to conduct a risk assessment or inspection for the presence of lead-based paint and/or lead-based paint hazards." You can waive it, in writing, and the same rule says so.

Target housing is defined at 40 CFR 745.103 as housing built before 1978, with narrow exceptions written into the definition. In this market that is 6,819 of 15,159 closings, 45.0 percent. Inside the City of Columbus it is 69.8 percent. In Lancaster 70.7, Newark 68.6. In New Albany it is 4.3 percent and in Lewis Center 3.3.

So on 45 percent of the houses that sell here there is a federal 10-day window most buyers never hear about, running alongside a contract inspection period that is usually shorter than that. I put the whole clock side by side in how long the inspection takes and what happens after.

What does Ohio law require of the inspector you hire?

Two things, and both are recent enough that plenty of buyers still do not know them.

Licensing. ORC 4764.02, effective November 2019 and enforced by the Division of Real Estate and Professional Licensing since July 2021: "No person shall knowingly conduct a home inspection or represent a qualification to conduct a home inspection for compensation or other valuable consideration unless that person is licensed pursuant to this chapter as a home inspector or performing a parallel inspection."

A written contract. Same section: "No person shall perform a home inspection unless it is performed pursuant to a written contract entered into between a licensed home inspector and a client." If somebody shows up to walk your house for money with nothing to sign, the statute is what they are skipping.

What is not in the $900?

The general inspection is visual and non-invasive. Nothing gets opened. The report covers roof, exterior, structure, foundation, heating and cooling, electrical, plumbing, interior surfaces, attic and visible ventilation, and it stops at the drywall. It is not a code compliance certificate and it is not a warranty. I laid out the limits in detail in what a general inspection covers and where it stops.

Also not in that $900: mold sampling at $359, well water at $180, septic at $230. Condos are their own conversation. They were 16.1 percent of closings in this universe, median $275,000, median year built 1999, and only 45.7 percent of them have a basement, so the radon trigger falls away on most of them and the roof and the exterior walls are usually the association's problem rather than yours, depending on what the declaration says. And if you are buying a house nobody has lived in yet, that is a different inspection with a different purpose, which is whether new construction needs one at all.

What I tell buyers before they order one

I grew up around this. My dad, my grandpa, my uncle and my great-grandpa were builders, and I worked in it until I was twenty. Later I sold roofs, siding, windows, gutters and downspouts. So when I walk a house I am looking for water first, every time. Downspouts that dump against the foundation. Soffit that has been patched. A window with a broken seal. Whether the thing is structurally and systemically sound. I am not a home inspector and I am not crawling the attic or scoping the line, and that is exactly why you pay someone who does.

Three things, then:

1. Price the whole package before you price the inspection. Pull up the listing, find the year built and the square footage, check whether it says basement. That is your number before you dial anybody.
2. Order early. FHA's own form tells you why: request it early and you may be able to make the contract contingent on the results. Late is how a buyer ends up with a report and no leverage, which I covered in what actually happens between contract and closing.
3. Spend the $300 on the sewer scope if the house predates 2001. Just over 73 percent of what sells here does. A lateral replacement is not a $300 problem.

$900 against a $350,000 purchase is 0.22 percent. I have watched buyers negotiate harder over the inspection fee than over what the inspection found. The report is the cheapest leverage in the transaction and the only document in the file that was written for you.

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Send me the address you are thinking about and I will tell you which of the three triggers that specific house hits, what the package should cost before you call anybody, and what I would want scoped first based on the year it was built. Call or text me at 937.239.2919.

Adam Geuy, Realtor - Blacktree Realty | ABR, SRS, PSA | License #2020007964 | calendly.com/adam-geuy