Home Inspections in Massachusetts: The Law Changed, and It Changed Offers

Massachusetts sellers can no longer require or accept a waived home inspection as a condition of accepting an offer. The rule, part of the Affordable Homes Act signed in 2024, took effect for most Massachusetts home sales on October 15, 2025. Buyers still may decline an inspection — but only after their offer has been accepted, never as the price of getting it accepted.

For anyone who bid on a house in Greater Boston between 2020 and 2024, this is a structural change. Waiving the inspection had become one of the standard levers buyers pulled to win, and it put people into houses with problems they had never looked for. The new rule removes that lever from the table for everyone at once — no individual buyer can afford to be the only one still asking for an inspection.

What Exactly Does the Rule Require?

Two things:

• Prohibition: a seller or a seller's agent may not require, encourage, or accept an offer that makes waiving the home inspection a condition of acceptance. Violations may be treated as unfair or deceptive practices under M.G.L. c. 93A, the Massachusetts consumer protection statute.
• Disclosure: before or at the signing of the first contract — the offer to purchase or the purchase and sale agreement — the seller or their agent must give the buyer a separate written notice affirming the buyer's right to a home inspection. Both parties sign it, confirming the buyer gets a reasonable opportunity to obtain and review an inspection, and to withdraw based on what it finds.

The rule governs what a seller may accept, not what a buyer may choose. A buyer who genuinely wants to skip an inspection can still do so once their offer is accepted. What has changed is that no seller can make that skip the entry ticket.

Who Is Exempt?

The exemptions are narrow and mostly sensible:

• Pre-sales of newly constructed homes, provided they come with a warranty of at least one year — carved out to avoid discouraging new housing production.
• Transfers between family members.
• Transfers arising from divorce orders or estate planning.

If you are buying new construction in Newton or Needham, the pre-sale exemption may apply — which makes the builder's warranty terms worth reading closely, since the warranty is what you are getting instead.

How Did Competitive Offers Change?

The inspection waiver did not disappear so much as get replaced. Buyers competing for the same property now differentiate on the terms that remain:

• A shorter inspection window — five days instead of ten signals seriousness without giving up the right itself.
• A dollar threshold — committing not to renegotiate unless the inspector finds defects above an agreed figure, so the buyer can still walk from something catastrophic while the seller is protected from being nickel-and-dimed.
• Inspection for information only — the buyer inspects and agrees in advance not to ask for repairs or credits, reserving the right to withdraw only for a major structural or safety finding.
• A larger deposit, a faster closing, or flexibility on the seller's timeline — these have nothing to do with the inspection and often matter more than people think.

The last of those is underrated: sellers coordinating a school year or their own purchase frequently value certainty and timing above the last few thousand dollars.

What Does a Massachusetts Inspection Actually Cover?

A general home inspection is visual and non-invasive, covering structure, roof, exterior, plumbing, electrical, heating and cooling, insulation and ventilation, and interior components. Inspectors do not open walls, and will report only what they can see.

Several things fall outside a standard inspection and, in this housing stock, are worth ordering separately:

• Radon — common enough across eastern Massachusetts to be worth testing routinely.
• Lead paint — Massachusetts housing skews old, and the Lead Law has specific obligations where a child under six will live.
• Sewer line scope — cheap relative to what a collapsed line costs, and the older the street, the more it matters.
• Title V septic inspection, for any property not on municipal sewer — a seller obligation and a separate process, covered in the Title V guide.
• Pests, chimney, and asbestos, depending on age and construction.

What Should Sellers Do Before Listing?

Assume the buyer will inspect, because now they almost certainly will. That argues for finding out what an inspector will find before you list rather than during a negotiation, when every discovery costs you leverage and momentum.

A pre-listing inspection is not the right move for every property, but fixing the small, obvious, cheap items always is: a GFCI outlet, a missing handrail, a failed seal, an unvented dryer. These are the findings that make a report look longer and more alarming than the house actually is.

This describes Massachusetts law as of 2026 and is general information, not legal advice.