New construction
New construction inspections and the 11-month warranty inspection
A brand-new house is the one most buyers assume they can skip inspecting. Nobody has lived in it, everything is under warranty, and a municipal inspector has already signed off. In practice a new home has more people, trades, and moving parts behind its finished walls than a resale, and the record of what actually happened during construction disappears the moment the drywall goes up. This page explains why an independent inspection still matters on a new home, the inspections you can order while the house is being built, and the one that protects you before the builder's warranty runs out.
Builder QA is not a buyer's inspection
Three separate things get confused when people say a new home has "already been inspected," and none of them is an inspection performed for you.
The first is the builder's own quality control. The general contractor and the trades check their own work, and they are checking against their schedule and their margins as much as against a standard. The second is the municipal building inspection. A code official visits at set points to confirm the work meets the local building code, which is a floor for life safety, not a verdict on workmanship or on whether a system was installed the way it should be. The third is the certificate of occupancy, which says the house is legal to live in, not that it is finished well. A buyer's inspection is the only one of the four that has a single job: to look at the house on your behalf and tell you, in plain language, what condition it is actually in.
That buyer's inspection follows the same rules on a new home as on any other. It is a visual, non-invasive examination of the readily accessible systems and components, performed to a published standard. The two documents that define that job across most of the United States are the Standard of Practice published by the American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI) and the Standards of Practice published by InterNACHI. New construction does not get a lighter version of the standard. If anything the visual limit bites harder, because on a finished new home the interesting parts, framing connections, flashing laps, and pipe runs, are already sealed inside the walls.
The core point. A code inspection asks "is this legal to occupy?" A builder's QA asks "did we finish on schedule and on budget?" A buyer's inspection asks "what is wrong with this house?" Those are different questions, and only the last one is being asked for you.
Phase inspections: catching problems before the walls close
The way to get past the visual limit on a new home is to look at the house before it is finished. This is called a phase inspection or a construction-phase inspection, and InterNACHI describes it as a visual inspection of the construction carried out in stages, with a written report after each one.
According to InterNACHI's new construction phase inspection agreement, the first inspections take place "during the post pour / pre drywall phase," with a written report after each, and "the final inspection will take place when construction is complete." In practice a phase program breaks down into three moments worth understanding.
| Phase | When | What it can still see |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-pour / foundation | After the footings and forms are set, before concrete is poured | Footing size and reinforcement, forms, grading and drainage, and anything that becomes permanent the moment concrete is poured |
| Pre-drywall | After rough-in, before insulation and drywall | Framing, and the plumbing, electrical, and mechanical rough-in that drywall will soon hide |
| Final | When construction is complete, around walk-through | Finishes, installed appliances and systems operated by normal controls, and the full readily accessible scope of a standard inspection |
The pre-drywall phase is the one that repays the effort most. InterNACHI defines "pre-drywall" as "a phase during the homebuilding process just after the installation of certain elements, such as the doors, windows, foundation, flooring, wall and roof components, plumbing and electrical rough-in, and right before the drywall is hung." It matters, in InterNACHI's words, because "drywall can obscure some aspects of the interior and make identifying or fixing any problems both difficult and expensive, once the new home is completely finished." The window is short: rough-in sign-off and insulation are often only a few days apart, so a pre-drywall inspection has to be booked ahead of time, not squeezed in.
Phase inspections do not replace the final inspection, and none of them turns a home inspector into a code compliance officer. The report is, again in InterNACHI's phrasing, "supplementary to the seller's disclosure," identifying defects the inspector "observed and deemed material." It is a second set of eyes on the construction while the construction can still be seen.
The builder's warranty, and the clock on it
Most production and semi-custom homes come with a written builder warranty, and it is almost always tiered. The common structure across the industry is one year of coverage on workmanship and materials, two years on the mechanical systems (plumbing, electrical, and HVAC distribution), and ten years on major structural defects. The exact terms vary by builder and by state, so the warranty booklet you were handed at closing is the document that actually governs; read it rather than relying on the general pattern.
The clause that catches people is the one-year workmanship term. It covers the ordinary defects, the ones that show up in the first year of living in a house: cracks, sticking doors and windows, grout and caulk failures, minor leaks, trim and finish problems. And it expires on a date, quietly, whether or not you noticed the defects it would have covered.
Why the 11-month warranty inspection matters
An 11-month warranty inspection is a full home inspection performed near the end of that first year, deliberately before the one-year workmanship warranty expires. The name is the whole strategy: booking in month eleven leaves a buffer of several weeks to compile the report, submit the list to the builder, and let the builder schedule the repairs, all inside the coverage window. Wait until month twelve and a real defect can lapse into an out-of-pocket repair on a technicality of timing.
The other reason to wait until month eleven rather than inspecting at move-in is that a house has to be lived in to reveal itself. A first summer and first winter put the HVAC, the windows, the seals, and the framing through a full cycle of expansion and contraction. Defects that were invisible on the final walk-through, a duct that cannot keep an upstairs bedroom cool, a settlement crack, a seasonal leak, only appear after the house has been through some weather and some occupancy.
An 11-month inspection is a standard inspection in scope and method: the same ten systems, the same visual and non-invasive limits described in the ASHI and InterNACHI standards. What changes is the purpose of the report. Instead of informing a purchase decision, it becomes an itemized, dated, third-party punch list you hand to the builder, which is far harder to wave off than a homeowner's own emailed complaints.
What these inspections commonly find. Drywall and ceiling cracks from first-year settlement; doors and windows out of alignment or not sealing; HVAC that underperforms in a room or a season; minor plumbing leaks and drainage that pools toward the house; grout, caulk, and flashing gaps; missed or thin insulation in attic corners; and cosmetic and trim defects that were easy to overlook at closing. Individually small; collectively, the reason the warranty exists.
How this relates to the ASHI and InterNACHI standards
Everything above sits inside the same standards that govern a resale inspection, and the limits carry over unchanged. The inspection is visual and non-invasive, so on a finished new home the inspector reports on what is readily accessible, not on what is sealed behind new drywall (which is exactly why the phase inspections exist). The standards target the material defect, not every cosmetic flaw, and both standards exclude code compliance: a home inspection, new-construction or otherwise, is not a substitute for the municipal building inspection, and a home inspector does not certify that the house meets code.
The practical takeaway is that the standard defines the method, and the timing defines the value. Order a phase inspection and you use the standard's visual method while the house is still open. Order an 11-month inspection and you use the same method after a year of occupancy, while the builder is still on the hook. If you want the full picture of what any of these inspections includes and excludes, read our companion guide on what a home inspection actually covers.
A short checklist for a new-construction buyer
- Do not skip the inspection because the house is new. Builder QA, the code official, and the certificate of occupancy are not inspections done for you.
- Book the pre-drywall inspection early. The window between rough-in and insulation is only a few days, and it is the last chance to see the framing and the rough-in.
- Keep your warranty booklet where you can find it. The tiers and the exact one-year expiry date are the terms that matter, and they are builder-specific.
- Put the 11-month inspection on the calendar the day you close. Aim for month eleven, not month twelve, so repairs happen inside coverage.
- Hand the builder a dated third-party report, not a running list of complaints. It is harder to dismiss and it timestamps the defects inside the warranty window.
Sources
- Pre-Drywall Inspections, InterNACHI. Definition of the pre-drywall phase and why closing the walls makes later problems difficult and expensive to fix.
- New Construction Phase Inspection Agreement, InterNACHI. The post-pour / pre-drywall inspections, the final inspection at completion, and the "supplementary to the seller's disclosure" framing.
- Standards of Practice, International Association of Certified Home Inspectors (InterNACHI). The visual, non-invasive scope, the material defect, and the exclusion of code compliance.
- Standard of Practice, American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI). The definition of a readily accessible, visual, non-invasive inspection that applies to new construction as well as resale.