The Four-Point Inspection: Four Problems, One Timeline

 

The Four-Point Inspection: Four Problems, One Timeline

Every one of these is cheaper in 2026 than it will be during your buyer's inspection period.

Most Florida sellers have heard of a home inspection. Fewer understand the four-point, which is a different document with a different purpose and a much sharper effect on whether a deal closes.

A home inspection is for the buyer. A four-point is for the insurance company. It typically gets required on homes around thirty years or older, and it covers exactly four systems: roof, electrical, plumbing, and HVAC. If it comes back badly, the buyer may not be able to bind coverage — and without coverage, there's no mortgage, and without a mortgage, there's no closing.

In Palm Beach County, four items flag over and over.

Water heater past ten years

The simplest problem on this list and the one sellers most often ignore. Many carriers won't accept a water heater older than ten years regardless of whether it's working perfectly. Replacement generally runs in the low four figures installed.

This is the cheapest insurance problem you will ever solve. Solve it.

Polybutylene plumbing

Gray or blue flexible supply piping, widely installed from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s. It degrades from the inside and fails without warning. Most Florida carriers decline homes that have it, and those that don't will price accordingly.

Repiping is a real expense, not a weekend project. Which is precisely why you want to know in 2026 whether you have it. If you do, you have three options — repipe, price the home accordingly, or find the carriers who will still write it — and all three require time.

Federal Pacific Stab-Lok panels

Installed widely from the 1950s into the early 1980s. The breakers have a documented history of failing to trip under fault conditions. Insurers treat them as a fire risk and most will not write the home.

Panel replacement is straightforward electrical work and requires a permit. Which brings up a point worth remembering for the next article in this series: get the permit closed.

Aluminum branch wiring

Common in homes built roughly 1965 to 1973. The connections loosen and heat over time. Full rewiring is expensive, but approved remediation methods exist and cost a fraction of that, and most carriers will accept a documented remediation.

The math sellers miss

A water heater replacement costs what it costs. The same water heater, discovered during a buyer's inspection period, costs that amount plus a credit, because at that moment the buyer isn't pricing a water heater. They're pricing uncertainty — what else in this house is at the end of its life?

One flagged item makes a buyer suspicious. Three flagged items makes them renegotiate everything.

What to do in 2026

Order your own four-point inspection. It's an inexpensive report and it tells you exactly what a buyer's insurer will see twelve months from now. Fix what's cheap, plan for what isn't, and document all of it.

Sellers who hand over a clean four-point are selling certainty. Everyone else is selling a question mark and accepting the discount that comes with it.

Florence Lewis, Realtor® — Keller Williams Wellington