This article explains what BuildFax Property History Reports are, how they benefit home inspectors, and how to enable and preview BuildFax reports through your HomeGauge Inspector Dashboard.

BuildFax provides property history reports that allow home inspectors to run a "background check" on a property before heading out to an inspection job. BuildFax reports include standardized, easy-to-read construction history and permit data for commercial and residential structures across the United States.

BuildFax provides home inspectors with access to:

8 billion data points on more than 80 million U.S. commercial and residential structures

Construction history on properties in 8,500+ cities, counties, and townships across the United States

Permit information for remodels, new construction, pools, demolition, and roof replacements

Trade coverage including mechanical, electrical, and plumbing permits

Inspection and contractor history and additional property data points

BuildFax Property History Reports provide several advantages for home inspectors:

Arm yourself with the construction history of the property before you arrive at the inspection. BuildFax provides a 19-point risk factor summary so you know more about the property going into the inspection, helping you prepare for what you might encounter.

Share documented repairs (such as HVAC updates and roof replacements) and value increases (such as additions and remodels) with your clients. This documentation helps your clients have peace of mind in their property purchase by showing the property's maintenance history.

Keep up with the competition and generate referral business by including BuildFax property history reports with your inspections. You can even resell BuildFax reports to your clients as an additional value-added service.

After you purchase a BuildFax report, it automatically appears in your list of reports on your Inspector Dashboard beside your home inspection reports. You have the option to share or not share the BuildFax report with your customer, giving you full control over report delivery.

Before you can preview or purchase BuildFax reports, you need to enable the BuildFax option in your HomeGauge Inspector Dashboard settings.

After enabling BuildFax, a BuildFax button will appear for your uploaded reports on your Inspector Dashboard. The BuildFax button is located right below the cover picture and property address in your list of reports.

You can preview BuildFax data before you decide to purchase a report. BuildFax offers three different ways to preview property history reports from your HomeGauge Inspector Dashboard.

You can preview BuildFax data when creating a new appointment in your Inspector Dashboard.

To learn about creating appointments in HomeGauge, see this article: Creating New Appointments.

If BuildFax data is available for the property address, the preview will automatically appear below the address after you enter the complete address information.

You can preview BuildFax data from an existing appointment or report in your All Reports list.

The BuildFax button will show the number of permits available for that property address.

The preview will show you available permit data before you purchase the full report.

You can search for BuildFax data for any property address using the manual search tool.

The preview will show you if BuildFax data is available for the property address and give you a summary of available permits.

After you preview a BuildFax report and decide to purchase it, click the Purchase BuildFax Report button, and allow the purchase to finalize.

You have full control over whether to share the BuildFax Property History Report with your customer. After purchasing a BuildFax report for $5.00, you can:

Include it with your inspection report as an added value for your client at no extra charge

Resell it to your client as a premium add-on service at your chosen price point

Keep it for your own reference to help you prepare for the inspection without sharing it with the customer

The BuildFax report will appear in your list of reports beside your home inspection documents, and you can choose whether to make it visible to your customer when you deliver the inspection report.

BuildFax provides home inspectors with deep insight into a property, including all details of permitted home improvements and renovations made to the structure. This includes additions, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing updates, roof replacements, renovations, demolitions, and more. In addition to permitted updates, BuildFax Property History Reports can also show spans of time when updates haven't occurred, which are often great indicators of aging systems that may need attention.

The cost of a BuildFax Property History Report is $5.00 for HomeGauge inspectors, which is more than 70% off the public price. HomeGauge inspectors can also resell BuildFax Property History Reports to their clients as a value-added service to increase revenue.

BuildFax has permit information on the majority of permits issued in the United States. In some areas, coverage is 90% or higher. In other, more rural areas, permit information is still being gathered, and more data comes online every day. It's important to note that areas where you do business may have differing levels of coverage. Just because one address cannot be found in BuildFax, don't stop searching other properties in your area.

BuildFax data is primarily sourced from permit data collected directly from the source - the building department in each jurisdiction. This collected data is standardized into a common report format and analyzed using advanced data analytics to highlight the information that matters to home inspectors and remove the cryptic "noise" often found within permit text. The result is an easy-to-read report that provides inspectors with the complete life story of a property.

Information collected and displayed by BuildFax is dependent on the local jurisdiction where the property is located. Some jurisdictions do not collect job cost information or obfuscate that information for privacy reasons, so BuildFax is unable to report it. This does not affect the quality of the permit history and construction data in the report.

Yes, home inspectors can preview BuildFax Property History Reports using any of the three methods described in this article: from a New Appointment, from All Reports, or from the BuildFax Manual Search tool. The preview shows you available permit data before you commit to purchasing the full report for $5.00.

No, you have full control over whether the BuildFax report is shared with your customer. After purchasing a BuildFax report, you can choose to include it with your inspection deliverables, resell it as an add-on service, or keep it for your own reference without sharing it.

BuildFax coverage varies by location. Some areas have 90% or higher coverage, while more rural areas may have limited permit data available. If one property address doesn't have BuildFax data available, continue searching other properties in your area - coverage levels can vary significantly even within the same region.

BuildFax reports you have purchased will appear in your All Reports list on your Inspector Dashboard along with your inspection reports for that property address. Click View Document under the BuildFax Property History title to view the report.

Yes, BuildFax Property History Reports include data on both commercial and residential structures. You can use BuildFax reports for commercial property inspections, or other type of property inspection where permit history and construction data would be available.

No, this article is for home inspectors using HomeGauge software. If you are a property buyer or property owner and received a BuildFax report from your inspector, contact your inspector directly with questions about the report contents. If you need help accessing your inspection report, visit this Customer Dashboard article.