An FHA mortgage is backed by the government and provides insurance to the lender. This is a loan with less money down but it does have some conditions. FHA is a one-size-fits-all loan program and these requirements apply to all of their homes. The typical things we look for during an FHA appraisal inspection include: Any peeling paint on a home/shed/garage built after 1978. It doesn’t matter if the house was just painted, FHA is concerned about the possibility of lead paint poisoning. If we find peeling/chipping paint on a home built before 1978, we are instructed to take photos of the peeling paint and make the report subject-to the removal of the peeling paint and the re-painting of those areas. Your lender will tell us when we can go back out to your property (only they can communicate with us and order the Update Appraisal – not the homeowner or the realtor) and then we take pictures of your finished work after you have completed the repairs and submit that report. It doesn’t matter to us how nice the painting job is when you get finished, but we simply need to “check the box” that the work has been finished. Standing water in the crawl space or in the basement. This must be repaired to the extent that we can come back and take a picture of (a mostly) dry crawl space or basement area. It doesn’t matter to us if you spend $10,000 on a complete waterproofing system or $250 on a sump pump. We must be able to say, on the appraisal update form, that this situation has been resolved. Pet urine can be a safety issue if it is difficult to breathe in the house. We will estimate a cost to remediate this situation and make the report subject-to. Every area that is missing a railing (that’s at least two feet high of the ground) must have a railing added. These include staircases, decks, porches, balconies, etc. The utilities must be on and in working order and the home must have a working stove. Remember, you do not have to have an FHA loan. You can get a Conventional loan and all of the FHA requirements are no longer in place. It is also important to know that sometimes the lender asks for things to be repaired that the appraiser did not ask for in the report. These are usually things that are not in the FHA required list but can be a repair that the lender wants to be completed before making the loan. It could be fixing a hole, repairing the floor, inspecting the roof and other things that showed up in our inspection but were not FHA concerns.