North Carolina requires a Summary section in home inspection reports. Only Safety, Repair or Further Investigate items are allowed in the Summary section. Maintenance, Recommendations, and Upgrades can be in the body of the report but not the Summary.

I include photos of most defects in the body of the report with circles and arrows highlighting the specific defect in the photo. Adding a photo for every defect adds 2-5 pages to the overall page count of the report. Currently I only include the photos in the body of the report.

I am toying with also putting the photos in the summary section since the photos often make the defect more obvious and understandable to the lay person when compared to text only. My reports are emailed to the client and the buyers agent so actual size is not really a concern. Usually the buyers agent simply forwards the report in total or creates a repair list based on the summary section.

Just wondering if agents would prefer to have photos in the body only, or in the summary and body.

The more photos the better thats me personally. As long as its easy to follow Im happy.