A few years ago, waiving your inspection wasn't really a choice on the Eastside — it was close to a requirement. If you wanted to win a home in Bellevue, Kirkland, or Redmond against eight other offers, dropping your inspection contingency was often what it took to be competitive. That era isn't fully gone, but it's fading fast, and the numbers back it up: nationally, only 18% of buyers waived their inspection contingency in December 2025, down from 20% a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors' most recent Confidence Index survey. Locally, single-family inventory across the Seattle area has climbed to 3.4 months of supply as of this month — the most breathing room buyers have had in a long time — and homes that once went pending in days are now averaging around four weeks on market.

All of which raises a fair question: if you don't have to waive your inspection anymore, should you? And if you're still tempted to — for a newer home, a hot listing, or just to look more competitive on paper — what are you actually giving up? Here's a real answer, not a scare tactic.

Why waiving became the default in the first place

Go back to 2021 and 2022, and the logic was simple: multiple-offer situations meant sellers could pick the cleanest offer on the table, and an inspection contingency was one of the easiest things to strip out to get there. Buyers weren't necessarily comfortable with the risk — they just didn't have leverage to insist on it. That's the piece that's changed. With more homes on the market and less competition per listing, your inspection contingency isn't the reason you lose the house anymore in most price bands. The pressure that made waiving feel mandatory has eased.

What you actually give up when you waive it

In Washington, your inspection contingency runs through what's called Form 35 — the inspection addendum attached to your purchase agreement. It's not a pass/fail hurdle; it's better understood as a negotiating window. Once you're under contract, you typically get a 10-day inspection period from mutual acceptance to have the home inspected and, if the inspector's written report recommends it, request an additional 5 days for specialized follow-up (a sewer scope or structural engineer, for example — that extension isn't automatic, and it has to be tied to what the inspector actually found). During that window, you can ask the seller for repairs, a credit toward closing costs, a price reduction, or you can walk away and get your earnest money back.

Waive the contingency, and you give up all of that. If the inspection turns up a failing sewer line or knob-and-tube wiring the week after closing, there's no clause left to point to — you own it, exactly as it sits.

What Eastside and Seattle inspectors are actually finding

This is the part that matters most for older Eastside housing stock, and it's worth being specific rather than vague about "hidden problems." A few issues show up again and again in local inspection reports:

Failed side sewer lines on homes built before 1985 — repairs commonly run $5,000 to $20,000 or more, and they're invisible until a scope goes down the line.

Undocumented heating oil tanks, often decommissioned decades ago but never properly removed or certified, which can become the buyer's liability and an environmental cleanup cost.

Knob-and-tube wiring or Federal Pacific electrical panels, both of which insurers increasingly flag or decline to cover without an upgrade.

Foundation movement on steep-lot homes — common across hillside neighborhoods in Kirkland, Bellevue, and parts of Sammamish, where drainage and soil conditions do real work over time.

Joint Maintenance Agreements on townhomes — not a structural issue, but a paperwork one: shared-wall or shared-driveway obligations that don't show up unless someone specifically asks for them.

None of these are reasons to panic about buying an older Eastside home — plenty of them are manageable, negotiable, or simply priced in once you know about them. They're reasons to actually have someone look before you're the one who owns the answer.

The risk almost nobody explains: you can waive your protection by accident

Here's the one that catches buyers off guard, and it has nothing to do with what the inspector finds. Under the rule governing Form 35 communications, if you or your agent share any part of your inspection report with the seller — even informally, even just a photo, even with good intentions — without the seller's documented consent first, you can inadvertently waive your entire inspection contingency, not just your ability to use that specific finding as leverage. All inspection-related communication with the seller is supposed to run through a separate form (Form 35R) specifically because of this. It's a paperwork trap, not a home-condition one, and it's exactly why "just send them the report and see what they say" is bad advice, however well-meaning.

So should you still waive it?

In today's market, for most resale purchases, there's less reason to. You're generally not competing against eight other offers anymore, and the leverage that used to force the decision has shifted back toward buyers. That said, it's not always a straightforward no. New construction with a builder warranty changes the calculus somewhat, since some structural and systems issues are already covered for a period after closing. And if you've had a home pre-inspected before writing your offer — genuinely inspected, not just walked through — waiving the contingency after the fact carries a different, smaller risk than waiving it blind.

What doesn't make sense anymore is waiving out of habit, or because that's just "how it's done" — that pressure has mostly lifted, and the data backs that up.

Bottom line

Waiving your inspection isn't reckless in every situation, and keeping it isn't automatically safe either — the details of your specific home and your specific contract matter more than a blanket rule either way. But going into it with your eyes open beats guessing: know what you're actually giving up, know what tends to show up in homes like the one you're buying, and know how the paperwork itself can trip you up before you ever get to the inspection report.

If you're weighing whether to waive on a specific home, or you just want a second set of eyes on an offer before you sign it, reach out and we'll walk through it together — no pressure, just a straight answer for your situation.