The county already inspected it. The builder inspected it. So why would you pay someone to inspect a house nobody has ever lived in? Because those inspections answer a different question from the one you are asking, and because the clock on Florida’s builder warranty starts running the day you take the keys.
What the county inspection is and is not
Municipal building inspections check the builder’s work against the Florida Building Code. They are required of the builder, they are pass/fail against code minimums, and they are not performed for you. Nobody at the county is looking at whether your shower drains properly, whether the attic insulation is at the depth specified, or whether the lanai slab slopes away from the house.
A private inspection is optional. Nothing in Florida law requires a buyer to have one on new construction, and any source telling you it is legally required is wrong. What it is, is the only look at the house performed by someone working for you.
The four points where an inspection is worth something
Pre-pour
Before the slab goes down: grading, drainage, trench and footer work, and the position of the plumbing that will be under concrete for the life of the house. This is the hardest phase to get access for and the most expensive one to get wrong.
Pre-drywall
The highest-value inspection of the four. Framing, roof structure, window and door installation, and the rough-in electrical, plumbing and HVAC are all still visible. As the inspection industry’s own standards body puts it, drywall obscures the interior and makes problems both difficult and expensive to identify once the house is finished. The window is short — it opens when rough-in passes and closes when the hangers arrive.
Final, before closing
The whole house, on the same standard a resale inspection would use: roof, structure, exterior, and every major system operated. Schedule it far enough ahead of closing that anything found can go on the punch list rather than into a warranty claim.
Month eleven
This is the one most buyers miss, and it is the one Florida law has made more valuable. Since 1 July 2025, section 553.837 of the Florida Statutes requires a builder to warrant a newly constructed home against construction defects that are a material violation of the Florida Building Code — for one year, running from the earlier of the conveyance of title or your first occupancy. One year, not one year and a bit.
An inspection at around month eleven is the last practical chance to find something and file it while that statutory warranty still applies. A house that has been through a full Southwest Florida summer — a wet season, an air conditioner run hard for months, a slab that has had time to move — shows you things a final walkthrough in month zero cannot.
Hiring in Florida: what to check
Home inspection has been a licensed profession in Florida since 1 July 2010, governed by Chapter 468, Part XV of the Florida Statutes and Rule 61-30 of the Administrative Code. Practising without a licence is a first-degree misdemeanour. Licensure requires a 120-hour approved course, a state exam, a background check, and general liability insurance of at least $300,000.
Two minutes of work protects you here: look the inspector up on the Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s licence search before you book. If they are not there, they are not licensed.
Getting the inspector onto the site
This is the part nobody warns buyers about. Florida gives you no statutory right of access to an active construction site, and builders vary enormously — some accommodate third-party inspectors without complaint, some make it difficult, and some write restrictions into the purchase agreement.
Where access is granted, the gate is usually paperwork rather than refusal. Builders commonly want a certificate of insurance naming them as additional insured, sometimes a waiver of subrogation, and general liability limits above the state minimum, before an inspector sets foot on the lot.
The practical consequence is that this is a contract question, not a scheduling question. Settle inspection access in the purchase agreement before you sign it. Afterwards you are asking a favour; beforehand you are agreeing a term.
What we would tell a client
Get the pre-drywall and the final. Add pre-pour if the builder will allow it and the lot has any drainage complexity. Diary the eleven-month inspection the day you close, because in twelve months you will have forgotten, and that is exactly when it stops being useful.
None of this is an accusation against any builder. New houses have defects for the same reason everything built by people has defects. The point of an inspection is not suspicion; it is that the one-year clock in Florida law is short, and the only way to use it is to know what to claim before it runs out.