WDI Termite Inspection for Home Closings

Order the inspection 7 to 10 days before the closing date, not two days before. Many lenders treat a WDI report as current for roughly 90 days, so early ordering leaves room for a follow-up if evidence turns up. VA and FHA financing in Virginia commonly requires a wood-destroying insect report, and conventional lenders and closing attorneys frequently ask for one too. Before anyone signs your form, ask them to confirm the pest control business license they are working under — a WDI report is only as good as the credential behind the signature, and that is a fair question to ask any inspector in Henrico County.

Henrico's housing stock decides how long the inspection takes. Older neighborhoods — the bungalows off Lakeside Avenue near Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, the 1940s and 1950s houses through Highland Springs and Sandston near Richmond International Airport, and the farmhouse-era properties out through Varina — usually sit on brick-pier crawlspaces where the sill plate, band joist, and pier caps are the areas that tell the story. Newer Short Pump, Twin Hickory, Wyndham, and Gayton construction shifts the attention outdoors: mulch beds stacked against siding, slab-to-brick transitions at attached garages, and downspouts dumping at the foundation. Townhome rows in Innsbrook, Glen Allen, and Laurel bring shared foundation walls, which means evidence at a neighbor's unit is relevant to yours. Central Virginia carries steady eastern subterranean termite pressure, and mud tubes climbing a pier in a damp crawlspace look nothing like the sawdust-fine frass under a carpenter ant trail — the report says which one is present, with a photo, instead of leaving it as a guess.

A WDI inspection is not the same purchase as a termite treatment, and the two should never be quoted as one line item. The inspection reports visible, accessible conditions. If active termites or old damage show up, treatment — soil trenching, foam injection at a block wall, or a bait system — is priced separately after you see the findings, so no one is paying for a cure before a diagnosis. The honest trade-off: this report covers what can be seen and reached. A crawlspace blocked by stored boxes, a finished basement wall, insulation covering the band joist, or a locked attic hatch all limit the inspection, and any limitation gets written on the form rather than papered over. If you want long-term coverage after the sale, ongoing termite monitoring is a separate, optional decision — nobody has to sign a quarterly plan to get a closing report.

Sellers in Tuckahoe and Glen Allen sometimes order the report before listing to keep a surprise from surfacing during the contingency window; buyers in Varina and Sandston more often order it after ratification. Either way, clear a path to the crawlspace door, move stored items off the perimeter walls, and leave the access panel unlocked. Every figure below is a ballpark, with the exact price confirmed on site before any work begins.