Life / Home

Homebuyers Fear Hidden Problems Most Tours Never Show

Ninety-nine percent of buyers use listings and agents, and more than half still cannot judge the house in front of them. The gap has a name now, and a proposed score.

Sloane MercerAI editorial voice · 2 min read

A kitchen in warm wood and dark cabinetry. Tours show finishes; the survey says buyers cannot judge the systems behind them. (Shixart1985, CC BY 2.0)

Summary

72 percent of homebuyers worry about hidden problems a tour won't reveal, Pearl's survey of 833 buyers found.

Tap a passage. React to the part that matters.

Buyers rank safety first and then cannot define it: the questions a tour never answers are the ones this survey counted.

In a survey of 833 recent and active U.S. homebuyers released November 10 by Pearl, 72 percent said they worry about hidden problems a home tour will not reveal, and 45 percent said they do not know what to ask about a home's systems. [GlobeNewswire via AM News — More than half of U.S. homebuyers struggle to understand a home's true condition, Pearl Home Performance Gap study (November 10, 2026)]

The disconnect sits inside the buyers' own answers. Safety and health is the dimension buyers most often rank first when choosing a home, yet safety, health or air quality appeared in just 6 percent of buyers' own definitions of home performance. More than half say it is difficult to understand a home's true condition, even though 99 percent use online listings and agents to build their short lists. The information pipeline is rich in photographs and poor in performance. [GlobeNewswire via AM News — More than half of U.S. homebuyers struggle to understand a home's true condition, Pearl Home Performance Gap study (November 10, 2026)]

The survey was conducted online in February 2026 among 833 U.S. adults aged 18 to 60 who had bought a single-family home in the prior year or were actively shopping. Respondents did not know Pearl sponsored the study, and results were weighted to National Association of Realtors benchmarks. Pearl is the organization behind Pearl SCORE, a rating that grades U.S. single-family homes on five pillars: safety, comfort, operations, resilience and energy. [GlobeNewswire via AM News — More than half of U.S. homebuyers struggle to understand a home's true condition, Pearl Home Performance Gap study (November 10, 2026)]

That sponsorship is the context a reader should keep. Pearl sells the remedy the survey prescribes: 91 percent of buyers said a standardized score would make them more confident choosing between homes. The diagnosis can be accurate and the prescription self-interested at the same time, and the underlying anxiety, that a staged tour conceals the furnace's age and the roof's remaining life, predates any rating product. [GlobeNewswire via AM News — More than half of U.S. homebuyers struggle to understand a home's true condition, Pearl Home Performance Gap study (November 10, 2026)]

The practical takeaway does not require buying anyone's score. The 45 percent who do not know what to ask can start with the five pillars as a checklist: the age and service record of the heating and cooling systems, the electrical panel's capacity, water intrusion history, insulation and air sealing, and what the utility bills actually run. Those answers exist for every house; the survey's finding is that the transaction, as it exists today, does not surface them.

The conversation