Key Takeaways
- 72% of homebuyers worry about hidden problems a home tour will not reveal, and 45% say they do not really know what to ask about a home’s systems, according to Pearl’s Home Performance Gap survey of 833 recent and active buyers.
- More than half of buyers say it is difficult to understand a home’s true condition, even though 99% use online listing services and their agents to narrow their choices to a short list.
- 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% of buyers’ own definitions of home performance.
- Eight in ten buyers said a standardized home performance score would be valuable, and 91% said it would make them more confident choosing between homes.
Most buyers can judge a kitchen from a photo. Far fewer can judge the furnace, the pipes, or the roof that will decide what the home actually costs them after closing.
That gap now has a name and a set of numbers behind it. Pearl, the independent organization behind the Pearl SCORE home performance rating, released The Home Performance Gap on November 10, 2026, a survey of 833 recent and active U.S. homebuyers who bought a single-family home in the prior 12 months or were actively shopping for one.
The Shortlist Happens Online, but the Condition Risk Shows Up Later
The survey found that 99% of homebuyers use online listing services and their agents to narrow down their choices to a short list. Beyond that short list, understanding the lived experience of the home proves much more challenging.
More than half of American homebuyers say it is difficult to understand a home’s true condition. And 45% say they don’t really know what to ask about a home’s systems.
“Buyers are committing to years of ownership with too little information about what that ownership will actually be like,” said Pearl co-founder and CEO Cynthia Adams. “Our research shows that some of the qualities they value most are among those they feel least equipped to assess. The real estate industry needs to make a home’s performance as visible as its price.”
| Pearl Home Performance Gap finding | Share of buyers |
|---|---|
| Worry about hidden problems a home tour won’t reveal | 72% |
| Don’t really know what to ask about a home’s systems | 45% |
| Find it difficult to understand a home’s true condition | More than half |
| Use online listings and their agent to build a short list | 99% |
| Said a standardized performance score would be valuable | Eight in ten |
| Said a score would make them more confident choosing between homes | 91% |
The order of those numbers is the fresh insight. Buyers fall for a home through photos and a tour first, and only meet its systems later, at inspection, at the first utility bill, or at the first breakdown.
Buyers Rank Safety and Health First, but Few Can Judge Them
The survey also tested whether buyers even share a definition of the thing they say they want. Fifty-six percent of respondents said they were very or extremely familiar with the term “home performance” before taking the survey, yet their definitions varied widely.
Safety, health, or air quality appeared in just 6% of definitions. That is striking because “safety and health” is the dimension buyers most often rank first when choosing a home, according to the report.
Pearl SCORE rates every U.S. single-family home across five performance pillars, which give buyers a plain checklist for that missing definition:
- Safety
- Comfort
- Operations
- Resilience
- Energy
“A standardized score gives buyers a consistent way to compare homes, ask better questions, and understand what they’re buying before making an offer,” said Pearl co-founder and President Robin LeBaron. “Lack of standardized home performance information has been a significant market failure. The introduction of home performance information into the market will influence how homes are bought and sold for decades to come.”
The stakes of misjudging a home do not end at an expensive repair. Ownership costs that surprise a buyer can turn into missed payments, and FHA loans are now 47.2% of seriously late mortgages, the highest share in over 20 years, in TransUnion’s third-quarter data.
Ask These Questions Before You Make an Offer
You do not need a score to close the gap on one home. You need the questions 45% of buyers say they do not have, asked before the offer, not after the tour.
- How old are the big systems, and what records prove it? Ask for the age and service history of the furnace, air conditioning, water heater, and roof. A seller who can document them is telling you something a tour cannot.
- What does this home cost to run? Ask to see utility costs, one of the inputs Pearl’s ratings draw on, along with climate data, maintenance projections, homeowner input, and home performance benchmarks. A cheap payment on an expensive-to-run home is not a cheap home.
- Where are the safety and health risks? Buyers rank this dimension first and define it least. Ask directly about air quality, water intrusion, and any known hazards, and let your inspection test the answers.
- What maintenance is already due? Turn the five pillars into a walk-through list: safety, comfort, operations, resilience, and energy. Note what would need money in the first year and price that into your offer.
- If you are buying with little down, protect your reserve. Buyers stretching to get in have the least room for a surprise system failure, including VA buyers, who a Realtor.com report found can buy about four years sooner with 0% down. A stronger condition check matters more, not less, when the down payment is small.
Sellers should read the same numbers from the other side. In a market where Mid-Atlantic homes are sitting longer and showings fell 12.8% in October, a seller who answers the system questions upfront, with records, removes the exact fear 72% of buyers walk in carrying.
For beginner investors, the lesson is direct. Price and photos are visible to every bidder, so they offer no edge. A home’s systems, running costs, and likely first-year repairs are visible only to the buyer who asks, and that is where an offer can be priced with confidence instead of hope.
Data source: Pearl, The Home Performance Gap, released November 10, 2026 via GlobeNewswire. The survey was conducted online February 5-27, 2026, among 833 U.S. adults ages 18-60; respondents did not know Pearl sponsored the study, and results are weighted to National Association of Realtors benchmarks.
