How to Write an ASTM E2018 Property Condition Report, Section by Section

A property condition report is read by people who were not in the building: the buyer deciding whether to close, the lender's underwriter sizing a reserve escrow, and, years later, a lawyer asking what the engineer knew on the day. ASTM E2018-24 does not prescribe a format for the report; it prescribes what the report must contain and how statements must be attributed. What follows is the section order that every lender-facing PCR in circulation uses (the three public samples cited below, from three different national firms, all follow it), with what each section must carry under the guide and the omission most often found in it.

Before you write: the guide is a baseline, not a checklist

E2018 describes itself as a guide that sets a minimum level of observation, inquiry and cost opinion. The user (the client) can scope it up, through the enhanced items in its appendices, or down; either way, every departure from the baseline is disclosed in the executive summary as a deviation. The guide also states plainly that following it is not, by itself, a professional architectural or engineering service; the PE stamp on a PCR is a requirement lenders and clients add, not one the standard imposes. Write the report knowing which parts are the standard's requirements and which are the client's.

Cover, transmittal letter and table of contents

Must carry: the property name and address, the client (the "user" in E2018's vocabulary), the consultant, the site-visit date and the report date, a project number, and the field observer and PCR reviewer named on the letter. The 2024 edition asks the user to state objectives and the evaluation period up front, so the letter should echo them.

Common omission: the report date. A PCR is a point-in-time document; the guide's principle is that it describes conditions as of the site visit, and readers need both dates to know how stale it is.

1. Executive summary

The most-read section and the one the guide specifies most precisely. It must carry, in order:

• A general description: use, size, age, location, construction type and occupancy, plus who the consultant is, who the user is, the user's position in the transaction, the purpose, and the site-visit date.
• Findings and opinions: the overall condition, the apparent level of preventive maintenance, capital work that is pending, in progress or recently completed, and a schedule of the material physical deficiencies with suggested remedies and opinions of cost. In practice this is a systems-summary table plus a copy of Table 1.
• Deviations from the guide: every place the scope was narrowed or extended (a reserve table, an accessibility screen and a moisture screen are the usual additions; a changed reporting threshold is the usual change).
• Disclosure of the relationship between the consultant and the field observer where they differ.
• Recommendations for further study.

Common omission: the deviations list. Reports that include a replacement reserve table without stating that it is an enhancement beyond the baseline are technically non-conforming, and the reviewer at the lender knows it.

2. Purpose and scope

Must carry: why the assessment was commissioned and the user's position (purchaser, lender, owner), then the scope, methods and constraints: what was surveyed, on what basis (representative observations of repetitive items are allowed if the extent is disclosed), and what was excluded. Define the condition terms here; the guide defines good, fair and poor relative to the reporting threshold and allows other terms if the report defines them. State the cost methodology: threshold, evaluation period, inflation, the source of unit costs and useful-life values.

Common omission: the cost basis. The guide lists six acceptable sources for unit costs, from user-supplied figures to published commercial data, and asks that each line carry quantity, unit and unit cost. A report that prints only lump sums with no stated source will be questioned.

3. System description and observations

One subsection per building system in the guide's walk-through order: site; structural frame; roofing and building envelope (merged in the 2024 edition); plumbing; heating; air conditioning and ventilation; electrical; vertical transportation; life safety and fire protection; interior elements. Each carries a brief description of what the system consists of, the basis for its stated age, the conditions observed, and the suggested remedy for each material deficiency, with its significance explained in plain terms. The guide gives the example that saying a property has aluminum branch wiring, without saying why that matters, is insufficient.

Two writing rules from the guide shape every sentence here. First, attribution: the report must distinguish what the field observer saw from what was reported by the point of contact or found in a document, and name the source. Second, the "observe" definition was broadened in 2024 to include auditory and olfactory evidence, so a failing bearing heard at a rooftop unit or a musty odor in a restroom is a legitimate observation, provided it is labelled as such.

Common omission: what was not observed. Every subsection should say which parts of the system were concealed, shut down or inaccessible, because the limiting-conditions section later depends on it.

4. Additional considerations

Anything outside the baseline that the user asked for, presented separately so a reader can see it is not part of the E2018 scope: the abbreviated accessibility screen from the guide's appendix, moisture and microbial observations, flood zone and seismic notes. Each is also listed as a deviation in the executive summary.

5. Document review and interviews

Must carry: the documents that were requested, which were provided, and the material information each contained; the documents requested and not provided; and the substance of the interview with the point of contact. The guide lists the documents to ask for when readily available (certificate of occupancy, warranties, historical repair costs, prior reports, pending proposals, code citations, rent roll, drawings) and says the consultant may rely on information that appears reasonable without verifying it, as long as the report says where it came from.

Common omission: the "not provided" list. It is the cheapest sentence in the report and the one that most protects the consultant.

6. Opinions of cost

Two tables, kept separate as the guide requires. Table 1 carries immediate and short-term costs, segregated. Table 2 carries long-term costs, the replacement reserve over the evaluation period, when the user has asked for one. Each line: quantity, unit, unit cost, source. Apply the reporting threshold: items under $3,000 are omitted unless they are life-safety or code items, or unless more than four similar sub-threshold items together exceed $10,000. Costs are order-of-magnitude construction costs only; design, permitting and fees are excluded unless the user asks for them to be added. See the cost categories guide and the reserve table guide for the arithmetic.

Common omission: the threshold statement itself, and the four-items rule. Both belong in the cost methodology and both are checked by lender reviewers.

7. Out of scope considerations

The guide's own list of activities the baseline excludes: exploratory probing, calculations, measurements to confirm owner information, entering unsafe spaces, opining on shut-down equipment, environmental sampling, warranty or code-compliance statements. Reproducing this list in your own words is the clearest way to tell a reader what the report is not.

8. Qualifications

Name the field observer and the PCR reviewer and state their qualifications, or say where the statements of qualifications are kept. The guide's own view of the field observer is a generalist with a well-rounded knowledge of building systems; the reviewer is the person who takes responsibility for the report.

9. Limiting conditions

Everything that limited the observation: areas not accessed and why, concealed construction, systems not operating, equipment not tested, documents not provided, weather, time of day. Then the reliance language: who may rely on the report and under what conditions. A lender's reliance letter, if issued later, refers back to this section.

10. Exhibits

Photographs, numbered and captioned and correlated to the text; the pre-survey questionnaire; owner-provided documents that are material; site plans or sketches. The guide lists the photographs the survey must include at minimum (elevations, site improvements, roof, structure, plumbing, HVAC, electrical, conveyances, life safety, representative interiors, and any special condition). See the photograph requirements guide.

Where the three public samples differ, and why it does not matter

NV5 (2019) puts photographs inline with each system; Partner (2025) and NDDS (2023) collect them in an appendix. Partner and NDDS print the cost tables on landscape pages laid out like the spreadsheet they came from; NV5 prints Table 2 that way and Table 1 in the narrative. None of these choices is governed by the guide, which is silent on format. What all three share is the section order above, the two-table cost presentation, the deviations list and explicit attribution, and those are the things a lender's reviewer checks.

How Baseline PCR structures the report

The draft follows the order above with the guide's section references printed at each heading, the cost tables built from the firm's own unit-cost library with every line showing its arithmetic and source, and every statement tagged observed, reported, documented or not provided. The reviewer edits, approves and signs; nothing is issued unreviewed. The sample report shows the full document.