It is scheduled for twenty minutes, it happens the day before closing or the morning of, and almost everybody treats it as a formality with a camera. It is the last moment the buyer has any leverage at all, and it is worth doing properly.
The short answer
The walkthrough confirms that the house is in the condition the purchase agreement requires: agreed repairs done, everything that was supposed to stay still there, nothing broken between the inspection and now. It is not an inspection and it is not an opening to ask for something new.
When it happens
As close to closing as the schedule allows, and after the sellers have moved out rather than before. A walkthrough done around a full house tells you about the seller's furniture, not about the floor under it. If the sellers are moving the same week, later is better, even if later means the morning of.
What to check, in order
- Utilities on. Water, power, heat or cooling. If they have been shut off, say so before you go any further, because nothing else on this list can be tested
- The agreed repairs, with the receipts and the invoices in your hand, not described from memory
- Everything the contract says stays: appliances, the mounted television bracket, the shed, the window treatments, the garage remotes and the keys
- Run water at every fixture and flush every toilet, then look underneath
- Open and close the garage door, the exterior doors and a window on each floor
- The floors and walls where furniture used to sit, which is where damage hides and where the movers left theirs
- The basement or crawl space floor, especially if it has rained since the inspection
- That the house is empty, including the garage, the attic and the shed. Left behind contents become your disposal problem at your cost
What it is not
It is not a re-inspection, and a walkthrough is the wrong moment to raise something the inspector already flagged and you decided to accept. It is also not a renegotiation. Asking for money at the walkthrough over a condition that existed at the inspection is how a clean transaction turns into a standoff on the last day, with a moving truck in the driveway and a lender waiting.
What happens if something is wrong
It depends on what the purchase agreement says, and that is not a dodge, it is the whole answer. The usual paths are an escrow holdback, a credit at closing, a repair before funding, or moving the closing. Each one needs the other side to agree, and a holdback or a credit also needs the lender to allow it, which is why the call goes to the lender and the closing agent immediately rather than after the paperwork is signed. Once the transaction closes, whatever you found becomes yours.
The uncomfortable part
Buyers are tired by this point, the house is finally theirs in every way that matters emotionally, and nobody wants to be the person who delays their own closing over a cracked pane. That fatigue is exactly why the checklist exists. Walk it with the list rather than with the feeling, and decide what actually matters afterward, in the car.
The part I will not answer
Whether a particular problem gives you a right to delay or to hold funds is a question about your contract, and it belongs to your attorney. Whether the lender will permit a holdback or a credit belongs to the lender, and the answer changes by loan program. What a repair will cost belongs to the contractor, in writing, before anyone agrees to a number.
The note on whether you have to be in the room to close covers what happens after this, and the buyers page sets out the steps that lead up to it.
This note is general. It is not legal advice, and what you may do about a problem found at the walkthrough depends on your contract and on facts only your attorney can assess.