Who pays for the home inspection in Florida?

The reason the buyer pays is the reason the inspection has value. The inspector works for whoever hired them. If the seller paid for your inspection, you would reasonably wonder whether the report was written to close a transaction. Buyer-paid means buyer-owned: you get the report, you decide who else sees it, and nothing in it is shaped by anyone else's interest in the deal going through. That independence is the whole product.

Payment is due at or before the inspection, before the report is released. That is standard practice across the industry and it exists for a specific reason. If payment were tied to closing, an inspector would have a financial interest in transactions closing, and the incentive on hard findings would point the wrong direction. Paying up front for a few hundred dollars keeps that clean.

The fee is not refundable if the deal falls apart, and that catches some buyers off guard. If your inspection turns up a failed roof and you terminate under your contingency, you have spent the inspection fee and gotten exactly what you paid for: the information that stopped you from buying a house with a failed roof. Buyers who go through two or three inspections before landing a house are not wasting money. They are paying a few hundred dollars each time to avoid a much larger mistake.

There are a few variations. Sellers order pre-listing inspections and pay for them, which is money well spent because it puts the timing and the repair decisions on the seller's schedule. Some new construction buyers negotiate builder contributions toward phase inspections, though most pay themselves. In some transactions a seller offers to credit the inspection fee as part of a negotiation, which is a price concession rather than a change in who ordered the report.

One thing not to do is let a seller or a builder hand you an inspection they arranged and treat it as your own. It might be perfectly accurate. It was still commissioned by someone whose interests differ from yours, and it may be months old and describe a house that has changed. Read it, note what it says, and get your own. Compared to the price of the house, the cost of an independent report is not the place to economize.