A few days later we met again went over some items in the inspection report.

You said a basic item like the toilet was dirty when you go stay yourself.

But some of the items I'd say to keep in mind are the following:1.

Use those to get an idea for your initial scope of work and itemize out everything you want done so you can get an initial cost estimate on your end. 

To which, I agree, would be an item for local governments to address and manage according to the desires of the citizenry.

Admittedly, I come from an area with very high transfer tax, but I could imagine that attorney fees, transfer tax, lender fees, and other miscellaneous items might come up during closing. 

Inquire as to non-traditional credit items that don't show up on a credit report such as utilities, rent receipts, buy here/pay here car payments.

I do this for every rehab, and for me, it's a personal walk-through of the house that I do myself, not a checklist for someone else (and I'm normally big on checklists and delegating, but not for this super-critical task)...In fact, this is one of the few things that I don't trust to my contractors, my project managers or even my wife to do...you only get one chance to impress a buyer, an inspector and an appraiser, and if there are punchlist items that aren't fixed, you can easily blow a sale or take a hit on price.Basically, I step into every room, look at every wall, carpet and ceiling, open and close every door and window, test every appliance, test every electrical fixture (I even use an electrical tester on all the outlets), test every plumbing fixture, test the HVAC, etc.At first, I would walk around with an inspector checklist...but it's all second nature.

They don't ave itemized prices on them, they only say "included" on the quote.

all the expenses on painting add up to around roughly $4.2k you can save $1.2k there alone You can get some items cheaper such as the dehumidifier and other priced items.