New homes are going up across North Texas at a pace the trades can barely keep up with — from Celina and Prosper to Northlake and Frisco. A brand-new home feels like it shouldn't need inspecting. The opposite is true: fast schedules and stretched crews are precisely when defects slip through, and once drywall goes up or concrete cures, they're hidden for decades. Phase inspections exist to catch them while they're still visible — and still the builder's problem.
Phase 1 — Pre-pour foundation inspection
Before concrete is poured, everything that will live inside your slab is exposed: the grade beams, the steel reinforcement or post-tension cables, the vapor barrier, the form boards, and the under-slab plumbing. A Phase 1 inspection verifies spacing, depth, placement, and condition of all of it. This is the shortest window of the entire build — often a single day — and findings here are the most expensive to fix later, because "later" means jackhammers.
Phase 2 — Pre-drywall inspection
Once the home is framed and the mechanical trades have run their rough-ins, there's a moment when everything is still visible: every stud, every wire, every duct, every drain line. A Phase 2 inspection is the most valuable look anyone will ever get inside your walls. We check structural framing and connections, plumbing rough-ins, electrical runs, HVAC ducts, window flashing, and roof decking — and what we find here is fixed with a hammer and an afternoon instead of a demolition crew.
If you only do one: make it Phase 2. After drywall, no inspector — ours or anyone's — can see what's behind the walls again.
Phase 3 — Final walkthrough inspection
Just before closing, the final inspection evaluates the completed home the same way we'd inspect any house: roof, attic, foundation, HVAC performance, plumbing fixtures, appliances, doors and windows, drainage — plus the thermal imaging, WDI report, foundation elevation survey, and irrigation check that come free with every Guardian inspection. Your builder's punch-out list gets a professional, documented backbone.
The 11-month warranty inspection
Most Texas builders provide a one-year workmanship warranty. In the home's first year, it settles, the seasons cycle, and the systems get real use — and the defects that emerge belong to the builder if they're documented before the warranty expires. The 11-month warranty inspection catches settling cracks, flashing and roof issues, HVAC problems, and plumbing defects in time for the builder to fix them at no cost to you. Buyers who skip it end up paying for those repairs out of pocket a year or two later.
What this costs — and what it saves
Each phase inspection is a few hundred dollars; a missed framing defect, a slab plumbing leak, or an out-of-warranty repair bill starts in the thousands. In boom markets where builders are managing a dozen homes per superintendent, an independent set of eyes at each phase is the cheapest insurance in the entire home-buying process.