Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Building Inspection Service Revenue Benchmark
Inspection of buildings for condition, code compliance and defects, usually reported to a buyer, lender or owner.
Average Building Inspection Service Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every building inspection business with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.
≈$586,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
7,624
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $4.5 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $4.5 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 7,624 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $586,000 per employer establishment. Home inspection ahead of a sale and commercial condition surveys are averaged together here.
Scope: Building Inspection Services, NAICS 541350. Classified separately in group 5413: 541310 Architectural Services; 541320 Landscape Architectural Services; 541330 Engineering Services, and 4 further codes. Nothing outside that code is counted on this page.
Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026
Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group
Architectural, Engineering, and Related Services, NAICS 5413, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
62.0%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 58.7 to 66.3 percent. This benchmark covers Architectural, Engineering, and Related Services, NAICS 5413, as a whole, and this category accounts for 7,624 of the 119,256 employer establishments in it. A count by age is not a survival rate, because the figures compare two headcounts rather than follow one set of businesses.
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll divided by receipts, both as published for the same year.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈38% |
Payroll share of receipts, Building Inspection Services, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 38.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll. The inspection itself is the product, so the ratio follows what inspectors are paid against what clients pay for a report.
Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes, payments to inspectors engaged as contractors and owner compensation, which matters in a trade where many firms grow by adding contract inspectors first.
Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data
How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Paid employees per employer establishment | 4.1 |
| Employer establishments per firm | 1.02 |
Scale and ownership, Building Inspection Services, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
The average establishment employed about 4.1 people, and the industry counted 1.0 employer establishments per firm.
These are arithmetic industry averages. They state the size of the average establishment and show that multi-establishment ownership exists. They do not show the distribution of business sizes and they do not measure market concentration.
Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis
Building Inspection Service: what an operator checks next.
Before you rely on this benchmark
- How many inspections does one inspector complete in a week? Report volume, not revenue, is the constraint here. A practice grows by adding qualified inspectors or by raising the fee per report, and the two have very different cost profiles.
- Who carries the liability for a missed defect? Errors and omissions cover is usually a standing cost in this trade, and the premium reflects services offered, coverage limits, revenue, claims history and the insurer's own underwriting.
- Is the work residential, commercial or both? A pre-sale house inspection and a commercial condition survey differ in fee, duration and reporting standard, yet both sit inside the same average on this page.
- How dependent is the practice on referrals from agents? Referral concentration is a real risk in this trade: one brokerage relationship can carry a large share of volume and end without notice.
- How quickly is the report delivered? Buyers work to contract deadlines, so turnaround is part of the product and it sets how many inspections one person can responsibly take in a day.
Explore More on BusinessNES
Neighbouring benchmark pages built from the same verified data, plus BusinessNES guides on the same subject.
Data Source Notice
This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.
Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.
Sources and Methodology
Revenue, establishment counts, payroll, employment and firm counts on this page come from the 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics, published by the US Census Bureau. Averages and shares are BusinessNES calculations from those published totals, and each one names the two figures it divides.
The Census counts employer establishments, meaning a business with paid staff. A sole inspector working alone is not included, and this is a trade with many of them.