A closing gets scheduled for a Tuesday. The buyer's loan is clear. The appraisal came in fine. Then, three days out, someone on the file realizes the wood infestation report was signed six weeks ago, back during the due diligence window, and the lender's underwriter wants a report dated within the last thirty days. Nobody did anything wrong. The house doesn't have termites. The paperwork just aged out.
This happens often enough in Columbus that it deserves its own explanation, separate from the general home inspection conversation. The termite letter, officially the Wood Infestation Inspection Report, or WDIR, on the state's Form 100, is not a single deadline. It is three separate clocks running on three separate schedules, and almost nobody explains that the schedules do not line up.
Clock one: your due diligence window
In Georgia, the due diligence period is a negotiated stretch written into the purchase contract, most commonly somewhere between seven and fourteen days, though competitive offers sometimes compress it to three to five. It starts on the Binding Agreement Date, the day both signed copies are in everyone's hands, and it is the window in which a buyer can walk away for any reason and still get earnest money back. This is when most buyers in Columbus schedule the general home inspection and, often as a line item on the same invoice, the termite inspection.
Clock two: the thirty-day lender window
Here is where the first mismatch shows up. Georgia mortgage lenders, particularly the ones issuing FHA and VA loans, typically want the wood infestation report dated within thirty days of the actual closing date, not the due diligence deadline. If a closing gets pushed, a financing delay, a repair renegotiation, an appraisal that has to be reordered, the WDIR that looked perfectly current during due diligence can be too old by the time everyone finally sits down at the table. The fix is a reinspection, which means another appointment, another fee, and another few days that nobody budgeted for.
Clock three: the ninety-day guarantee
The report itself carries a separate promise that has nothing to do with either of the first two clocks. Under the state's structural pest control rules, if visible evidence of an infestation shows up within ninety days of the report being issued, for an organism the report certified as absent, the property is entitled to a free minimum adequate treatment. That ninety-day guarantee is a protection against what happens after closing. It is not the same as the thirty-day age limit lenders enforce before closing, and treating the two as interchangeable is the single most common confusion I see.
| Clock | What it governs | Typical length |
|---|---|---|
| Due diligence period | Buyer's right to inspect and exit the contract | 7 to 14 days, negotiable, often shorter in competitive offers |
| Lender's report age limit | How recent the WDIR must be at closing | Within 30 days of closing, per typical FHA/VA lender practice |
| Report's own guarantee | Free retreatment if infestation appears after the report | 90 days from issuance |
None of these three windows are set by the same clause, and none of them automatically reset the others.
Why this isn't actually state law
The part that surprises people most is that Georgia does not legally require a termite letter at closing at all. The state's real estate contract shifted this years ago, moving the wood infestation report off the mandatory closing checklist and onto the buyer's list of due diligence items to arrange on their own. Lenders picked up where the state left off. FHA and VA loans in particular still expect a current WDIR before they'll fund, which is why the report feels mandatory even though no statute compels it. Georgia is also a buyer-beware jurisdiction. Seller disclosure forms are customary, not required, and the state's passive-concealment rule only stops a seller from actively hiding or lying about a defect the buyer couldn't reasonably discover. A termite inspection is one of the few tools a buyer has to actually verify condition rather than take a seller's word for it.
The report is not the law. The lender's underwriting condition is the law, functionally, and it runs on its own calendar.
The letter and the bond are not the same document
A second confusion sits right next to the timing problem. A wood infestation report is a snapshot, what an inspector observed on one specific day. A termite bond is an ongoing service contract between a homeowner and a pest control company, and it comes in two flavors that matter differently at the negotiating table. A retreatment-only bond covers just the cost of treating a new infestation. A repair or warranty bond goes further and covers structural repair costs, which is why it costs more annually to maintain. When a seller has an existing bond in place and it's transferable to the new owner, that changes the conversation. A buyer inheriting an active repair bond is inheriting real financial protection, not just a piece of paper that says the house looked clean on inspection day. Sellers who let an old bond lapse before listing lose a genuine selling point they didn't know they had.
Why Columbus homes carry real pressure on this
This isn't a hypothetical risk unique to older housing stock. Georgia and Alabama together see an estimated six to thirteen termite colonies per acre of land, and the humid subtropical climate along the Chattahoochee keeps colonies foraging close to year-round rather than going dormant. That combination is exactly why lenders in this market lean on the report so heavily, and why local companies, from Pest Authority of Columbus to Arrow Exterminators to Columbus Termite Pro to Active Pest Control, do steady business specifically around real estate closings rather than general pest calls. A crawl space, a slab with an old expansion joint, a deck attached where wood meets soil, these are the conducive conditions inspectors flag even when there's no active infestation, and they're common enough in this area that almost every report includes at least one note.
What this means if you're closing this fall
If you're a buyer under contract, order the termite inspection early in your due diligence window, but ask your lender directly what age limit they'll accept on the report at your actual anticipated closing date, not just at due diligence. If your closing date shifts for any reason, assume the report needs to be refreshed rather than hoping it slides through.
If you're a seller preparing to list, check whether an existing termite bond is currently active and whether it's transferable. A current, transferable repair bond is worth mentioning in your listing remarks, the same way you'd mention a new roof or a recent HVAC replacement. It answers a question buyers are going to ask anyway.
If you're working through a VA loan specifically, the timing pressure is often tighter because VA underwriting tends to be firm about the thirty-day window. Our guide to VA buyers in Columbus covers more of what that loan type expects from a transaction.
A few questions worth asking directly
Does every home sale in Columbus require a termite letter? No. State law doesn't mandate one. Most FHA and VA lenders do, and many conventional lenders request one as a matter of local practice, but it isn't a Georgia statute.
Who pays for the inspection? There's no fixed rule. It's set by whatever the purchase agreement says, and in most traditional transactions the seller covers it, though this is negotiable like anything else in the contract.
What happens if the report finds something? A finding doesn't end the deal. It typically triggers treatment before closing, followed by a reinspection and a fresh report once the company issues a clearance letter. The thirty-day clock then restarts from that new report's date.
Termite paperwork is one of the smaller line items in a Columbus closing, until the timing goes wrong and it becomes the reason everyone is waiting in a parking lot instead of signing documents. If you want a second set of eyes on your contract timeline before that happens, whether you're buying, selling, or just trying to understand what your Columbus home is actually worth right now, Ron Jones is happy to walk through it with you. Schedule a free consultation, or start with a free home valuation, and we'll build your calendar so the clocks actually line up.
