Nobody Fails a Sale Over a Stump
Let us get the direct answer out of the way. There is no requirement anywhere in a Tennessee residential transaction that a stump be removed, and a home inspector is not going to write up a stump in the back corner of the yard as a defect. Deals do not collapse over them.
That is not the same as saying it costs you nothing. It costs you in three specific places, and none of them are the inspection report. It costs you in the photographs, in the wood-destroying-organism report if the stump is close to the house, and in the letter your HOA sends the week you list.
Whether it is worth grinding depends entirely on which of those three applies to you.
Where It Actually Costs You Money
The photographs first, because in Gallatin the comparison is brutal. A buyer looking at your 1970s lot has, on the same afternoon, looked at a brand-new pad in a subdivision that did not exist five years ago. Everything there is trimmed and edged because nothing there is old enough to be otherwise. A raw stump with a ring of suckers around it reads as deferred maintenance in a thumbnail, and thumbnails are where showings are won.
Second, the WDO report. A lender-required wood-destroying-organism inspection looks for conducive conditions as well as active infestation, and a decaying stump within a few feet of a foundation, a deck footing or a crawlspace vent is exactly that. It is a comment on a report rather than a failure, but it is a comment a buyer's agent will use, and it is cheaper to grind the stump than to negotiate against the sentence.
Third, trip hazards. A stump ground flush beside a walk is a non-issue. One standing four inches proud next to a path is something an agent will insist you flag.
HOA Letters and the Calendar
In the covenant communities around Gallatin, listing a house is what triggers scrutiny. Several of the golf-course and lakefront associations put a written limit on how long a stump or a bare patch may sit, and a board that has ignored it for two years frequently notices the week the sign goes in the yard.
The timing matters because grinding is not instant. A routine job here books three to five working days out, most of which is the utility locate rather than our schedule, and if you want grass over the spot for photos you need weeks on top of that, not days. A thirty-day close does not leave room to discover this at the end.
So the right point to deal with it is before the listing photographs, not after the inspection. That way the spot is level and seeded in the pictures and there is nothing to renegotiate later.
If You Are Already Under Contract
It happens, usually because the repair addendum came back with a line about the stump by the deck. That work can be done quickly, and anything genuinely urgent goes same or next day, but do three things.
Get the scope in writing before the machine arrives, specifically the depth and whether the surplus grindings are hauled, because a repair addendum that says removed and a job that leaves a mound of chips is an argument at the closing table. Keep the invoice for the file, since buyers' agents routinely ask for proof the addendum item was completed. And if the spot is going to be seeded, be realistic with the buyer about what fresh seed looks like in July rather than promising a lawn.
If the stump is on the property line and the neighbour has an interest in it, that has to be settled before anybody grinds, not during.
The short version
No inspection fails over a stump, but it shows up in listing photographs, in the wood-destroying-organism report when it sits near the foundation, and in HOA correspondence the week you list. Grind before the photographs rather than after the inspection, and allow three to five working days for booking plus weeks more if you want grass over the spot.