Inspecting a property

Experienced buyers walk through a property looking for reasons to say no. Newer buyers tend to walk through it picturing their furniture. Both notice the light and the layout; only one of them checks under the sink. The method below costs nothing and routinely saves five figures.

Building and pest: the best $600 in the deal

A combined building and pest inspection ($400 to $800) is a visual, non-invasive assessment by a licensed inspector: structure, roof, subfloor, moisture readings, termite evidence. Commission your own, attend in person, and ring the inspector afterwards; the ten-minute phone call is franker than the written report, which is drafted with lawyers in mind. Read the whole document, not the summary, and remember what it is not: inspectors don’t open walls, move furniture or test appliances, so “no visible evidence” means exactly that.

Don’t skip the report on new builds or renovated homes; fresh paint hides more than old wallpaper ever did. And treat the seller’s own report, if offered, as a starting point rather than a substitute. It may be accurate, but the inspector was engaged by the seller and reported to them. Our building and pest inspection guide covers what to ask.

Units: the strata report is the building’s diary

For apartments and townhouses, the strata (body corporate) records search, $250 to $400, matters as much as the building report. You’re looking for: the capital works (sinking) fund balance against the building’s age and size; any special levies struck or flagged; meeting minutes mentioning water ingress, concrete spalling, combustible cladding or defect disputes with the builder; insurance currency; and the ratio of owner-occupiers to renters. A healthy building has boring minutes and a fat fund. A $400,000 unit above a $40,000-per-lot remediation problem is not a bargain at any discount.

The red flags that cost five figures

Some defects are negotiating points; some are exits. The expensive ones cluster in five families: water (failed waterproofing, rising damp, poor drainage; bathroom rebuilds start around $15,000), structure (underpinning and restumping commonly run $15,000 to $40,000), termites (active infestation plus structural repair regularly exceeds $20,000), roofing (full replacement $15,000 to $30,000), and old services (rewiring or replumbing a whole house, $10,000 to $25,000 each). None of these is automatically a deal-killer; all of them are deal-repricers, and the seller knows it the moment your report does.

When to walk

Walk when the defect is structural and unquantified (no engineer’s report, no fixed price), when the seller blocks reasonable inspection access, when the strata minutes show a defect dispute with no funded plan, or when fixing the problem would cost more than the discount you can realistically negotiate. There is always another property. It rarely feels that way in the middle of a search, but it’s clear a year later.