Could your dream home turn into a nightmare once you’ve bought it? To avoid getting stung on your next purchase, ensure you use a professional building and pest inspector.
After months of searching, hours of driving and more home inspections than you care to remember, you think you might just have found your dream home. But before signing on the dotted line, you need to ask a very important question: How can I be sure the house I’m buying is in good shape?
Whether you’re purchasing a family home or an investment property, a pre-purchase building and pest inspection is essential.
Not only might it help identify serious problems that will need fixing – either in the short or the longer term – it might also reveal faults that you can use as bargaining tools when it comes to negotiating a price.
Dodgy building work, structural faults and deterioration can be difficult to spot with the untrained eye and that’s why you need to draw on the services of a qualified, licensed building inspector. They will generally be able to assess with a professional eye the condition of the interior as well as the roof, roof space, under the floors and other relevant areas – but only if they are able to get access to them
Once an inspection has been completed, you will receive a detailed report outlining any issues, risks or work required and in some cases an estimation of the likely cost of fixing the problem.
Those potential costs are the ‘ammunition’ you can take to the vendor when negotiating.
It’s also important to fully understand the scope of the inspection since commonly there are areas that it won’t cover. These often include electrical wiring, plumbing, drainage, watering systems and gas fittings.
The cost of pre-purchase inspections varies, depending on the level of detail included in the report, the size and condition of the property and the time required to inspect it. This is one area where basically you get what you pay for, but it’s an important issue and it’s worth paying a little more for a quality inspection.
You could end up spending more than $500, but it could also save you thousands in the long run. More seriously, it could warn you away from a property that would demolish your life savings.
