The Triangle of Exchange (Pest & Building)

Hi, my name is Aaron Wybrow. I'm from Diagnostics and Finance.

And I'm Judy Hogarth from KLH Conveyancing.

Hi, my name is Robbie from Roachbusters Pest Control Services.

And we're here today to cover off part three of how you can exchange on your property successfully and easily. Part one, if you want to go back and see it was about contracts. Part two is about unconditional financial approval. And today we're talking about pests and buildings inspection. And we are lucky to have Ravi here today to talk about that.

Thanks for coming, Ravi. So once we've gone through the contract review and we've made sure the client has their unconditional loan approval, the next step is to make sure the property is in a position that the clients can move forward and be content that they know all the unseen issues. What are some of your findings that could bring a purchase unhinged?

Well, basically you get two reports. So you get a building inspection report and a termite or cast inspection according to the Australian standards. The building talks about more like structure of the property, if the property has moved, any cracks in the property. That's what the major concerns of the purchaser, if the property has moved. But termites, basically, pest inspection talks about termites regardless if there is inactive termite damage or active termite damage or previously has there been any treatment done. So this is a very comprehensive report.

So you might look at your property and love the backyard for the kids, love the whole kitchen. It's beautiful, big stone, bench tops and things. But there's so many things that are unseen with your building inspectors. Do they check out things that buyers don't usually check out, like getting up in the roof?

Yeah. So basically the report comes with a comprehensive report is basically going the roof. If there's excess under the house, they're mostly concerned about any moisture coming through the house. So if there's any water leaks or if there's your bathroom leaking, that's a very big concern and heavily costly. So this is what they look into. Yeah, but yeah, they do.

And sometimes I have buyers that don't want to pay for a building and pest report.

Yeah, I don't understand that because they're paying $1 million for the property and they're not keen on spending $500 on inspectors to go out there. It's a worth it report. And in terms like they can be saved, paying thousands.

Yeah. For such an investment, $500 versus probably 500,000 if it was removed, if the concrete was slipping or anything, it's well justified.

And I think the process that generally speaking in Sydney we go through with buying property, putting deposit down to get it off the market, to do your due diligence and you may lose that is better than losing a million dollars and then spending a little bit more time and money getting the right reports and the right reviews. And if you don't go ahead with it, you might have to pay for people's time, but at least you're going to save headache down the future. In your reports, do you provide recommendations of what they might need to do for the property going forward in the future?

Yeah. So the report is all about recommendations. Basically. It's not to scare the buyers or the purchases, it's about recommendation. And if, for example, for argument's sake, if the bathroom's leaking, then they need a new bathroom, basically it gets them aware that what would be the cost of fixing these things and then budgeting themselves to buy the property?

Yes. And you could always renegotiate if something comes back that's massive. You could always say, look, it's going to cost me 25,000, renegotiate the purchase time.

And people might be thinking that you're buying an existing, existing property. It's old, I need all these reports. But there's a lot of new properties. So what would be different to an established property, to a new property? And why would you need someone like yourself and building inspections to go through?

So there's two types of standards now. So there's a completion report for the new build and there's basically a pre purchase inspection for the existing houses. Why we recommend completion report is if there's any defects in the house and then you can take that report to the builder and say that this needs to be like this needs to be fixed before I purchase this property. So a lot of buyers out there don't understand what reports they are needed. But yeah. So basically there's two reports and then we can help them out.

Yeah, and it's good because if it's a bigger developer or a bigger builder, sometimes they're not as supervised as say a smaller boutique builder who may take a little bit more pride in the work versus just churning it out. It's not a bad asset, it's just you just take a little bit of extra checking and then we can go down the line of the financial approval and the right contract exchange.

Sure.

In, in your experience, do newly constructed houses tend to have more defects than existing properties?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I found, too depends there and said depend on the builder. Like, now you might get a, like, a smaller builder might take two jobs a year. Then a bigger builder takes like 10 jobs a year. And then depending on, like. No, it's, it, it varies with the builders. But we're not saying that the builders are bad.

No, no, not that they're bad, but just, it's just, yeah, it just, it.

You need to get it inspected and then go from there.

So therefore, buying an established property or a new property or even buying across the country, you're best off having the right contract review, the right financial approval and the right pests and buildings inspection. So you can make an educated judgment call on whether you're going to buy this property or not. Thanks for coming, guys.

Thank you. Thanks.