Even if you’re buying a newly built property, or a property that has recently been renovated, building & pest inspections are absolutely essential!!
A property recently listed which I quite liked and so I decided to do some due diligence. It was a beautifully renovated period home, just completed by a very reputable builder. The temptation was to just ‘trust’ that there would be no concerning issues, but we decided to do the right thing and organise an inspection. Well I’m glad we did!!
The first thing my guy ‘Tony’ noticed was that the front yard was completely saturated. It hadn’t been raining on the weekend and so I could see his concern immediately. Before even entering the house he asked me to step on the grass and then step on the driveway, just to see how much water my shoes carried. These guys are like detectives.
Tony then crawled beneath the house and he was quite shocked at what he saw. He could immediately smell dampness and the sub-floor of the property was extremely wet too.
If there’s a small or recent burst pipe or something of that nature there might be some wetness in a localised area but in this instance the whole sub-floor was wet.
Tony was so concerned that he asked me crawl under the house myself and feel the soil to see first hand what he was talking about. I’m not much of a ‘crawl beneath the house’ kind of guy, but I did it anyway, it was terribly muddy.
We mentioned the concern to the selling agent and he said something to the effect of “I’m not surprised, it’s a pretty old house…”. But regardless of age the sub-floors should be DRY.
Here’s what we eventually found out:
- The slope of the block was from the rear of the property to the front
- Rainfall into the backyard was naturally traveling down towards the house
- The builder had also installed a large ‘sunken firepit’ in the backyard, but we found out this wasn’t part of the original plan – and the firepit drainage was therefore sub optimal
- When it rained the firepit collected a lot of water and instead of having the storm water pipe below the firepit, it was strangely above the firepit
- Water therefore had to be pumped up from the firepit and into the storm water, and these pumps had only recently been installed
- Even if the pumps solved the problem, or even if the house could be purchased for less (enabling the drainage to be re-done properly), there was no way of knowing the extent of the damage already caused
- Tony was concerned that in years to come structural issues might arise which could be very costly to fix
- It was a ‘hard no’ from Tony… and so we decided to not pursue the property any further
It was such a shame because everything else about this property was AAA, but regardless of all that there’s no point taking the risk on what may have potentially been a nightmare property!
If you’re ever wavering about a building & pest inspection hopefully this article drives home the lesson I learned. And for any clients looking to purchase in Melbourne I can also connect you with Tony too.
Have a good week ahead.
Regards,
Dan
