Brisbane Home Buyers Beware of Dodgy Vendor Reports

Recently it has become very common practise for the seller of a property in Brisbane to provide building and pest reports to interested home buyers. To date I have been provided with many of these reports and of the reports that I have reviewed most are at best bland and lacking vital information or mindboggling difficult to understand. In some cases, I have seen reports that have been complied to be deliberately misleading omitting significant structural damage. These reports usually have a covering clause at the end of the report with a long list of all of the people, i.e. engineers and trade specialists that you require to further inspect the property to cover themselves for what they’re leaving out of the report.

At one of my client’s inspections the vendor’s report they had been given stated that there was no termite activity or damage located on the property however I found widespread termite damage in easily accessible areas within the subfloor under the building. Several of these areas had brightly coloured warning stickers stating that active termites had been located and that dangerous chemicals were in place to treat them. To cap it off I found live termites in the door frame of the master bedroom.

I can absolutely assure you that if you are not going to get your own building in pest inspection done by an independent company to carry out the inspections on your behalf you are playing Russian roulette. Given the very high cost of purchasing a property these days the $600 or $700 for quality unbiased building and pest inspections done by a trusted company that is working for you alone is a must. Our plain English reports will tell you exactly what is going on with the property and are easy to understand, well laid out with plenty of photos of any significant defects that may exist.

Gregory Mueller

BuildandPest.com

Servicing Greater Brisbane – Morton Bay – Ipswich Areas