Clear Realty Real Estate Blog

I was driving down the southern motorway over the weekend and saw a brilliant advert near Tip Top Corner which was advertising commercial building washing services

It read (something along the lines of) “You wash your car every week, how about washing your biggest asset?”

That got me thinking… We have to take our cars in for a WOF every 6-12 months. Sometimes we breeze through and sometimes we need to replace a set of tyres, replace a tail light, and even sometimes we are sent away to remove rust and make the car safer.  But what about the homes we own? Isn’t it prudent to be getting a WOF on your house? Or is it just better to wait until we come to sell and then find out any issues?

The reason I raise this point is because sometimes vendors can miss out on a sale or have a conditional sale price negotiated downwards if a building inspection conducted by a purchaser, raises significant issues about your home. Typically the big ticket items that can cast a shadow over the sales process are:  re-roofing, the re-piling of foundations, & the re-cladding of the home, and sometimes even the rewiring of a home. If the contract isn’t cancelled for the above reasons, then typically vendors can expect buyers to want to pay less as they perceive these are costs they are going to pay once they own the home.

The big point here is that this type of scenario can be avoided or somewhat mitigated by being aware of any potential issues. One way is to book in a WOF with a trusted building inspector for your home. A building inspection can be anywhere from $250 – $600 depending on how comprehensive you want it to be. If you own a $500,000 this equates to roughly .1% of the value of your home. Is that a worthwhile investment, so that you know what’s happening with your home? I think so, especially if there is some serious work to do, that will protect that value of your home in the future.

This is not typically what people do, and my suggestion is if you are engaging a builder to do such an inspection, ask them to put together a maintenance plan along with an assessment of work to be done. As this work is completed over time you are able to ask the builder to update the plan with what you have done. If there is not a lot of maintenance required, then great! If there are some maintenance works required, then you can plan for these, and also can convey the value you’ve added to the property/or maintained for the property when it comes time to sell your home. Having a maintenance plan means you’ve got something to work to, and something to show for it.

Even if you don’t want to consider this, then at the very least consider a building inspection  a few months before you consider selling. If you know what needs doing on your home and you have a dollar value amount for the cost of any works, if any disputes arise after the purchaser has a building inspection, then the building inspection can be used as a reference document. Or you now have an action list of maintenance items to address before going to market.

Building WOF’s by a professional tradesperson should become the norm for people. Would you like to know the current condition of your home? I’m interest to hear your thoughts on this.