CAN A BUILDING INSPECTION HELP YOU NEGOTIATE A BETTER PRICE?
Disclaimer - Dwell Building Services is not in the business of Property Negotiation.
But we have been in close proximity to property sales for a long time and from what we’ve witnessed, we believe there are some situations where you should definitely go back to the seller with your building inspection report in hand and query some of the findings.
Assuming you negotiated the first deal taking the house at face value that there were not going to be too many major surprises, if something expensive, structural and unexpected came up in the due diligence process, you would be within your rights to negotiate. The alternative would be to walk away.
Top 4 Major Defects/Situations that justify a return to the negotiation table:
(1) Major termite damage found to the framework anywhere in the house but especially in the roof space. If there is structural damage caused by termites in the roof framing, it is pretty much guaranteed to be throughout the property and you’ll have to pull down every plasterboard wall to work out where. Big expensive headache. Would be a deal breaker for me.
(2) If there’s moisture (detected via moisture metre) found behind the bathroom walls and corresponding cracking/damaged grout to the shower areas. You don’t know how long this has been going on. This is a 15-25 year old house type defect that isn’t uncommon - water always finds a way. Ironically, shower sealing mobs are not expensive, but the damage moisture leaves can be devastating. If you suspect that you need to pull it all up and start again, you should renegotiate.
(3) If you’re buying an older style unit and find out from your building report that there are a lot of issues that affect the whole property (for example external paint, balustrades, concrete cancer in the parking garage) but your conveyancer has done a strata search for you and there’s no money in the sinking fund. Those 2 bits of information together can tell you that you may be hit with an extra strata levy or similar...You don’t want to incur something like that 4 months in to owning a new property.
(4) If, in the process of the building inspection, you find out that the seller has lied or withheld information about the building. This could reveal itself in the form of an undeclared renovation, a fixup job that wasn’t discussed or was poorly done, anything. Extra points if the sales agent has presented you with their own “version” of a building and pest inspection that doesn’t match up with yours. Extra extra points if the sales agent tries to discourage you from getting your own, or waiving the cooling off period.
(5) If you negotiated from a distance and now that you’re reading the report, the property does not match the photos. We’ve never done this ourselves, but we have had clients who are buying from interstate or overseas and that process has its own set of challenges. Not ideal but it happens more than you’d think!
That about covers it. We always recommend that you negotiate for property in good faith to position yourself as open, not jumping to conclusions… Having said that, you need to stand up for yourself and ask for what you want out of the deal too.
