Can You Walk Away?

SPEAKER_00 0:10

If you're a buyer and you've done a builder's report and you're wondering whether you can pull out of a purchase because of the builder's report and what warrants it, this is the episode for you. Listen up. I've got Evan with me today from Czech Home Building Inspections. Hello, Evan.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Hi, how's it going?

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Good, thank you. Now, you've got a story for me today.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Yeah, so

Meet The Building Inspector

SPEAKER_01 0:31

this would have been maybe about two years ago. So I did an inspection on a house in Lower Hart. It was quite a big house. I think it was about 280 squares, multiple bathrooms, really well looked after. The exterior was a stucco-clad house, so that inherently has some risk areas, but the exterior was actually in not too bad condition.

Moisture Readings In Tiled Bathrooms

SPEAKER_01 0:58

I discovered some potential elevated moisture readings in a fully tiled bathroom.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

But that's common, isn't it, in the bathroom to have elevated moisture readings?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yes, yeah. So we never test on the inside of the shower. And the way that the waterproofing systems work is even if we do get elevated moisture right next to the shower, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's failing. It just means that moisture is moving in behind those tiles. And so as long as it's like pretty localized and it's not ridiculously high, you can kind of say you need to monitor this. The good part was that you could get into the subfloor. I crawled all the way under the access hole was on the other side of the house, so I had to crawl the entire length of the house, which was always fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah, job sounds fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Great.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Um needs Pilates.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Yeah, ducking and diving underneath uh the ducting um for the heat pump system and stuff. Got over to the bathroom and I couldn't really see any elevated moisture or moisture staining to the timber. There was a little bit, but it's pretty common with stucco clad houses where the bottom plate will have some moisture because the cladding will absorb moisture, moisture will run down. So it was a a little bit here and there, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. So I pulled it up in the report. The buyer wanted to do a little bit of further investigation. The the vendor allowed it, which

Tiles Off Reveals Rotten Studs

SPEAKER_01 2:39

was good because they obviously wanted to sell the house. They ended up pulling off a couple of tiles and the studs were rotten on the inside. And to redo that entire waterproofing system and bathroom, they would have had to redo, they had to do all the tiles and and waterproof the entire thing because I think the bathroom was only about four or five years old. So uh it's failed, and so then you need consent and go through the whole process. So I think they ended up getting a quote for something like like $40,000 or something.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

I was about to say that'll be about $50,000.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

In today's money, two years later.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Yeah, true, true, true, true. So I think the vendors obviously didn't want to negotiate on the price they pulled out because essentially they classified it as a lemon. Yeah, it it's it's one of those wild things is you get a a small detail like that in a building inspection where there is potential elevated moisture because it's it's hard to tell my moisture meter could have been reacting with something on the inside of the wall. And they could have opened that up and it may have been fine. I've got a pretty good track record of when I say that there's elevated moisture and they've opened up, there's elevated moisture. So I'm pretty confident when I do say it is, but you just can't 100% confirm without invasive testing or destructive testing.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Wow. So that really saved those people from buying something that would have cost them. And I mean, look, I still have clients that would have gone for something like that anyway.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Absolutely same. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

If they know what they're doing, yeah, if they've got the money to do that, then yeah. But I guess if, and again on the flip side of it,

Banks, First Home Buyers, Hard Calls

SPEAKER_00 4:28

we do deal with a lot of first-time buyers that don't have the funds to renovate. And most most often than not, the bank will actually turn around and say the funding will be declined for that sort of property.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Because if the clients don't have the money to renovate, even though they might have the skills, like sometimes you know, I might be a plumber saying, Hey, I can do it myself, I'll fix it myself, or a builder, the bank may still not approve that.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah, yeah, it it's tough because at the end of the day, you just have to you have to go with your gut. If you have the ability to do the renovations, I I'm not there to kind of you know turn buyers away. I want I want people to be buying houses, like otherwise I'll be out of the job. But yeah, my job is to tell you what's there and the and the risk areas, and and luckily for that, that one instance, I highlighted a risk area and it turned out to be right. I mean, there was a lot of dry rot as well in the wall. So my moisture meter wasn't picking up anything like that, but the studs were failing. So yeah, that's why it ended up being quite a significant quite major. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Awesome. Well, Evan, thank you so much, and um hope to see you soon again with more stories.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah, great.