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Making Smarter Offers With A Proper Builders Report
•Zebunisso Alimova
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You’re standing in the lounge of a house you might buy, offer paperwork is coming, and someone says, “Just get your dad to have a look.” That tiny moment can decide whether you end up with confidence or with costly surprises. We sit down with Megan, a real estate agent and keen listener of our earlier chats with Evan the building inspector, to unpack what actually happens before a builders report is even booked: the offer stage, the conditions, and the choices buyers make under pressure.
We get practical about the difference between a builder and a qualified building inspector in New Zealand. A builder can be knowledgeable, but a specialist inspector brings process, up to date training, and crucially, insurance and independence. That independence is what makes a report useful when you need to activate a condition, document what was found (and what could not be accessed), and have something vendors will take seriously. We also talk about effort and access, because crawling under a house or into a roof space is where the real answers often live.
Then we move into negotiation: how you use a builder’s report to ask for remediation or a price reduction, and why getting two or three quotes matters. A roof story shows how estimates can swing wildly depending on method and access, and why evidence beats vibes when tens of thousands of dollars are on the line. We also cover the personal risk of mixing family and money, and why even well meaning friends may not want the liability of your biggest purchase resting on their call.
If you’re a first home buyer (or helping one), this is a straight talking guide to due diligence, conditional offers, and smarter property decisions. Subscribe, share this with a mate who’s house hunting, and leave a review with the biggest building report lesson you’ve learned.
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I did a few episodes with Evan, the building inspector, and my beautiful friend Megan, who's a real estate agent as well, she listened to those episodes and she thought, ooh, there's an interesting angle here. Hello, Megan. Hello. Builders' reports.
SPEAKER_00
Yes. I was it was quite interesting because I listened to most of your episodes.
SPEAKER_01
I've got a number one fan.
SPEAKER_00
You do, you do. He covered a lot of what the builders' report includes and the work that they do on their reports and how accessible they try to make it for buyers
to understand. But I thought if you go back a step to my job, because his job starts when the book building report has been booked, but my job is at the point where the buyers make the offer and we say to them, What conditions would you like to add? And they say, Oh, can you put a builder's report on there? And we're like, okay, how many days do you want? And things like that. And then I say to them, Do you want a list of our approved building inspectors for Carpenter to help you out? They're all insured, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, oh no, I'm going to get my dad to do it. Or I've got a friend who's coming. And there's that little moment where you have that chat with
them. Did you know the difference between your friend or a family member doing a report for you versus a proper LBP, fully insured, up to $2 million, like licensed, metal qualified, met all the criteria, building inspector. Because any builder can go through a house and have good knowledge of the house and point out problems, but only the special building inspector people uh have the insurance and have that sort of I guess you can come back to them if there's issues.
SPEAKER_01
Interesting. Because I guess a lot of people don't think about that condition to be a proper condition that they can activate.
SPEAKER_00
And I mean there's there's criteria, of course, and you know, there's there's quirky things with a house that maybe they couldn't pick up because they weren't able to access under the floor or in the roof space or whatever. But they usually clearly know that in their reports. But there's a lot of buyers, especially first home buyers, who don't understand what the difference is because they hear builder and they're like, but dad's builder, they don't realize that a building inspector is different to a builder. Yeah. So we try and explain it to them, and then we're like, we'll obviously be guided by what they want to do, but it is a it's really interesting conversation to have.
Okay. The way I usually sit with my clients when they want to put an offer is I often explain to them that if you put a builder's condition and then you've done a report, I always go back to the report. I never mentioned that, you know, if your dad looks at it or uncle or friend. But if you do the report and then there's something that's comes up on that report, you can actually flag it with the vendors and you can get them to either remediate the issue, so the vendors have to fix it, or they drop the price. Like for instance, we had one where the roof was leaking and the vendors were kind enough to replace the roof, the other vendors were kind enough to drop the price by 20k because they didn't want to be bothered spending.
SPEAKER_00
They might have got like a quote for how much of a cost effects, yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Correct. So builders report first and then the quotes, and you probably want to get a couple of quotes, not just one. So two or three, usually good practice. And then you go back, and this is your ground to negotiate. But if you try to negotiate because your dad thinks that the windows need replacement because they're rotting, I don't think the vendors will take it seriously.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Even if your dad is a qualified builder.
SPEAKER_00
It depends on the vendor. If I mean, if you're threatening to pull out of the deal, then they probably would listen, but they'd still want a qualified person that they could independently verify who's not related to you to provide
the quotes to fix. So with the roof, I mean, you'd get in two or three roofers, for example. You'd say, Hey, look, the buyers have flagged this as an issue. We actually had that a little while ago. The buyers identified uh $20,000 needing to be done to the roof of repairs for a variety of things, and the homeowner got very grumpy and got their own roofer in and fixed everything notified to them by the buyers for about $3,000. But a lot of the original cost was scaffolding, and these people had used a different method. So yeah. Spider-Man. Yeah. So I mean, yeah. And but the you know, a lot of cases the buyers are happy if the issue is fixed or if the work, you know, is done to the standards. Yeah. Yeah. And then the original builder came back to check it off against what he'd identified. Yeah.
The other thing that Evan and I often discussed is, you know, he always tries to get into places if he can, like climbing under the house and getting into the rooftop and things like that. But obviously, there are places that he just can't physically get to. And again, you know, if if you're trying to get your dad or your uncle to do it for you, are they skinny?
SPEAKER_00
That was not where I was going with that. Sorry. Sorry.
SPEAKER_01
That was awesome. You know, it's just a matter of are they going to take the same effort? Yeah. Are they really gonna get into all the nooks and crannies and you know, really know what they're looking for? Yeah. As a builder, yeah, you may be knowing certain things, but I guess as a qualified building inspector, you're also undergoing various trainings and tests and you know, industry knowledge and things, yeah. Up to date with exactly what needs to happen.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
So I feel like it's almost like sending a GP to do a surgeon's work.
SPEAKER_00
Yes. Yeah. We had one guy turn up, the buyers didn't end up buying the house, but their builder friend turned up and just looked around and went, Oh, wow, I love the kitchen. This is cool. And it was very much a casual turning up as a friend. We were thinking he's not really checking very much stuff, you know, like he might have looked at it and had amazing knowledge of the house, but I think you have to put your head into the attic and
try and get under the floorboards and things. We also had another buyer who she was a vendor of ours, but then she was trying to buy as well. And all the way through, she was like, Yeah, yeah, my friend is gonna be the one who comes and checks it for me. And we had the conversation with her, you know, do you want a registered licensed blah, blah, blah builder or inspector? Or do you want your friend? Is he okay? Does he understand that you're buying this based on his knowledge? And she went back to him and had the conversation. And he goes, Oh, actually, I'm not comfortable providing you with this if you're going to base whether you buy the house on my advice or not, because he suddenly realized about the liability of that and how much trust she was placing in his opinion. And if she had just wanted his opinion, he'd have been fine. But realizing she was actually paying money for this house because he said so.
SPEAKER_01
And that was gonna be the last point I would have raised as well is that you know, family and money never mixes well. Like, try to, if there is a professional you can pay, just pay the professional, get the proper opinion, because then if you're gonna, you know, suddenly realize the house has issues or whatever, you can go back to the builder and you can say, Hey, you've told me this, but this is this, you know, what are we gonna do about this? Versus if that was your dad, or if that was your uncle, if it was your cousin or a brother, I mean, imagine how you're gonna feel. What sort of family feuds are you gonna have?
SPEAKER_00
And people try and use their family and friends to save money, which
is fair enough if they're making multiple offers on properties, it gets really expensive. But if you're looking at the cost of your home loan versus the cost of a building report, most of the building inspectors charge based on square meters. So if you're buying a first home, that's under 100 square meters. Usually you get a better price than if you're buying a 350 square meter home with two stories, for example. So yeah, it's she's looking at me. Um, yeah. So there's there's different prices for reports. And if you look at the cost of a loan or potential repairs for something that's missed versus a cost of a report, it is worth getting the report. Yeah.
Well, I hope Evan enjoyed this episode. Evan, this episode was not sponsored by Building Inspectors. But if you'd like to sponsor this episode, we're more than happy to do so. Awesome guys, thank you so much for listening in. And as usual, if there are any hot topics that you'd like us to address, feel free to reach out.
