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The Great Chattels Mishap And Other Real Estate Lessons
•Zebunisso Alimova
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The fastest way to lose money on a property purchase isn’t paying a bit too much, it’s missing the one question that exposes a repair, a consent issue, or a settlement-day argument waiting to happen. We’re continuing our bias checklist by talking through the questions we actually want buyers to ask a real estate agent, because the best outcomes come from clear facts and fewer assumptions.
We start with urgent repairs and what proper disclosure looks like, including how a builder’s report can take the heat out of awkward conversations. From there we move into alterations and why older homes are more likely to have changes that may or may not be consented. We talk about checking the council file, when a LIM report is worth making a condition, and how to think about consents and certificates without getting spooked.
If you’re buying an older New Zealand home, the details that matter for insurance and peace of mind come up quickly: piles, plumbing, wiring, and whether there’s proof the work was done to a proper standard. We also cover heating and insulation through the lens of Healthy Homes, especially if you’re buying a future rental or you simply want a warm, dry place to live.
Then we get into the surprisingly dramatic world of chattels: what stays, what goes, what to do when something breaks before settlement, and why alarms and appliances can turn into last-minute standoffs. If you’re a first home buyer or an investor doing due diligence, you’ll leave with a tighter question list and fewer nasty surprises. Subscribe, share it with a mate who’s house hunting, and leave a review. What question do you wish you’d asked before you bought?
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Part three of our episodes on bias asking questions to the real estate agent, not sponsored by West Beck List. All right. Let's go. So we are down to a question. We just talked about the repairs and stuff. Well, sorry, subdivisions.
And now we're going to talk about does the home need any urgent repairs? Surely there will be in your disclosures as well.
SPEAKER_00
Definitely. Yeah. I mean, it's it's a no-brainer. Buyers are smart, they're gonna figure it out. We recommend that they get builders' reports anyway. Like, we're not trying to hide anything. Oh, I do have a story for you actually. My very first sale when I went on board with George to sell houses. We had this house and it had rot in its cladding. And it was really popular house. And people going around the outside before they came inside. And they were I had so many people come in and go, Hey, hey, do you know there's rot in the cladding? We're like, Yes, we actually do. See this builder's report we've got here, and we had it on the bench or printed out. We're like, check page 27, and that goes over the builders' findings on this cladding and what needs to be done urgently. And they were like, Oh, because I think they were kind of expecting to like catch us out or something. Like, we we don't hide stuff like that. We tell them, yes, this needs to be done. The person who ended up buying it actually covered the cladding in a plastic, I'm still not exactly sure what it was, but like a sort of like duraceal, you know, like a plastic covering so that the rot wouldn't get worse between buying it and settlement. So they had to get permission from the vendor to do that. But of course the vendor said, yeah, by all means, just to protect it from the elements. So it gave them a bit of time to sort of make it weathertight, and then once they moved in, they repaired it. Like she had people in her family that could help her out with that. So yeah, so definitely we would definitely say if there was anything in urgent need of repair, if we know about it, and most of them we do know.
SPEAKER_01
And that's where we're gonna do a separate episode around the builders' reports and the importance of
Alterations, so that would be more for like the older style homes where a garage might have been converted back in the day to like a playroom or something, possibly without consent, possibly with, we're not sure. There might have been walls in some of the older properties that were like the dining room was a special room of its own, and we all like open plan now, so they might have removed a wall, and that's where a lot of our due diligence comes in before listing the house. We request a council file, uh, we check for structural walls and things like that, make sure the footprint matches what's on the council file. So, yes, we can answer stuff like that.
Does all the work have consents and certificates? And again, normally you would know.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we do. We check the limb for that. Yeah. The only problem is when a homeowner doesn't pay for a limb, then that can be a little bit kind of like if we don't have the information, we would recommend that they get a limb as part of their if they're doing a tend or a deadline, would say, hey, put a condition on for the limb so you can check it, especially if it's been built like in the 1940s or 50s or 60s, like you might not have the sort of same exact footprint. Yep.
older properties. Have piles, plumbing, wiring been redone and when? We have this question for insurance purposes as well for the houses that are older than 1920s, 1940s, somewhere.
SPEAKER_00
Something like that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Somewhere there. We usually ask that question, and it's important for us to know because otherwise insurance will not cover it.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I remember that from when I was working in banking. There were the five questions that and it's great when I get a buyer asking me those questions. I know they're almost at the end of their due diligence and they're likely to make an offer. So I'm always very happy to find out. Um, the other thing is we find out what the where the current homeowner is insured as well, is a helpful thing so that they can cross-reference that. Um, if we know about plumbing wiring empires, we'll tell them. It's interesting though, unless we have a certificate to prove that it's been done, it we can only say hey the vendors said that they've done this, they don't have any paperwork to back up who was done by what standard. That's the only kind of like little grey area where you like if you don't have an electrical certificate and you've just done this work, is it done by a registered person, like a properly certified person? Yeah. Okay. But you could get a builder's report to check that stuff.
Yeah, this is with the healthy homes, this is really key. So it's quite obvious what heating is available usually. Like you're like, here's a heat pump in the lounge, and there's another heat pump in the bedroom. But the one that we just sold last week didn't have any heating. She used oil heaters, and the house was actually really warm. Like we went there at different times of the day, and the oil heater was perfectly fine. But we would say to them, you can't get this rented with an oil heater, it has to be a fixed source of heating. So, like a hump, a heat pump that came out. You know, those sorts of things. And insulation, I believe there's different types of insulation. So the homeowner might have put insulation in back in the day and it might not reach today's standard of insulation because the standards change all the time. So we can only really say, look, we've looked in the attic and we can see there's some pink bats or whatever in there. We're not sure if it meets today's regulations, but here's some phone numbers you could call to get it assessed if you're worried about that. Maybe they've got kids or maybe they are planning to rent it.
SPEAKER_01
Mmm, that's a really good one. The last one is really interesting. What
feetings are being sold with the home? Yeah. That will be in your shuttle list, wouldn't it? Yes, it would.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
I hate that word by the way. Is it shuttle or chattel?
SPEAKER_00
I guess I I say chattel, but I don't know. I'm not confident on how that's pronounced. But it doesn't, yeah. I mean, most things are pretty easy to understand. Like if there's an oven, it's included. If there's a fridge, it's not included. Unless the homeowner is downsizing or upsizing and doesn't want to take their fridge. The weird ones are like special lampshades. So they might have like a really fancy or sentimental lampshade that they don't want included in the sale. Would often say to them, hey, you know, why don't you swap the lampshades out before you list the house? But maybe it makes the room look really cool, or maybe they want to enjoy the lampshade while they're in the house, so they will just have it there, but it will be excluded from the chattels. Shelving is usually included if it's fixed to the walls. And yeah, there's there's a variety of different things.
SPEAKER_01
I had a bit of a boo-boo story where my mum made these beautiful curtains for my firstborn in our house in Palms the North. And when we sold a house, I sold a house by accident with those curtains and I couldn't take them off because apparently, like part of the reason they really wanted that house because of those beautiful curtains. Oh no. And because I never crossed them off the list, I had to sell it.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and if they wanted them, I mean, most reasonable people would say, Oh, yeah, we understand. No, you take your curtains as long as you replace them with something equally suitable.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Um, but they were one of a kind. Oh they were brought from back home. So yeah, my poor mum, she still reminds me of that. Yeah, of course she would. That I sold the house with those curtains. Yeah. And you're right, like if you haven't crossed it out, then you know you've got to be careful. And then, but also the reverse, like if you have something on the list and then you no longer have it. Like if
it breaks. If it breaks. Like I see some posts about oh, you know, we're selling a house and then the oven has broken. Can we replace it with a similar value or a completely different hob?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you have to replace it so that it and it's probably best practice to tell the buyer, hey, the oven's just broken. Bugger. I'm gonna- Good timing for you. Yeah, I've got to buy a similar value oven, or would you prefer the money so you can go and choose your own? So it depends on the homeowner and and you can negotiate that. The best thing to do is to call the law call the agent, because we can help negotiate for free. And then once an agreement's been met, then do it via the lawyers officially. Okay. So yeah, that that can happen. I had a friend who moved into a house and the oven broke the day before she moved in and she was laughing and the homeowner was furious. But we always say that like when we're listing the house, make sure all the chattels are working.
So the heated towel rails, insyncorators are still a thing. Yeah, and they're always broken, but like just cross it off or say insyncoraker is not working, and alarms as well. Like you might want to put on the chattels, alarm is in the house, as is where is has never been used.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you know, we had that happen to us. So again, when we bought a house, the one I bought off trade me, it had the alarm system in there, but we've never used it in our entire life. But when we went to sell it, we never crossed it off. And on the day of the settlement, the buyer, it's a very picky buyer, they uh they wanted a working alarm and we're like, well, we never had it activated, so we had to actually pay for a specialist to come out and get the alarm working for her, even though we never had it working for us. We'd paid for someone to have it working for her because that was part of the list, and we were in danger of not being able to settle, and I just didn't want to risk it.
SPEAKER_00
That is crazy, super stressful. I actually sold a house with an alarm and I got a similar story. So the agent rang me and I was in the middle of moving, like sitting in the truck, sort of like well, the car following the truck, and he rang me and he goes, Your buyer is refusing to settle until you give her your code for the alarm. And I was like, But today's the day that we're settling, I've cancelled my account and she needs to ring up and create her own account so that she can get her own PIN number to put onto the alarm system. And he was like, No, no, she's saying she wants your PIN code. And I was like, But my PIN code doesn't work in the same way that the electrical bill or the water bill or whatever would be in your name. Like you cancel it when you move out, and the new person has to create their own account. So yeah, it was quite funny. It took a couple of calls before she kind of really realized like she had to create her own account because even if she had my PIN, my profile was gone, like my account was cancelled, it was done. It wouldn't work. Interesting.
Well, thank you so much, Megan. I really appreciate this beautiful list. Not sponsored by West Beck. And but for those that are listening, and if you do have any of your questions of your own, please feel free to reach out to us. You know, we're here to help, we're here to set you right on the pathway of buying your first home, buying investment property, or just getting on the letter. We're here to help. Thank you so much.
