Victorian government vows to shift building inspection costs from buyers to sellers
Posted by gazmal
Victorian government vows to shift building inspection costs from buyers to sellers
Posted by gazmal
26 Comments
I wouldn’t trust a vendor supplied inspection
Cool, but the seller better be paying for the inspector I choose and the inspector better be communicating with me and not the seller.
Enter a sub section of cheap and nasty inspectors with low rates and questionable ethical standards.
Huh… In theory a sound idea, but in practice it means the independence and reliability of building inspection reports is called into question. After all, it is absolutely in the interest of a seller to have a report that says everything is fine, whether it actually is or not…
On the other hand, a building inspector engaged by a prospective buyer has no such interest in helping the seller make their sale, their interest is ensuring the prospective buyer is protected.
To me this just seems like a good way for dodgy builders and sellers to push stuff through the market that shouldn’t be, and the eventual costs will end up landing squarely on the buyer down the track when they find out about hidden problems.
What a rort
What they mean is pass costs to sellers which will then pass those costs to buyers for what is ultimately an untrustworthy document.
Useless unless inspectors are regulated hard, or government runs their own independent inspectors
We had this in the ACT, both as a buyer and seller. The inspectors are registered and have liability if they don’t mention something they should have seen and the reports were at least as good as the ones we got done independently in Melbourne.
Only if the buyer agrees on the inspector
10-20% of Buyers are currently spending hundreds if not thousands on independent inspections per property
If done by an accredited inspector this will be great to help people, with dodgy inspections giving people recourse against the person who signed the paperwork
I feel like people against this are just upset Labor is doing something good
Honestly this sounds like something to be run by the council for avoidance of conflict of interest.
Seems like a waste.
If you’re spending that amount of money, you’d want to make sure you use an inspector you trust.
If I was a buyer, I’d tell the seller not to worry, I’ll get my own one done.
This will help first buyers on low deposit schemes who are required now to get an inspection. They end up knowing the faults, but bidding against people who don’t and assume all’s fine. It puts them at a double disadvantage.
Sort of like a seller supplied road worthy for a car.
1M+ for a house an no one is confident enough to assure that it’s structurally sound. lmao
Stupid decision. Caveat emptor has always been the right way to do these things. An owner will get the cheapest inspection that will say it’s all great. That inspection will not be worth the paper it is written on so either the buyer must again pay for an inspection or other buyers will be lulled into a false sense of security.
I don’t get why everyone is being so negative about this.
I dislike the labor government as much as anyone here, but give them credit where it’s due. This is a good idea in theory.
It’s really unfair for multiple buyers to pay for an inspection on a property, that actually may be underquoted anyway. The seller should just pay once and add this to the cost of selling the property.
All we need to do is ensure there is some regulation and accountability on the side of the inspectors. For example, if they miss something major, they can be sued and lose their licence.
so does this mean that if the building report doesn’t show any issues “wink,wink”.Then any signed contact cannot be subject to a pest and building inspection claus?
Knowing the state government. They’re going to half ass this.
It would be great if it’s legally enforceable if something comes up the inspection didn’t find. Otherwise REA’s will just find cheap and easy inspectors that don’t kill contracts.
If you’ve been around the block a few times it’s easy to see how this is going to go.
The policy is great on paper and costs them nothing to implement, easy PR win making them look like they’re the good guys looking out for first home buyers etc.
But they won’t spend a cent on regulation of the inspectors, so in reality we’re just going to see exactly what we already see with new houses being ticked off despite being riddled with no compliant work.
Ask yourself this very basic question, if you were going to be dropping a million bucks on a house, would you save yourself $800~ and trust the seller’s chosen inspector who clearly has a vested interest in giving them a good report?
I rekon you’d have to be absolute insane to even consider it.
Another small step for Victoria to lead Australia. Might not be a perfect solution but so much better than the people that complain and complain then do nothing.
This sounds like a whole nothing burger. A building and pest inspection only costs a few hundred dollars and what’s stopping the seller from adjusting the asking price to account for it?
So if the seller gets a dodgy report and you get your own done does that mean every “subject to building and pest” ends up in court where it’s one report versus another ?
With the way VbA is going, this will be an absolute disaster for buyers. I will still hire my own guy.
Years ago real estate agents thought I was odd because I climbed under the house and brought my own ladder
Before getting a building inspection.
I think this needed to happen, and should be combined with liability for the inspectors should they fail to identify or disclose something clearly detectable.
Effectively, they should act as an independent entity that works for the council / government rather than the seller (regardless of who the costs are passed on to).
That being said, it’s *definitely* going to sting having paid for an inspection when we bought, and then again for the same damn house when we sell!