A Building Report can save your bacon!

Got accepted!

Those of you who have been avid followers will recall that we put in an offer on a house, conditional on a builders report, LIM and finance and it got accepted!

Action stations team – we thought that we were busy finding a house, but when you have an offer accepted there’s even more to do! First the LIM. In our negotiations, the vendor asked us to reduce our LIM condition down to 10 days. That meant that to have enough time to get the LIM from council and look at it properly, we needed to order an urgent LIM. So we did that. Next, book a building report inspection. Tick. The inspector arranged a time to check the property out directly with the agent, and sent through a report when it was done.

Well well, we thought as we scrolled through the report. Perhaps this isn’t our dream home after all.

When issues show up in your building report, you’ve got two choices. You can either find out how much it will cost to fix the issues and negotiate the purchase price accordingly, or if the issues are significant enough, you can cancel the agreement to purchase.

The report on our dream house showed that the roof would need replacing, that there had been leaks which affected wiring, and that there had been a structural wall removed and there appeared to be sagging in the ceiling. The LIM also showed that some of the major works that had been done were not consented by Council. We were on the fence for a couple of days whether we loved the house enough to take on those issues, or whether we wanted to get out of it.

Then a friend we now call Wise Wilko said to us “you don’t want to buy other peoples’ problems”. Figuring that was rather sound advice in these circumstances, we cancelled the agreement to buy what we thought was our dream home. And just like that, we’re back to square one.

Tally:

Lim: $400
Building report: $550
Not buying other people’s problems: Priceless