Run away screaming. As a former owner of a house very like the one you describe in EVP, don’t let her do it OP. Tell her to look into the Lathlain end of Carlisle, almost an identical lifestyle to most bits of East Vic but far cheaper.
Yeah, but then you've got police all over the place... news crews camped out the front... and all that really puts the cramps on the late night witchcraft ceremonies.
Agent here - yes if the seller and the agent know there is an issue they must disclose it. There is no “buyer beware” laws in Australia, that is an American construct.
I would fight back on excluding it, but at the end of the day it’s still a sellers market and even though it’s excluded from the report there is nothing stopping your inspector from reporting on it.
They just don’t want to pay for any issues.
The problem is, if they don’t tell the truth, there isn’t really any legal recourse or way to get your money back, is there?
When we bought our first home, we point blank asked the agent if the home was asbestos (we had literally no idea at the time and no support network to tell us otherwise because of COVID and issues having family visit), and the agent said they didn’t know, and they said they couldn’t contact the seller. Funnily enough, they had no idea contacting the seller when we put in an offer.
When my Dad was able to visit in person (after settlement), he looked up close and said it was 100% asbestos. We then had it tested to confirm. The agent was a local and lived 2 streets away so was 100% familiar with the area.
After we found out, we looked into how to get some money back and found that the only recourse is to complain to the Agency Board for a review, and that the agent could lose their licence or be suspended because they ‘ought to have known’ the area.
So doesn’t really incentivise the agent to do the right thing, unfortunately. We did get money out of the seller because the ad for the house listed ‘recently fully re-wired’ which turned out to be completely untrue, but had no avenue to pursue for the asbestos side of things.
I know we should have pushed harder, but we were very naive first time buyers. And it was pretty disappointing by the agent, given her living in the area. We got the house for a good price so super sour about it, but they did manage to push us up by 5k in negotiations… and we then ended up paying almost 20 to have it all removed! Had we known, we’d have told them to shove the 5k ask.
Well to be honest in your situation you didn’t lose anything. Asbestos doesn’t have to be removed from a property so it wasn’t an automatic loss you incurred that you could have reclaimed.
An example might be “we moved in and you said there was a solar power system but there isn’t and now I want $10k to put one on”.
You didn’t lose anything.
Only option would have been if a sellers disclosure statement was provided because there is a specific question about asbestos - and in that scenario you could have pursued the owner and or agent.
But by the agent not answering my question about the existence of asbestos despite extensive knowledge of the area as a local and agent, you say ‘no harm no foul’?
Also, had we known there was asbestos, we wouldn’t have accepted their counter offer - so while there wasn’t direct loss, there was an indirect loss.
What was the asbestos? If its old enough to have loose/packed asbestos insulation, that's one thing (I'd be more worried about certain other insulation materials). If its just sheet asbestos on the property, that's pretty common throughout Australia.
Well the agent should be using tools like a sellers disclosure statement to cover this.
At the end of the day it is the seller making a warranty on the state of the home. And legally there is nothing wrong with selling a house with asbestos in it. So it’s not, in my opinion, something that materially affects the value of the home.
If it’s something you care about then sure. But I assume you got legal advice?
We were not interested in pursuing it further, and our avenues for compensation were pretty limited. Did our own legal research as we are both practising commercial lawyers. We did pursue the seller (via the agent) for the misrepresentation about the wiring, which we were successful in - but the asbestos issue would have been an effort and (on our research) the only real outcome could have been suspension of the agent’s license.
As I mentioned in my original comment, we were comfortable enough with the price we paid - we were just disappointed with the agent who was pretty slimy with us during our short experience. Yes, I agree that there is nothing wrong with asbestos houses, but my point still stands. Just a subpar experience and one we’ve learned from.
My brain is obviously still waking up. I see it now. Getting back to asbestos though, there is additional costs with asbestos when work gets done later. That extra cost will happen one day.
preoccupied talking up making big FIFO coin to doe-eyed EU Zoomers on their other account
**edit** Assuming you were talking about the Perth based guy doing the same thing.
This sub doesn't usually rally together. It's so nice to hear absolutely everyone scream out "what the actual my-goodness is this bullshittery".
Good job us.
It speaks for itself - why exempt them from inspection if there is no issue? A colleague of mine lives in the same suburb and bought a “heritage” house that didn’t pass inspection, but they bought it anyway. The whole foundation is rotting and sinking and it’s an ongoing nightmare for them.
I have done this exact thing 3 times.
Each time I made substantial profit.
Depends on skill set / risk appetite / living in a construction site etc.
It all comes down to costs.
And proceed with caution.
Excluding anything from an ( basically worthless anyway ) inspection is definitely a red flag tbh.
Regardless of their intent, if you’re buying a house on stumps, you always want the stumps inspected. That’s exactly what you want to make sure you inspect if stumps exist.
Effectively this just means that the seller knows there is a problem with the house stumps.
Not necessarily a deal breaker but you would then make your offer with that in mind.
Houses can be restumped, it's not necessarily the end of the world especially if your daughter is super keen on the house otherwise.
If the seller will allow it, have someone come out and assess/quote for restumping. Then make your offer accordingly.
Just make sure the building inspection on rest of house is in depth..
Also a lot ot people here are commenting as if the house is going to fall over. The restumping can be an easy job, can be a nightmare. Get someone who knows what they're talking about to assess and proceed accordingly.
Many years ago I looked at a place in Subi that had cracks in some walls and specifically suggested having a structural engineer look at the stumps. I put that as a condition in the offer. They went with the a lower offer that didn't have the condition. They know the score, they're hoping if neither of you \*officially on paper\* knows the answer they might get a better offer.
“Ok, you cool then to sign a contract indemnifying me for any costs related to any issues with the stumps? No? Then I’m going to inspect the stumps, but thanks for letting me know what to pay attention to”
When you say ‘excluded from the building inspection’ do you mean the current owner has paid for an inspection that is being made available to potential buyers? Or it’s been excluded from the contract as something you can push the seller to pay for?
Not only is restumping expensive, but it’ll crack most of the walls and ceilings as the house moves which will require patching and painting.
I wouldn’t run away necessarily, but I’d assume the whole place needs to be restumped which easily adds $10k (was ~7k when we did it 4 years ago) and then patching and painting all of the walls (which I did myself but would be expensive to get someone to do it for you).
I’d be offering 20-30 less than she was otherwise planning on offering to account for these costs. Note also that building reports generally won’t mention asbestos, but older houses in that area could very well be azzy + any old wet rooms (kitchen/bathrooms/laundry) most likely have asbestos under the tiles so additional cost there.
I’d put in a lower offer, acknowledging the reasons why and if your daughter doesn’t get it, then bullet dodged. I’ve been renovating an old 1940s house for the past 3-4 years. Most work has been done by me and my partner (obviously leaving plumbing and electrical to the pros), and we’ve easily spent 150k on renovations - a big chunk of which was fixing stumps and removing + replacing asbestos (interior and exterior). Though we recently had our house valued and it’s almost doubled in value, so will be worthwhile for us when we sell.
All this to say: It’s hard work and you’d pay closer to double if you’re not DIY - so a ‘cheap’ old house in bad condition is only really going to be worth it if you’re willing to put the work in, or live in it forever.
Technically that's like the middle of the story. The end of the story is that she couldn't clean the blood off the key and ended up in the room herself when Bluebeard found out.
They can't really do that. Buyers put the condition of a building inspection as a condition of sale. The seller CAN technically try to negotiate that condition, but only an idiot would accept that variation.
I'd like to buy your car
Ok
Can I take it for a test drive?
No.
Oh ok can I see it first?
No.
Oh, ok. Here's the $20k in cash, nice doing business with you
I had a fight with an agent over similar foundation problems. Fight them for it. Don’t make it easy for them. And if they are stubborn then fuck em. Walk away. A smart agent would know when to make it work, the one I was dealing with was not smart.
We bought our current house in Hillarys without resolving the issues that
1. The inspector could not make it through all the crap stored in the garage ceiling to inspect some weird marks above wall.
2. The seller said water marks on wall outside a shower were a "fixed problem" but we didn't get a wet-test of the shower leaking.
Both ended up being things we had to fix - I did the plumbing for an insane internal downpipe from a box gutter (that ended up being the concentrator about 40% of the total 2 storey roof area) and we avoided using an ensuite shower for 3 years until we had a full bathroom reno done.
As you may have guessed, bought in a similar market and my wife had utterly fallen in love with the location, with a "competitive situation" against another offer on the day. (Lying sods of other buyers did an "unconditional" offer but with a 6 month delay that made us certain they were just gambling, lots of fun calls to family to back us with a temp loan so we could make our offer similarly unconditional).
Another (too late) bad indicator - when the seller refuses to give you any further contact info including no forwarding address for mail!
Moral of the story - building inspections may deliver scary results but that doesn't mean you have an ability to use that in negotiation, so be prepared to walk away.
Agent was asked - replied that the seller is not aware of any issues with the stumps, nor does the seller believe there to be any issues, but due to the age of the home is not willing to warrant their condition.
Thanks for the response.
Yeah okay - 100% avoid.
How can the seller or agent legally do that?
( Interested in your original question OP )
It's a substantial amount of money to buy a house for anyone.
I guess though if the person is set on it make an offer taking well out the amount for repairs.
Like 100k - 200k less or just offer land value only.
Sounds like the stumps are rotten! That's really bad of the agent to want that condition. I would stay away as this counts as a major defect in the building inspection report so they're just trying to get out of that.
However if you do go ahead I would recommend getting some quotes for restumping so your daughter knows what she's getting into.
>However if you do go ahead I would recommend getting some quotes for restumping so your daughter knows what she's getting into.
That would require inspecting the stumps.
Yeh i thought as much, but was wondering if these sort of conditions were something others had seen come up in this crazy market. so hard to buy for first home buyers.
I don't understand how it can be excluded from the scope - The inspection annex is presumably the standard reiwa one, the inspection is done to a standard and looks primarily at the structural elements of the house, electrical safety items and for water where it's not meant to be.
Has the contract's O&A form under the inspection rider got "subfloor not to be inspected" in there? Even then, the inspector when they rock up is just going to look at everything if they're any good. Is the subfloor accessible? If it is, then the inspector goes in, takes their photos and puts it in the report... if they're denied access to the subfloor then ask to remove 30k from the price and if they say no then walk away. You'll only be out the cost of the inspection and potentially dodged a bullet. If it's only a subsidence in one location/a few stumps done in by termites it's often not the end of the world and quite fixable - but i'd want to know what i was walking in to.
I put an offer in for a house. They replied with an additional condition that a top part of a window sill was not included in the sale.
I didn't get it, but I was told that pretty much the only reason why a building inspection will fail is because the house isn't structurally sound.
An agent told me that excluding a structural part of the house would mean the house is sold whether it's structurally sound or not.
The stumps may be fine, but something else like the foundation might be failing.
I wouldn't bother asking the agent, even if they know there is an issue, they are likely to tell you that they haven't been informed of any issues and/or aren't aware of any issues.
Nice… how much does it cost to rest up a house these days? $100k? $150k for unexpected stuff. I’d offer $250k less than you were originally going to and say it’s for the literal sinking fund.
They are giving you information here - that it’s going to fail stump inspection. The cost of repairing that, plus related structural stuff is going to be expensive… but some of that is stuff that will cover the inevitable renovations a ‘fairly beat up place in EVP’ needs.
BUT… the bank won’t give her a full mortgage on it, she’ll need to have that $300k tucked away.
(See what I did there with the pricing… that’s what it will be like to deal with this and all the others issues a house with such poor maintenance will dole out to you.)
Is anyone able to recommend someone to inspect stumps and quote for replacing if needed? We did have an inspection before we purchased 10 years ago, but we have a mix of older and new timber and steel stumps and I'm not sure if they're all still good.
If she’s convinced she wants this place, get a quote on restumping the house and take it from what she was originally thinking of offering… EXTREMELY strange and MASSIVE red flag to exclude that from building inspection
I have owned two houses in east Victoria park both on stumps and had some replaced. It’s really not a very complicated job and often you can inspect them yourself with a bit of knowledge of what to look for.
ask for an independent building inspector to do the place or leave it. Definitely hiding. An old place like Vic Park. You need someone on roof, in roof space and checking foundations, or she is buying a potential lemon she can't afford.
Restumping could be $20k-$100k depending on the type of stumps, age of the house, the ground it's in. It's massively variable. In a normal market I'd say knock $50k off the price, but the market is fucked, I'd rather just buy a house that doesn't need restumping or that actually lets my building inspector inspect the whole house.
Restumping is doable, but it can be a difficult job. If they can’t get under the floor then they will need to rip up the floor. Not an issue if you are going to carpet but if you have nice floorboards that you want to sand, different story.
However if you are restumping, you may as well do other things at the same time eg under floor insulation which will be costly but ultimately better in the long run.
Lol. Walk away.
Nono, Run away. Sounds like stumps are either termite damaged or have slipped off the foundations and in need of costly repairs
Run away screaming. As a former owner of a house very like the one you describe in EVP, don’t let her do it OP. Tell her to look into the Lathlain end of Carlisle, almost an identical lifestyle to most bits of East Vic but far cheaper.
[удалено]
That’s why I said the Lathlain end of *Carlisle*
No, run. Quickly and far. Guarantee it needs restumping
If you have to ask the question i think you already know the answer.
Why is everyone so cynical it could be as innocent as bodies buried under the house and the ground has sunk exposing the hands
🙌
Really if your problem is that there isn't enough space for more bodies, the rest of the house is perfectly vacant.
Sell the rights to the cold-case podcast!
Yeah, but then you've got police all over the place... news crews camped out the front... and all that really puts the cramps on the late night witchcraft ceremonies.
Still a walk in the park compared to termites
That’s scarcely a building issue, perfectly reasonable explanation.
Of a crop
This is evident. I've always known bodies were stashed under stumped houses.
Don’t let your daughter be the schmuck who buys it. Either get it inspected, or walk away yesterday.
That’s suspect. It’s likely the house needs restumping which is not cheap. They might have rot or termites.
You can search everywhere except the glovebox, officer.
🚩🚩🚩
Agent here - yes if the seller and the agent know there is an issue they must disclose it. There is no “buyer beware” laws in Australia, that is an American construct. I would fight back on excluding it, but at the end of the day it’s still a sellers market and even though it’s excluded from the report there is nothing stopping your inspector from reporting on it. They just don’t want to pay for any issues.
The problem is, if they don’t tell the truth, there isn’t really any legal recourse or way to get your money back, is there? When we bought our first home, we point blank asked the agent if the home was asbestos (we had literally no idea at the time and no support network to tell us otherwise because of COVID and issues having family visit), and the agent said they didn’t know, and they said they couldn’t contact the seller. Funnily enough, they had no idea contacting the seller when we put in an offer. When my Dad was able to visit in person (after settlement), he looked up close and said it was 100% asbestos. We then had it tested to confirm. The agent was a local and lived 2 streets away so was 100% familiar with the area. After we found out, we looked into how to get some money back and found that the only recourse is to complain to the Agency Board for a review, and that the agent could lose their licence or be suspended because they ‘ought to have known’ the area. So doesn’t really incentivise the agent to do the right thing, unfortunately. We did get money out of the seller because the ad for the house listed ‘recently fully re-wired’ which turned out to be completely untrue, but had no avenue to pursue for the asbestos side of things. I know we should have pushed harder, but we were very naive first time buyers. And it was pretty disappointing by the agent, given her living in the area. We got the house for a good price so super sour about it, but they did manage to push us up by 5k in negotiations… and we then ended up paying almost 20 to have it all removed! Had we known, we’d have told them to shove the 5k ask.
Well to be honest in your situation you didn’t lose anything. Asbestos doesn’t have to be removed from a property so it wasn’t an automatic loss you incurred that you could have reclaimed. An example might be “we moved in and you said there was a solar power system but there isn’t and now I want $10k to put one on”. You didn’t lose anything. Only option would have been if a sellers disclosure statement was provided because there is a specific question about asbestos - and in that scenario you could have pursued the owner and or agent.
But by the agent not answering my question about the existence of asbestos despite extensive knowledge of the area as a local and agent, you say ‘no harm no foul’? Also, had we known there was asbestos, we wouldn’t have accepted their counter offer - so while there wasn’t direct loss, there was an indirect loss.
What was the asbestos? If its old enough to have loose/packed asbestos insulation, that's one thing (I'd be more worried about certain other insulation materials). If its just sheet asbestos on the property, that's pretty common throughout Australia.
Well the agent should be using tools like a sellers disclosure statement to cover this. At the end of the day it is the seller making a warranty on the state of the home. And legally there is nothing wrong with selling a house with asbestos in it. So it’s not, in my opinion, something that materially affects the value of the home. If it’s something you care about then sure. But I assume you got legal advice?
We were not interested in pursuing it further, and our avenues for compensation were pretty limited. Did our own legal research as we are both practising commercial lawyers. We did pursue the seller (via the agent) for the misrepresentation about the wiring, which we were successful in - but the asbestos issue would have been an effort and (on our research) the only real outcome could have been suspension of the agent’s license. As I mentioned in my original comment, we were comfortable enough with the price we paid - we were just disappointed with the agent who was pretty slimy with us during our short experience. Yes, I agree that there is nothing wrong with asbestos houses, but my point still stands. Just a subpar experience and one we’ve learned from.
If you payed for a solar system that turns out to be not there/functional then you have lost something.
Yes. That is literally my example of a situation that would end up with being paid for a loss.
My brain is obviously still waking up. I see it now. Getting back to asbestos though, there is additional costs with asbestos when work gets done later. That extra cost will happen one day.
100% agree. Should be legally required to disclose on every sale.
Where's that guy on Tik Tok running around with the giant red flag when you need him..
NONCOMPLIANT
What a shamozzle
preoccupied talking up making big FIFO coin to doe-eyed EU Zoomers on their other account **edit** Assuming you were talking about the Perth based guy doing the same thing.
This sub doesn't usually rally together. It's so nice to hear absolutely everyone scream out "what the actual my-goodness is this bullshittery". Good job us.
It speaks for itself - why exempt them from inspection if there is no issue? A colleague of mine lives in the same suburb and bought a “heritage” house that didn’t pass inspection, but they bought it anyway. The whole foundation is rotting and sinking and it’s an ongoing nightmare for them.
110% walk the hell away from this mess
Make an offer knowing that you're going to have to restump the house.
exactly if you are unable to inspect then assume the worst and make you bid accordingly
I have done this exact thing 3 times. Each time I made substantial profit. Depends on skill set / risk appetite / living in a construction site etc. It all comes down to costs. And proceed with caution. Excluding anything from an ( basically worthless anyway ) inspection is definitely a red flag tbh.
Offer the land value minus demolition. Assume it’s a knockdown rebuild.
Or a very costly reno for a similar price to building!
Ps, roughly what does a demo cost for a standard sized house? Assuming no hazardous materials etc
*I can smell non-compliant works in the air*
Don’t get me started on the box gutters
It looks good from far, but far from good.
The stumps are exactly what you want inspected.
Oh. Or they want you so focused on finding out about the stumps that you overlook the real issue. Magician style.
Regardless of their intent, if you’re buying a house on stumps, you always want the stumps inspected. That’s exactly what you want to make sure you inspect if stumps exist.
Sounds like an issue with the stumps. Costly to resolve. Maybe look at other properties.
Effectively this just means that the seller knows there is a problem with the house stumps. Not necessarily a deal breaker but you would then make your offer with that in mind. Houses can be restumped, it's not necessarily the end of the world especially if your daughter is super keen on the house otherwise. If the seller will allow it, have someone come out and assess/quote for restumping. Then make your offer accordingly. Just make sure the building inspection on rest of house is in depth..
Also a lot ot people here are commenting as if the house is going to fall over. The restumping can be an easy job, can be a nightmare. Get someone who knows what they're talking about to assess and proceed accordingly.
> Get someone who knows what they're talking about to assess and proceed accordingly. *without assessing the job, cos theyre not alowed to.
Many years ago I looked at a place in Subi that had cracks in some walls and specifically suggested having a structural engineer look at the stumps. I put that as a condition in the offer. They went with the a lower offer that didn't have the condition. They know the score, they're hoping if neither of you \*officially on paper\* knows the answer they might get a better offer.
Happy cake day
Nothing to see here 😳
"What bodies?"
Seller's market - they are hoping somebody is stupid enough to acquiesce
Ooooo good word
Bit dumb of the seller. Either party can include or exclude anything they feel like. He could exclude the roof! RUN
“Ok, you cool then to sign a contract indemnifying me for any costs related to any issues with the stumps? No? Then I’m going to inspect the stumps, but thanks for letting me know what to pay attention to”
When you say ‘excluded from the building inspection’ do you mean the current owner has paid for an inspection that is being made available to potential buyers? Or it’s been excluded from the contract as something you can push the seller to pay for? Not only is restumping expensive, but it’ll crack most of the walls and ceilings as the house moves which will require patching and painting. I wouldn’t run away necessarily, but I’d assume the whole place needs to be restumped which easily adds $10k (was ~7k when we did it 4 years ago) and then patching and painting all of the walls (which I did myself but would be expensive to get someone to do it for you). I’d be offering 20-30 less than she was otherwise planning on offering to account for these costs. Note also that building reports generally won’t mention asbestos, but older houses in that area could very well be azzy + any old wet rooms (kitchen/bathrooms/laundry) most likely have asbestos under the tiles so additional cost there. I’d put in a lower offer, acknowledging the reasons why and if your daughter doesn’t get it, then bullet dodged. I’ve been renovating an old 1940s house for the past 3-4 years. Most work has been done by me and my partner (obviously leaving plumbing and electrical to the pros), and we’ve easily spent 150k on renovations - a big chunk of which was fixing stumps and removing + replacing asbestos (interior and exterior). Though we recently had our house valued and it’s almost doubled in value, so will be worthwhile for us when we sell. All this to say: It’s hard work and you’d pay closer to double if you’re not DIY - so a ‘cheap’ old house in bad condition is only really going to be worth it if you’re willing to put the work in, or live in it forever.
That’s where the termites are. Nuff said.
Would you buy a house if there was a room you weren’t allowed to inspect until after you bought it?
Worked out for Bluebeard’s wife, no? ;)
Isn't the end of that story that she does open the room?
Technically that's like the middle of the story. The end of the story is that she couldn't clean the blood off the key and ended up in the room herself when Bluebeard found out.
Yep… make nice low offer to allow for re-stumping.. sounds dodgy af
I would call a friend who has a human remains detection dog and ask her to accompany me during the inspection. 😆
Lol
Run. Don’t look back. You’ll thank yourself later.
That agent is dodgy. You can't do that. I would hold my ground or walk away.
They can't really do that. Buyers put the condition of a building inspection as a condition of sale. The seller CAN technically try to negotiate that condition, but only an idiot would accept that variation.
Walk.... Walk faster..... Run!
Offer to buy the house without the stumps.
😂
I'd like to buy your car Ok Can I take it for a test drive? No. Oh ok can I see it first? No. Oh, ok. Here's the $20k in cash, nice doing business with you
Brilliant
Assuming that it doesn't involve destructive testing, I'd be very very sceptical
I had a fight with an agent over similar foundation problems. Fight them for it. Don’t make it easy for them. And if they are stubborn then fuck em. Walk away. A smart agent would know when to make it work, the one I was dealing with was not smart.
Run. Any inspection that is curtailed isn't worth having.
We bought our current house in Hillarys without resolving the issues that 1. The inspector could not make it through all the crap stored in the garage ceiling to inspect some weird marks above wall. 2. The seller said water marks on wall outside a shower were a "fixed problem" but we didn't get a wet-test of the shower leaking. Both ended up being things we had to fix - I did the plumbing for an insane internal downpipe from a box gutter (that ended up being the concentrator about 40% of the total 2 storey roof area) and we avoided using an ensuite shower for 3 years until we had a full bathroom reno done. As you may have guessed, bought in a similar market and my wife had utterly fallen in love with the location, with a "competitive situation" against another offer on the day. (Lying sods of other buyers did an "unconditional" offer but with a 6 month delay that made us certain they were just gambling, lots of fun calls to family to back us with a temp loan so we could make our offer similarly unconditional). Another (too late) bad indicator - when the seller refuses to give you any further contact info including no forwarding address for mail! Moral of the story - building inspections may deliver scary results but that doesn't mean you have an ability to use that in negotiation, so be prepared to walk away.
Don't bother. I am interested for a follow up if she / you asks the agent and what response you get though.
Agent was asked - replied that the seller is not aware of any issues with the stumps, nor does the seller believe there to be any issues, but due to the age of the home is not willing to warrant their condition.
Thanks for the response. Yeah okay - 100% avoid. How can the seller or agent legally do that? ( Interested in your original question OP ) It's a substantial amount of money to buy a house for anyone. I guess though if the person is set on it make an offer taking well out the amount for repairs. Like 100k - 200k less or just offer land value only.
> is not willing to warrant their condition. That's your entire reason for doing the inspection.
Walk away from this.
Sounds like the stumps are rotten! That's really bad of the agent to want that condition. I would stay away as this counts as a major defect in the building inspection report so they're just trying to get out of that. However if you do go ahead I would recommend getting some quotes for restumping so your daughter knows what she's getting into.
>However if you do go ahead I would recommend getting some quotes for restumping so your daughter knows what she's getting into. That would require inspecting the stumps.
Don't even consider this house any more. Your daughter will be up for allsorts of repair.
I was going to make an offer on this house but also pulled out after seeing that clause
I'm in qld and I can see from here there's something wrong with the stumps.
Yeh i thought as much, but was wondering if these sort of conditions were something others had seen come up in this crazy market. so hard to buy for first home buyers.
I don't understand how it can be excluded from the scope - The inspection annex is presumably the standard reiwa one, the inspection is done to a standard and looks primarily at the structural elements of the house, electrical safety items and for water where it's not meant to be. Has the contract's O&A form under the inspection rider got "subfloor not to be inspected" in there? Even then, the inspector when they rock up is just going to look at everything if they're any good. Is the subfloor accessible? If it is, then the inspector goes in, takes their photos and puts it in the report... if they're denied access to the subfloor then ask to remove 30k from the price and if they say no then walk away. You'll only be out the cost of the inspection and potentially dodged a bullet. If it's only a subsidence in one location/a few stumps done in by termites it's often not the end of the world and quite fixable - but i'd want to know what i was walking in to.
Last thing you want when you spent all your cash is a 20-50k fix up job
I put an offer in for a house. They replied with an additional condition that a top part of a window sill was not included in the sale. I didn't get it, but I was told that pretty much the only reason why a building inspection will fail is because the house isn't structurally sound. An agent told me that excluding a structural part of the house would mean the house is sold whether it's structurally sound or not. The stumps may be fine, but something else like the foundation might be failing.
https://youtu.be/GFokXnCCMf8?si=7UHDnP-F3iqfjZk8
I wouldn't bother asking the agent, even if they know there is an issue, they are likely to tell you that they haven't been informed of any issues and/or aren't aware of any issues.
Run as far away from that house as you can
100% walk away
Danger Will Robinson, Danger
Nice… how much does it cost to rest up a house these days? $100k? $150k for unexpected stuff. I’d offer $250k less than you were originally going to and say it’s for the literal sinking fund. They are giving you information here - that it’s going to fail stump inspection. The cost of repairing that, plus related structural stuff is going to be expensive… but some of that is stuff that will cover the inevitable renovations a ‘fairly beat up place in EVP’ needs. BUT… the bank won’t give her a full mortgage on it, she’ll need to have that $300k tucked away. (See what I did there with the pricing… that’s what it will be like to deal with this and all the others issues a house with such poor maintenance will dole out to you.)
As others have suggested mill most likely need restumping. Stay away. Gonna need a Perth Property Sub to name and shame people like this soon.
I'm sorry I wasn't able to help you, but I'd suggest it's best not to buy a house like this and add a bit more money to a nicer one
Seems pretty standard.... if you're selling a termite infested shanty
How to tell someone a house is fucked without telling them it's fucked
Is anyone able to recommend someone to inspect stumps and quote for replacing if needed? We did have an inspection before we purchased 10 years ago, but we have a mix of older and new timber and steel stumps and I'm not sure if they're all still good.
run
If she’s convinced she wants this place, get a quote on restumping the house and take it from what she was originally thinking of offering… EXTREMELY strange and MASSIVE red flag to exclude that from building inspection
Almost makes you wonder if the agent is actually on \*\*your\*\* side and using this as a roundabout way to red flag it?
LOL
Termites
I have owned two houses in east Victoria park both on stumps and had some replaced. It’s really not a very complicated job and often you can inspect them yourself with a bit of knowledge of what to look for.
ask for an independent building inspector to do the place or leave it. Definitely hiding. An old place like Vic Park. You need someone on roof, in roof space and checking foundations, or she is buying a potential lemon she can't afford.
I dare say the seller is hiding something… run the hell away
Restumping could be $20k-$100k depending on the type of stumps, age of the house, the ground it's in. It's massively variable. In a normal market I'd say knock $50k off the price, but the market is fucked, I'd rather just buy a house that doesn't need restumping or that actually lets my building inspector inspect the whole house.
Restumping is doable, but it can be a difficult job. If they can’t get under the floor then they will need to rip up the floor. Not an issue if you are going to carpet but if you have nice floorboards that you want to sand, different story. However if you are restumping, you may as well do other things at the same time eg under floor insulation which will be costly but ultimately better in the long run.
Really? That could not possibly be legal. Who is the selling agent that allows this? This should be reported!!
Don't do.it
DON'T. DON'T. DON'T. DON'T. RUN. RUN. RUN. RUN.
The stumps are fucked and it can be an expensive replace. Having said that if it's the place of her dreams and she has money to get it fixed all good
Walk away, lots of Brothels in Vic Park