Home Buyers Warned on Uninsured Inspectors

The first question anyone hiring a person to undertake a pre-purchase housing inspection should ask is do they have professional indemnity insurance and what are their qualifications, Australia's major independent home inspection service Archicentre said today.

An Archicentre architect inspecting a property

In a period of economic downturn and unemployment people try to set themselves up in businesses and areas where they may have no expertise or appropriate qualifications.

Archicentre, the building advisory service of the Australian Institute of Architects said the integrity of any pre-purchase home inspection report is fundamental to the first line of consumer protection for home buyers who are about to make the largest investment of their life.

Mr David Hallett, General Manager of Archicentre said the reality is people can operate in the housing inspection area in Australia with no real expertise and in some cases no professional indemnity insurance which leaves the home buyer high and dry if they have to make a claim over the quality of the report which led to purchasing a property with expensive faults.

Mr Hallett said that warning signs of a risky inspection process includes a request for cash payments before the inspection, the lack of a business contact telephone number apart from a mobile, a post office box address and no business address, and no professional indemnity insurance. There is often a lack of professional testing equipment such as ladders, damp detectors, levelling devices and probes.

"The end result of anyone 'buying a lemon' on a faulty pre-purchase housing report can be financial disaster, especially when people are heavily committed just to purchase the property only to find they are facing tens of thousands of dollars to fix unbudgeted faults, particularly where you have termites or major structural issues involved."

Archicentre 2009 national statistics on Building Faults compiled from Archicentre pre-purchase home inspections in each State

	VIC	QLD	WA	NSW	SA	TAS
Illegal Building	30%	22%	21%	29%	32%	34%
Faulty wiring	33%	21%	19%	31%	31%	25%
Roofing	53%	31%	30%	37%	37%	40%
Rising damp	32%	32%	30%	47%	46%	25%

Archicentre compiles detailed statistics from the inspections of 15,000 to 20,000 homes each year and these reveal common faults including faults with roofing. Archicentre inspectors find up to 50% of homes inspected in some areas have significant roofing problems and roofs are usually an area 'fly by night inspectors' do not check.

Repairs for roofing problems can vary from a few hundred dollars and up to $40,000 to $50,000 or more for serious roofing problems. Vendors sometimes sell without realising they have expensive roof problems however some do know and sell to avoid paying the costs to fix the problem.

Archicentre has addressed the homebuyer's risk and the inspection professional issues by only using seven year trained architects, and providing additional special training on housing and building inspection. The inspections of every Archicentre inspector are covered by professional indemnity insurance.

Mr Hallett said that Archicentre has also put extra consumer protection into its reporting system by including an extra free $15,000 insurance cover guarantee for the home buyer on any serious structural defects that become apparent to the home buyer within twelve months of the pre-purchase inspection and which were not identified in the pre- purchase report.

www.archicentre.com.au

Media Enquiries:
David Hallett General Manager Archicentre (03) 9819 4577 Mobile: 0439 439 115
Ron Smith Corporate Media Communications Archicentre (03) 9818 5700 Mobile: 0417 329 201

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