Building Inspectors Can Get You Out of Deep Water
With the amount of money involved in houses these days and the potential for agonizing heartbreaks and devastating financial losses, anyone who tries to do everything on his or her own without enlisting the help of industry professionals is taking enormous risks. Most of us only get one shot at establishing the perfect nest for ourselves and our loved ones and the consequences can ruin our lives if we get it wrong. Residential building inspection services can help prevent any such misgivings and may just help us avoid making the single biggest mistake of our lives (apart from getting married).
There are many situations, often critical, in which professional building inspectors can intervene and help us make informed decisions about buying, selling, repairing and renovating our houses.
When it comes to buying a house, most of the negotiating is done with real estate agents whose primary interest in the transaction is the commission they will earn on the closed sale. We are not taking a swipe at the level of professionalism and ethics of real estate agents here, we are just talking about a simple, undeniable fact that every buyer has to keep in mind when they’re about to invest their life savings in a new home. Professional building inspectors, on the other hand, are on the buyers’ side and are there to make sure that people get what they’re paying for.
Sellers also need to get in on the act when it comes to building inspection if they don’t want to risk lawsuits, or being landed with a hefty defect liability for a problem they may have overlooked, or could have avoided. They should also bear in mind that buyers will run for the door at the first signs of trouble, or cleverly use anything they find as leverage to negotiate prices down. All of this amounts to massive headaches and substantial financial haircuts, which could easily have been avoided. It is also important to realise that many codes and regulations pertain to a particular state, city or municipality. This means that building inspection in Sydney, for instance, will entail differences to similar practices in other cities and states.
It is needless to point out that houses deteriorate with time and require regular maintenance and repair. Ageing houses can begin to suffer from problems relating to structural fatigue, humidity, mould, termites and other situations that only worsen with time. Some houses may also still have asbestos panels incorporated into the structure, which spells serious health implications for the inhabitants. All of these problems can be identified by inspection professionals who have been trained to spot the symptoms and locate the areas in the house requiring immediate attention.
Renovations and extensions almost always involve knocking down sections of the house and rebuilding or adding new areas. From an engineering perspective, this often involves adding new loads to existing structural elements in the building, and renovators need to be dead certain that these elements can withstand them.
There really is no doubt regarding the necessity of having building inspectors survey the properties we live in or intend to buy. There are many well-trained professionals in the business, but the best ones would have to be the service providers that are also, to some extent, builders themselves, even if they are comparatively small construction companies. The reason is that these companies, especially those which provide across-the-board or macro solutions, have the inside knowledge and experience necessary to find the problems that are less obvious and more difficult to identify. In short, they know where to look.
