PERTHGetting your Perth home inspection-ready
The low-cost jobs that keep a building inspection report clean: access, drainage, small leaks and the safety items WA law already requires. What to do before you list.
There is a version of selling a house where the building inspection goes smoothly, and a version where it turns up a page of small faults that make a buyer nervous about the big ones. The gap between the two is often a weekend of cheap, dull jobs done before the inspector arrives. None of it hides anything. It just stops a sound house from reading like a neglected one.
The single most useful thing you can do costs nothing at all. It is access.
Access is the whole game
An inspector can only report on what they can reach. If the roof-space hatch is painted shut, if the manhole is behind a wardrobe full of boxes, if the subfloor vent is blocked by a garden bed, those areas get written up as "no access" and a cautious buyer reads "no access" as "something to worry about." Clear the way to the roof space, the subfloor, the meter box, the hot water system and the switchboard before the inspection. Move the stored boxes off the manhole. Open the side gate. It is the highest-value hour you will spend, because it turns a report full of caveats into a report full of clear findings.
This matters more in Perth than in a lot of places, because so many of our homes are double brick with a tiled roof, and the roof space is where the story is. On an older home that roof space is where delignification, batten condition and past leaks all show. If the inspector cannot get up there, the most important part of your house goes unread, and that helps nobody.
The safety items WA law already wants
Two things are required by law before a home changes hands in Western Australia, and both are cheap. The first is compliant, mains-powered smoke alarms. The second is two residual current devices covering all the circuits. A buyer's inspector will note if either is missing, and it reads badly because it is both a safety item and a legal one. Sorting them before you list removes a line from the report and a question from the buyer's mind. We have written the detail of the smoke-alarm rule separately, because the date logic catches people out, but the short version is: battery alarms usually will not do, and it is worth checking now rather than at settlement.
The small leaks that read as big ones
A dripping tap, a running toilet, a slow leak under the sink, a gutter that overflows in the first winter downpour. Individually these are nothing. On an inspection report, a cluster of small water items starts to suggest a house that has not been kept on top of, and water is the thing buyers fear most because they cannot tell cheap water damage from expensive water damage. Walk the house with a critical eye, or better, on the first rain after you decide to sell, and deal with the obvious ones. Clear the gutters and downpipes. Check where the water goes when it leaves the roof, because in Perth stormwater that pools against the house is a genuine issue, not a cosmetic one.
What not to do
Do not paint over a problem. A fresh coat across a damp stain does not remove the damp, and an inspector reading moisture behind fresh paint trusts the rest of the house less, not more. Do not attempt a structural repair the weekend before listing. And do not strip the house of every sign of its age, because a buyer's inspector expects a fifty-year-old home to look fifty, and a suspiciously perfect surface invites a harder look underneath.
The goal is not to disguise the house. It is to present it honestly and let the sound parts read as sound. Clear the access, fix the small leaks, sort the two legal safety items, and most Perth homes will inspect about as well as they truly are, which is usually a good deal better than a cluttered, dripping version of the same house would have.
If you would rather know exactly what a buyer's inspector will find before they find it, that is a pre-sale inspection, and it is the natural companion to this list.
Common questions
How do I prepare my house for a building inspection?
Clear access to the roof space, the subfloor, the meter box and the hot water system, deal with any obvious small leaks, and make sure the smoke alarms and RCDs already meet WA law. Access is the single biggest thing, because an inspector can only report on what they can reach.
Should I fix defects before selling or just disclose them?
It depends on the defect and the cost. Cheap, quick fixes that would otherwise read as a list of small faults are usually worth doing. Larger structural items are often better disclosed and priced in, because a rushed repair can read worse than an honest one.
Does a clean inspection report help sell a house?
It removes friction. It will not add to a price on its own, but it stops a buyer's inspection turning up a list of surprises that stall or reopen a negotiation late.
Where to go next
If you want the service pages behind this, see our pre-purchase building inspection, pre-settlement inspection. The technical detail lives in our guides on smoke alarms selling a house, subfloor ventilation. Related reading: Should you get your Perth home inspected before you sell it?.