Pre-purchase building inspection in Melville

Melville carries two pieces of history that shape a pre-purchase building inspection here. The first is its foreshore: the swampy Swan River foreshore that limited settlement until the late 1890s created a ground character in the lowest-lying parts of the suburb that persists beneath the homes built above it. The second is its hill: the Applecross Wireless Station, a Commonwealth radio transmission facility built in 1912 and operated until 1989, whose heritage-listed transmitter buildings now sit in Wireless Hill Park above the suburb. A pre-purchase building read at Melville attends to both, depending on where in the suburb the home sits.

For lower-lying blocks nearest the Swan foreshore, the ground character is the pre-purchase concern. The swampy foreshore that held back the suburb’s early development maintained a drainage and moisture environment in the lowest positions that residential development managed but did not eliminate, and the homes built on those blocks since the late 1890s have been sitting in that foreshore ground character for over a century. We read the subfloor, the site drainage and the wall bases for what that position has produced, because the pre-purchase inspection is when that record becomes visible before you commit to the price.

For homes adjacent to Wireless Hill Park, the former Commonwealth transmission facility is a site context rather than a building defect, but the park covers ground that carried significant Commonwealth industrial infrastructure for nearly eighty years before decommissioning, and we note that context for homes at the park boundary.

The housing stock from the 1896 Melville Park Estate through interwar, postwar and mid-century development carries each era’s own age read. The oldest homes from the late 1890s and early 1900s carry over 120 years of age in a riverside suburb; the mid-century stock carries the standard read for that era; and the modern renovations and rebuilds earn the contemporary read.

A pre-purchase inspection gives you the building scope on its own, to AS 4349.1, with the defects that matter set out plainly and separated from the cosmetic. In Melville, where the foreshore ground and the hilltop history both play into the read, the inspection tells you which home and which ground you are buying. The report follows within 24 hours.

We run the same inspection across the area, including nearby Applecross and Attadale.