Apartment & strata inspection

A different scope from a house. What is your lot, and what is common property? Where does your liability stop and the strata company's begin?

When you need it: Buying a unit, villa or apartment.

What it costs

$440 flat feeinc. GST ($400 + GST)

The line that catches most buyers

Buying an apartment, villa or townhouse means buying two things: the lot you own outright, and a share of everything held in common. Almost every problem that arises from a strata purchase comes from not appreciating how differently those two are treated.

Under AS 4349.1 the inspection of a strata or company title property is limited to the nominated residence and its immediate surrounds. Common property is not included. That is not an inspector cutting corners; it is the scope the standard sets, and there is a practical reason for it. Establishing the condition of the whole common property would mean inspecting every unit and every shared element in the complex.

Why that matters more than it sounds

Your liability for repair costs is not confined to your own unit. As an owner you contribute to the cost of repairing common property, which means a defect two floors below you, in a part of the building you will never enter, can arrive as a special levy addressed to you.

So an inspection of the lot alone, done properly, still leaves the larger financial question open. Where we find clear evidence during the inspection that points to a problem in the common property, we say so and we recommend an inspection of the common areas, which is a separate engagement.

Strata records are not a substitute

People sometimes skip the inspection on the basis that the strata records will disclose the defects. They will disclose the defects that have been formally raised with the body corporate. That is a different set, and usually a smaller one, than the defects that exist.

Read the records and have the place inspected. They answer different questions.

What we look at inside the lot

Wet areas first, because in apartments they cause most of the argument. Shower recesses, waterproofing at the junction of floor and wall, falls to floor wastes, and any staining on the ceiling below a bathroom above.

Then movement and finishes: cracking in walls and ceilings, whether doors and windows still sit square, drummy render and tiling, and the condition of internal linings.

Balconies where they form part of the lot — balustrades, the surface, and whether water is getting into the structure at the threshold. Above-ground waterproofing has a service life and it is shorter than the building's.

Windows and glazing seals, sash operation, and water staining that suggests it has come in before.

Where the roof space, subfloor or roof exterior form part of the lot and there is safe access, they are inspected too. In most apartments they do not and there is not.

What the standard leaves out

The exclusions that bite hardest in apartments are timber pest activity, which is a separate inspection under AS 4349.3, air conditioning, concealed plumbing, and any assessment of asbestos or other health hazards, which needs a licensed assessor rather than an inspector.

Where something warrants that specialist attention, the report says which specialist and why.

Cost

A flat fee of $400. The report lands within 24 hours of the inspection itself, not 24 hours from booking, which matters when the strata search and the finance clause are running on the same calendar.

What we can and cannot see in a strata inspection

Inside your lot, the inspection runs the same way a house inspection does: walls, ceilings, floors, wet areas, windows and doors, the electrical and plumbing fittings that are visible, and any private courtyard, balcony or store attached to the lot. Where your lot includes a top-floor ceiling with roof-space access, we get into it where it is safe. Where it is a middle-floor unit with a concrete slab above, there is no roof void to enter and the ceiling is the boundary.

What sits outside the lot boundary is common property, and that is where the picture goes quiet. The building's structure, the roof over the block, the external walls, the common stairwells and lifts, the shared plumbing stacks and the waterproofing of the podium or the roof deck are all common property in most schemes. We report what shows from inside your lot, and we flag where the evidence inside your lot points to a common-property problem. A stain spreading across your ceiling from the unit above, efflorescence at the base of a shared wall, or a balcony membrane that has failed at the junction with the building are all things we call out, because they will end up as a levy on you even though the defect is not inside your lot.

The documents that matter as much as the inspection

On a strata purchase, the inspection is only half the due diligence. The other half is the scheme's paperwork, and the 2020 reforms to the Strata Titles Act gave you a right to it before you sign. The strata company's financial statements tell you whether the administrative and reserve funds are healthy or depleted. The minutes of recent meetings tell you whether a major repair is being argued about. A special levy for concrete spalling or combustible cladding remediation, voted in the month before you buy, becomes your cost the day you settle.

We assess the physical condition of the residence; the records tell you whether the scheme that maintains everything around it is solvent and well run. A sound apartment in a broke, dysfunctional scheme is still a bad buy, and the only way to see that is to read the numbers alongside the inspection.

The defects that cost apartment owners the most

Three recur across Perth strata, and all three sit at the boundary between lot and common property. Balcony and podium waterproofing failure is the most common and the most expensive, because water tracks from the failed membrane into the structure and into the units below. Concrete spalling, where moisture reaches the reinforcement and the expanding rust blows the concrete cover off, is a structural repair that runs into serious money on a multi-storey block. And combustible cladding, still being remediated on buildings identified after the national audit, is both a safety issue and a material fact that has to be disclosed to a buyer.

None of these is fully visible from inside a single lot, which is exactly why the inspection and the strata records have to be read together. The report tells you what your unit shows; the records tell you what the building is already dealing with.

The building's age tells you where to look

Strata stock in Perth falls into a few broad eras, and each one carries its own characteristic problems. The older walk-up blocks from the sixties and seventies are usually double brick, structurally simple, and their issues are the ordinary ones of age: rising damp at the base of the walls, tired common plumbing, and waterproofing in the wet areas that has long since passed its design life. The concrete apartment buildings from the eighties and nineties bring concrete spalling into the picture, where moisture reaches the reinforcement and the rust expands and blows the concrete cover off, a repair that gets expensive fast on a multi-storey structure. The newer towers from the two-thousands on are where balcony and podium waterproofing failure and, in some buildings, combustible cladding are the things that matter.

Knowing the era tells you what to weight. It does not replace looking, but it points the inspection and the questions you ask of the strata records at the problems the building is statistically most likely to have, which is a far better starting point than treating every apartment as if it carried the same risks.

The levy that lands after you buy

The financial risk that catches apartment buyers hardest is not inside their own lot at all. It is the special levy: a one-off charge raised across all owners to fund a major common-property repair the ordinary contributions cannot cover. Concrete remediation, a full re-waterproofing of the podium, cladding replacement, a lift overhaul. These run to serious money, and they are shared among the owners according to unit entitlement whether the owner bought last week or has been there twenty years. A special levy voted in the month before you settle becomes your bill the day you own the lot, and there is no undoing it.

This is why the inspection of the lot and the reading of the strata records have to happen together, and why neither is sufficient alone. A sound apartment in a scheme that is about to hit every owner with a five-figure cladding levy is not a good buy, and the only way to see that coming is in the minutes and the financial statements, not in the condition of the apartment itself. We assess the physical lot; the records tell you whether the scheme that surrounds it is solvent, well run, and free of a major bill about to fall due.

Questions the records should answer before you sign

The 2020 reforms to the Strata Titles Act strengthened a buyer's right to information, and it is worth knowing what to do with it. The financial statements tell you whether the administrative fund covers the day-to-day running and whether the reserve fund is being built up to meet future major works, or has been left thin so that the next big repair will have to come from a special levy. The minutes of recent general and council meetings tell you what the scheme is arguing about: a defect being disputed, a repair being deferred because the money is not there, a levy being contemplated. A ten-year maintenance plan, where the scheme has one, tells you what is coming and roughly when.

Read together with the inspection of the lot, these answer the question that actually matters, which is not just "is this apartment sound" but "is this apartment sound, in a scheme that is solvent and well managed, with no major bill about to land". That is the whole picture, and a strata purchase made on half of it is a purchase made half-blind.