Dilapidation report

A dated, photographed record of a property's condition before works start next door. It is the evidence you will wish you had.

When you need it: Excavation, demolition or construction is about to begin nearby.

What it costs

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

This is not a building inspection

It is worth saying that first, because the two get confused and they are not related work.

A dilapidation report is a dated, photographed record of the existing condition of a property, made before something happens nearby that could damage it. It is not carried out under AS 4349.1, it is not a pre-purchase inspection, and it does not offer an opinion on whether the building is a good buy. Its entire purpose is evidentiary: to fix in place what the property looked like on a particular day, so that afterwards there is no argument about what was already there.

When you need one

Excavation next door. A demolition. Piling, rock breaking, or a basement dig. Road or drainage works in the street. A neighbour building a two-storey addition hard against the boundary. Anything that puts vibration or ground movement near your footings.

The timing is not flexible. A dilapidation report done after the work starts is worth a fraction of one done before, and a report done after the cracking appears is worth almost nothing at all. If the excavator is already on site, the window is closing.

Both sides use them. If you are the one building, a pre-works record protects you from being blamed for cracking that predated your machinery. If you are the neighbour, it is the only thing that will substantiate a claim.

What the record covers

Existing cracking, with locations and widths. Movement in paths, driveways, paving and steps. Retaining walls and their condition. Fencing. The condition of internal linings, cornice lines, and door and window operation, because those are the first things to move when footings do. Where relevant, the state of surface water drainage, since stormwater going the wrong way is the most common aggravating factor in any subsequent argument.

Everything is photographed with its location recorded. A written description of a crack is arguable. A dated photograph with a scale next to it is not.

Crack widths, and the thing people get wrong

Cracking gets categorised on a scale that runs from hairline through to damage requiring sections of wall to be broken out and replaced. Category 0 is up to 0.1 mm. Category 1 runs to 1.0 mm and needs no repair. Category 2 reaches 5.0 mm, where cracks are noticeable but easily filled and doors may start to stick. Category 3 runs to 15 mm, with service pipes fracturing and weather-tightness impaired. Category 4 goes beyond that.

What that scale does not do is tell you whether the crack matters structurally. Width alone does not decide it. A 0.1 mm crack can be a structural defect and a 5.0 mm one may not be. Anyone offering you a millimetre threshold as the answer is selling certainty they do not have.

For a dilapidation record the categorisation is useful for a different reason: it gives a before-and-after comparison that two engineers can argue about on the same terms.

Turnaround and cost

A flat fee of $400. Turnaround is agreed before we start, because the scope depends on how much boundary there is and how much of it matters. We do not attach the 24-hour promise here — that is a promise about pre-purchase inspections, and borrowing it for a different job would be dishonest.

If matters have already gone wrong and you need someone who can stand behind the record in a proceeding, that is a different engagement again.

What the report is for

A dilapidation report exists to answer a question that is almost impossible to settle after the fact: was that crack there before the works next door started? Once excavation, piling or demolition begins on an adjoining site, any new damage to your property becomes a dispute about timing, and without a dated record of the condition beforehand, the dispute is your word against the builder's. The report removes the argument. It is a thorough, photographic record of the property's condition at a fixed point in time, so that anything that appears afterwards can be shown to be new.

What it covers

The survey documents the existing condition inside and out: wall and ceiling surfaces, cracks and their width, floors, the state of finishes, and the site features, fences, driveways, paths, retaining walls and outbuildings. Where relevant it extends to council assets at the boundary, the kerb, the footpath, the crossover. Every item of note is photographed, because a written description of a crack is arguable and a dated photograph of it is not. The point is to create a baseline detailed enough that a later comparison can identify precisely what has changed.

Who needs one, and when

Two parties, protected in opposite directions. If you are the one doing the work, a knockdown-rebuild, a deep excavation, an extension close to the boundary, a dilapidation report on the neighbouring properties protects you, by recording their pre-existing defects so they cannot later be attributed to your project. If your neighbour is the one building, you do not have to be the developer to commission a report; as the adjoining owner you can have your own property surveyed before their work starts, to protect your position if their excavation or demolition damages your home. In Perth's established suburbs, where knockdown-rebuilds are constant, both situations are common.

The situations that most warrant one

The risk is highest, and the report most worth having, where the works involve demolition, piling, deep excavation, basement construction, underpinning, or construction hard against a shared boundary. These are the scenarios where damage is both more likely and, without a baseline, hardest to date. An older home next to a new development is especially exposed, because it has less tolerance for the ground movement and vibration that heavy works transmit. The report is cheap relative to the cost of a foundation or a cracked wall you cannot prove someone else caused, and it is only useful if it exists before the first machine arrives.

The dispute this prevents

Picture the scenario the report exists to head off. A developer knocks down the house next door and starts excavating for a basement, or drives piles for a two-storey build hard against your boundary. A few weeks later a crack appears above your hallway door, or your driveway develops a step it did not have, or the cornice in the front room starts to separate. You are certain the building work caused it. The builder is equally certain it was already there, and points out that your house is forty years old and cracks are what forty-year-old houses do. Without a record of the condition of your property before their work started, that argument has no referee, and it usually ends with you paying to fix damage someone else caused.

A dilapidation report is the referee. Prepared before the neighbouring work begins, it is a dated, photographed record of exactly what your property looked like beforehand, down to the existing cracks and their widths. If new damage appears, the comparison is objective: the crack that is in the after but not the before is new, and the timing points at the works. The report does not win the argument by being persuasive. It wins it by removing the argument entirely.

It protects both sides of the fence

People assume a dilapidation report is something only the party doing the building needs, and it is true that a developer commissioning reports on the surrounding properties is protecting themselves against inflated or pre-existing damage claims. But you do not have to be the one building to want one. If your neighbour is the one whose excavation or demolition could reach your home, you can commission your own dilapidation report on your own property before their work starts, precisely to protect your position if their project damages your house. In Perth's established suburbs, where knockdown-rebuilds happen on almost every street, the adjoining owner has as much reason to want a baseline as the developer does.

Where a report is commissioned by the party doing the work, it is worth having it cover every property that could plausibly be affected, not just the one sharing the closest boundary. Vibration and ground movement do not stop at the fence line, and a claim can come from two doors down as easily as from next door. The cost of documenting a few extra properties is trivial against the cost of an undocumented damage claim.

Vibration, ground movement, and why older homes are exposed

The risk is not evenly spread across every kind of neighbouring work. It is highest, and the report most worth having, where the project involves demolition, piling, deep excavation, basement construction, underpinning, or rock breaking. These are the activities that transmit real vibration and cause real ground movement, and they are increasingly common as blocks are subdivided and developers build down as well as up to make the numbers work.

Older homes are the most exposed, and it is worth understanding why. A double-brick house from the sixties or seventies has far less tolerance for differential ground movement than a modern articulated build. It has fewer, or no, articulation joints, its footings were designed for a quieter neighbour, and its mortar and plaster have spent decades in a settled equilibrium that heavy works next door can disturb. The same excavation that a new house shrugs off can put stepped cracking through the brickwork of the house beside it. If you own one of those older homes and a development is about to start next to you, the report is cheap insurance against a problem that is genuinely more likely to land on you than on your newer neighbours.

When to get one done

The timing is not flexible: the report has to be prepared before the neighbouring work begins, because its entire value is in establishing the "before". A dilapidation report commissioned after the excavator has already been on site cannot separate pre-existing damage from new, which is the one thing it exists to do. As soon as you know that significant works are planned next door, whether you are the one building or the one living beside it, that is the moment to arrange it. Once the first machine arrives, the window has closed.