What we look for in Aubin Grove, and why it differs from the suburb next door. 24.0 km from the CBD, 5.1 km from the coast, postcode 6164.
Aubin Grove is one of Perth's newest suburbs, gazetted in 2003 out of Banjup and named after a market gardener who settled here around 1898. It is masterplanned, still building, and the station opened in 2017 with around nineteen hundred park and ride bays.
Most of the housing is 2000s and 2010s or later. Some is newer still. That makes this new build territory, where the questions are handover defects, whether they were fixed while the builder was still liable, and whether the defect liability period is still open on a particular house.
A great many owners let that window close without using it. On a suburb this young it is often still available, and it is worth checking rather than assuming.
Newer estates here include narrow and cottage lots, which brings zero lot walls, close boundaries and drainage that has to function in the gap between two buildings. On a narrow lot, access for any future repair is restricted, which turns a straightforward job into an awkward one.
The land was market garden and rural ground before it was an estate, so made ground, old irrigation and a soil history sit under some parcels. Where a slab shows movement, that is worth understanding before assuming workmanship.
Inland, so salt and delignification are a low priority, and the roof inspection concentrates on workmanship, flashings and roof plumbing instead.
Former market garden ground is the specific exposure, and none of it is visible from the surface. Decades of horticulture leave buried timber from trellising, shed bearers and fence lines, along with irrigation that leaks long after anyone stopped using it.
Timber decaying quietly in ground that stays damp is exactly what a subterranean colony establishes on.
Every house here was built with a termite management system and carries a durable notice recording it. Find it. On a house from the mid 2000s that system is closer to the end of its useful life than most owners realise.
Then look at the perimeter, which on the newer cottage lots is largely inaccessible. Where two houses sit a metre or so apart, that strip is often the last thing landscaped and the first thing forgotten, and it is exactly where a barrier gets bridged.
We report honestly where we could not get in rather than implying the whole perimeter was seen.
Access is the constraint on a lot this size. It applies equally to both assessments. Getting into the side strips, under the eaves and onto the roof safely is most of the effort, so combining the visits is simply the efficient way to do it. Reported under AS 4349.1 and AS 4349.3.
Check whether the defect liability period has expired. Most owners never do. On a suburb still building, a surprising number of houses are inside it, and that changes who pays for what.
Ongoing construction means handover inspections and condition records where building happens on an adjoining lot. On narrow lots those records matter more than usual, because the works will be within a couple of metres of your wall and arguing about damage afterwards without a dated record is an unwinnable position.
Aubin Grove sits on the Spearwood dune system — residual yellow and grey sand over a Tamala Limestone core, with the rock often close to the surface. Limestone near the surface makes for stable footings and expensive excavation. Where the rock is shallow, older houses often sit directly on limestone footings, and those are the ones to look at for rising damp and salt damp at the base of the wall.
What that means in practice, on a house in Aubin Grove:
Landform is assigned from the suburb's position on the Swan Coastal Plain rather than from a site soil test. It tells you what to expect, not what you have. A site classification to AS 2870 is a different exercise and a different report.
Hammond Park, Success, Atwell, Banjup and Wandi sit on the same ground as Aubin Grove, so the footing behaviour and the drainage problems tend to repeat across all of them. If you are comparing houses across those suburbs, you are largely comparing the same site conditions.
Munster is 5.1 km away but sits on the Quindalup dune system. That is the useful thing about this part of Perth: the ground can change inside a few kilometres, and with it what an inspection is looking for.
On site classification: any soil zone quoted for a suburb is indicative, inferred from geography rather than surveyed. A real AS 2870 classification comes from geotechnical work on your actual block and can differ from the one next door. We report what we observe; we do not read your soil class off a map.
The inspection is visual and non-invasive, over the readily accessible areas, reported to AS 4349.1. Our inspectors physically enter the roof space, as long as there is sufficient access. Report within 24 hours of the inspection.
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Flat fee, the same in Aubin Grove as anywhere: $440 inc. GST for a pre-purchase building inspection, or $616 inc. GST with the timber pest scope added in the same visit. Full price list →
5.1 km inland through Cockburn, the salt risk in Aubin Grove is real but secondary. The same fee weighs an older roof for corrosion alongside the wet areas, the drainage and the movement patterns the Cockburn stock tends to show.
Pre-purchase building inspection in Aubin Grove →
Building and pest inspection in Aubin Grove →
Yes. Our inspectors physically enter and inspect the roof space, as long as there is sufficient access to do so safely. Where access is restricted, the report says so plainly rather than implying we saw more than we did.
Aubin Grove is 5.1 km from the coast — outside the highest-exposure band, but close enough that salt-driven delignification is worth checking in an older tiled roof.
Within 24 hours of the inspection itself, not 24 hours from booking. On a pre-purchase or pre-settlement job that timing is the whole point, because your leverage disappears once you are committed.
We would rather you checked than took our word for it. These are the bodies that actually hold the records and set the rules:
Tell us about the property and what you need. We'll come back to you with a firm quote and a time.
PERTH