What we look for in Doubleview, and why it differs from the suburb next door. 9.5 km from the CBD, 0.9 km from the coast, postcode 6018.
Doubleview was named in 1926 for exactly what it offers. Two views. The Indian Ocean to the west and the Darling Range to the east, seen from elevated ground. The water tower on Princess Street sits at the high point. There is also a piece of local history that says something about how the land was sold.
When Stoneman subdivided the northern part in 1910 he used Perth city street names, which misled buyers into thinking they had bought closer to town than they had. That is a curiosity now, but the suburb still carries the layered development it produced.
The northern section holds post war soldier settlement houses built by the state government for returning servicemen, and the original dwellings there are timber framed rather than brick. That changes the inspection. A timber framed house on stumps means the subfloor carries the structure, and asbestos era cladding is likely on anything unrenovated. More recent brick and tile sits among them.
Parts of the south contain 1960s and International style housing, which is different again in detailing and materials.
Being genuinely elevated brings slope. Ridge and hillside sites mean retaining, cut and fill platforms and drainage that has to be managed down the block. At under three kilometres from Scarborough Beach and up on a ridge catching the sea breeze, salt exposure is moderate, so delignification is worth checking on older tiled roofs.
The northern timber framed stock is the higher exposure, because the structure itself is timber and it sits on stumps over ground. The subfloor comes first there, with ventilation frequently restricted by later additions built across the original vents.
Elevated blocks bring their own pattern. Retaining walls holding damp soil against a structure, cut and fill platforms with fill of unknown composition, and drainage that concentrates water at the low corner of a sloping site.
On the 1960s southern stock the focus moves to the perimeter and slab edge. Across the suburb, barriers on anything of this age have long stopped working and gardens of sixty and seventy years hold buried timber and old stumps.
On a sloping site the retaining and the drainage inform both reports, and on the timber framed houses the subfloor serves both. Either way one attendance gives a single coherent view. Reported under AS 4349.1 and AS 4349.3.
Establish whether a house is timber framed or brick before anything else here. The northern soldier settlement stock and the southern 1960s houses are different buildings and buyers regularly assume the wrong one.
Ridge blocks with views attract rebuilding, so we do staged inspections while retaining and site works are open, and handover checks at completion. Condition records apply where excavation happens above or below an existing house on a slope, which on a ridge affects properties in both directions.
Walk the low corner of a sloping block before buying. Water ends up there and retaining fails there first, and the view from the front door tells you nothing about either.
Doubleview earns its name from genuine elevation, ridge and hillside sites with views to both the ocean and the ranges, and that slope is the suburb's defining inspection feature. Sloping sites bring retaining walls, cut-and-fill, and down-gradient drainage, and retaining in particular is where the money goes wrong, so the walls, their drainage, and how water is managed down the slope get real attention here. The elevation that gives Doubleview its outlook is the same thing that makes its groundwork more demanding than a flat suburb's.
The stock splits by section. The northern part is post-war soldier-settlement housing, much of it timber-framed government homes, which means timber-frame checks (stumps, borer, framing) and asbestos-era materials on the originals. The southern section is 1960s and International-style stock, a different era with different detailing. About 2.8 kilometres from Scarborough Beach and up on a ridge catching the sea breeze, Doubleview has some salt exposure, so delignification is a moderate check on an older tiled roof. Establishing which section and era a house belongs to, and reading the slope and its retaining carefully, is the core of a Doubleview inspection.
The slope is where a Doubleview inspection earns its keep. Retaining walls are read for their construction, drainage and any sign of movement or bulging, because a failing retaining wall on a hillside site is among the most expensive things this suburb produces, and the down-gradient drainage is traced to confirm water is taken away from rather than under the house. On a northern timber-framed home the stumps, framing and borer history are the structural questions and the subfloor is where they are answered. Being up on the ridge and a few kilometres from Scarborough, any older tiled roof gets a batten check for the salt-driven delignification the sea breeze can drive.
None of it is guesswork. Reading the stock above into an inspection, these are the checks the Doubleview pattern pushes to the top of the list:
Doubleview sits on the Quindalup dune system — young calcareous sand, still mobile in places, and thin over the water table near the front. Sand this young has low bearing capacity but very little reactivity, so footing movement is uncommon and drainage problems are not. What the ground gives you here it takes back in the air.
What that means in practice, on a house in Doubleview:
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.
Scarborough, Wembley Downs and Karrinyup sit on the same ground as Doubleview, 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.
Woodlands is 1.5 km away but sits on the Spearwood dune system; Innaloo is 1.5 km away but sits on the Spearwood dune system; Churchlands is 2.5 km away but sits on the Spearwood 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 Doubleview 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 →
At 0.9 km from the water, Doubleview sits inside the coastal-salt band, and salt does the damage this close to the water. The flat fee buys a hard look at the tile battens for delignification, at the wall ties and metal fixings for corrosion, and at the rust bleed through render that looks cosmetic and is not. The tiled-roof void is the priority.
Pre-purchase building inspection in Doubleview →
Building and pest inspection in Doubleview →
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.
Doubleview is 0.9 km from the coast, inside the band where delignification should be expected in tile battens. On a tiled roof more than about ten years old it is one of the first things we look at.
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.
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