What we look for in Duncraig, and why it differs from the suburb next door. 15.8 km from the CBD, 2.0 km from the coast, postcode 6023.
Duncraig went up fast. The bulk of it was built in the mid-1970s, with the schools and the library opening alongside the houses in 1974 and 1975. Fifty years on that history has produced a suburb where the same handful of problems turn up street after street, which is useful, because it tells us where to look before we arrive.
Start with the roof. A mid-1970s tiled roof two kilometres from the ocean is the classic setting for chemical delignification, and Duncraig is rated high risk for it. Salt-laden air works on the battens and rafters for decades. The tiles look fine from the driveway. Underneath, the timber holding them up can be soft enough to crumble between your fingers, and you only find that by getting into the roof space and putting hands on it.
Then there is age. Houses built in 1975 have now been through one full cycle of roofing, plumbing and wiring, and many are due for a second. Original wet areas are long past their working life. Where nobody has renovated, asbestos-era materials are likely in eaves, wall sheeting and old vinyl. None of that is a reason to walk away from a house. It is a reason to know the number before you sign, rather than after.
One local quirk matters. Part of the south-west of the suburb sat under a sand and limestone mining lease, and after a planned town centre there was shelved, that pocket was the last area built on. So it carries a later build vintage and a history of ground extraction and reinstatement. Which part of Duncraig a house sits in changes what we expect underneath it.
Termite pressure here is real but not extreme, and it is driven by three things. Mature gardens on 1970s blocks mean old stumps, buried form-work and railway sleepers, which is where colonies get established before they ever reach a house. Reticulation running for fifty years keeps soil damp against footings. And the original chemical barriers put down in the seventies are chemically dead. Those treatments were never permanent.
Most Duncraig houses sit on a slab, so the risk is concentrated at the perimeter: weep holes bridged by garden beds, paving laid over the slab edge, and additions that cover the very junction an inspector needs to see. We check timber in the roof space too. Termites do not always announce themselves at ground level.
Buyers usually book the building and timber pest inspections as one job, and in a suburb like this it makes sense. The two problems overlap. Damp that feeds a termite colony is often the same damp that rots a bearer. A roof space opened up for one inspection is already open for the other. You get one attendance, one appointment to keep, and a single picture of the house instead of two partial ones. Both are reported to their own standard, AS 4349.1 for the building and AS 4349.3 for timber pests.
Duncraig finished its core development in the early 2000s and the focus shifted to infill, so original 1970s houses now sit beside subdivisions and rebuilds. That brings different jobs. New builds on subdivided lots need staged inspections during construction and a practical completion inspection before handover, when faults are still the builder's to fix. Where a neighbouring block is being developed, a dilapidation report records the condition of your house before the excavator arrives. Pre-settlement inspections matter on any purchase, new or old, because the final walk-through is your last chance to raise something before you are committed.
We also inspect the units and townhouses appearing on those infill sites. Strata is a different job. The building around your lot is partly your responsibility through levies, so what the scheme has spent, and what it has put off, belongs in the same conversation as the condition of the walls.
Duncraig is the classic delignification profile: a suburb of mid-1970s homes with concrete-tile roofs sitting just two kilometres from the ocean and rated HIGH risk. Fifty years of salt-laden air on roof timbers is exactly the exposure that degrades battens and rafters, so the roof-space inspection is the priority here, not an afterthought, and on any unrenewed roof the batten condition is a realistic finding rather than a remote one. The mid-1970s stock is now around fifty years old, so most homes are into a second cycle on roofs, hot water and wiring, original wet areas are long past their life, and asbestos-era materials are likely in anything unrenovated.
One local ground point is worth establishing: part of the south-west was under a sand and limestone mining lease and was developed last, so that pocket has both a later build vintage and a history of ground extraction and reinstatement, which is worth knowing before reading any movement there. With core development complete by the early 2000s, the focus has shifted to infill, so original 1970s homes now sit beside subdivisions and rebuilds, and establishing which a property is matters because the two are completely different inspections. A Duncraig inspection leads with the roof space and delignification, reads the second-cycle services, and pins down which part of the suburb and which era the house belongs to.
The roof space is where a Duncraig inspection concentrates, entered wherever access allows so the battens and rafters can be assessed for the delignification that fifty years of coastal salt on a HIGH-rated roof makes a realistic finding, with the tile fixings and pointing checked alongside. The services are read as second-cycle items: a switchboard and wiring likely once replaced and due again, a hot water system near its life, and wet areas whose original waterproofing has long since failed as a membrane. In the south-west mining-lease pocket any movement is read against the history of ground extraction and reinstatement, and where a 1970s home sits beside a subdivision or rebuild, that newer stock is read for its own separate set of concerns.
None of it is guesswork. Reading the stock above into an inspection, these are the checks the Duncraig pattern pushes to the top of the list:
Duncraig 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 Duncraig:
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.
Duncraig Library and Marmion Town Centre are the fixed points in Duncraig. They matter to an inspection for an unromantic reason: they date the surrounding stock. The decade that built them is usually the decade that built the houses around them, and that decade decides what is in the roof, what is in the walls, and what the wiring looks like.
Glengarry and Greenwood sit on the same ground as Duncraig, 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.
Marmion is 2.2 km away but sits on the Quindalup dune system; Sorrento is 2.2 km away but sits on the Quindalup dune system; Carine is 2.3 km away but sits on the Quindalup dune system; Watermans Bay is 2.9 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 Duncraig 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 2.0 km from the water, Duncraig sits inside the coastal-salt band, in postcode 6023, the fee here is spent chasing salt. Chemical delignification in the tile battens, wall ties rusting inside the cavity, fixings going to lace where the sea air reaches them — on an older tiled roof the roof space is where most of the inspection time lands.
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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.
Duncraig is 2.0 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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