What we look for in Mount Nasura, and why it differs from the suburb next door. 26.0 km from the CBD, 20.2 km from the coast, postcode 6112.
Mount Nasura takes its name from Derry na Sura, Gaelic for valley of the vine, a vineyard established in the early 1890s on the hillside above Albany Highway. Around a hundred acres of it were planted. The suburb was subdivided from 1966 onto those old vineyard terraces.
That terracing is the local structural story. It is also the expensive one. Houses here sit on a hillside that was deliberately cut into level benches for growing vines, and the modern subdivision followed those contours. Terraced and cut sites mean significant retaining walls, and on a hillside the condition of retaining is not a cosmetic question. It is what the platform is standing on.
So we look at wall height and at the drainage behind. Evidence of movement. Whether the thing was engineered at all, or simply built. Laterite and gravel over rock affects excavation and how footings were formed.
Elevation brings views and slope together, so stormwater management down the block matters, and remnant native bushland means BAL bushfire requirements apply on treed and edge blocks. Neerigen Brook runs along the southern side, so low southern blocks carry a water table and drainage considerations.
Housing is mostly 1970s to 1990s hills homes with newer among them, and the community is mature, with a median age in the forties. Armadale Health Service is the main non residential feature. Residents campaigned in the 1980s and 90s to separate the name from Armadale.
Old vineyard ground is the distinguishing exposure. Vines need posts. Posts go into soil. Vines are grown on trellis posts set directly into soil, often in long rows across a terrace, and when a vineyard is subdivided those posts are not always removed. Buried timber decaying in hillside ground is where colonies establish.
The bushland edge adds continuous habitat, and blocks against remnant vegetation face steadier pressure than interior streets.
Terraced sites bring timber retaining, which is both a food source and a structure holding damp soil against itself. On sloping blocks the subfloor or undercroft varies from accessible to impossible. Barriers on 1970s and 80s stock are long finished. Toward Neerigen Brook the ground stays damper, which raises pressure on the low side.
Retaining walls are the common ground here. Both reports look at the same stone. A structural inspector is assessing whether they are holding, and a pest inspector is assessing what is living in and behind them. That is the same wall, and it should be looked at once by someone considering both. Reported under AS 4349.1 and AS 4349.3.
Retaining is the recurring theme of our other work here. Buyers ask for walls to be assessed specifically, and where a wall has failed between two properties we prepare reports for the owners involved.
New building on terraced blocks warrants staged inspections while the site works are visible, since drainage behind retaining cannot be checked once it is backfilled. We also do handover inspections on newer hills homes and condition records where excavation happens uphill or downhill of an existing house.
Walk the lowest corner of the block before you buy. That is where water collects and where retaining gives way first. Neither is visible from the driveway.
Mount Nasura sits on the Guildford Formation — alluvial clay and sandy clay laid down by the Swan and Canning systems. This is the reactive ground. Clay here shrinks and swells with moisture, which is what puts stepped cracking through brickwork and takes doors out of square between seasons. Articulation joints matter on these sites, and a great many older houses do not have them where a current standard would want them.
What that means in practice, on a house in Mount Nasura:
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.
Armadale-Kelmscott District Memorial Hospital is the fixed point most people in Mount Nasura navigate by. Buildings like it are useful to an inspector for a duller reason: they date the area. Whatever era put that up is usually the era that put up the houses around it, and the construction methods of that decade are what we expect to find in the roof.
Kelmscott sit on the same ground as Mount Nasura, 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.
Armadale is 1.4 km away but sits on the Bassendean dune system; Mount Richon is 2.3 km away but sits on the Bassendean dune system; Bedfordale is 2.9 km away but sits on the laterite foothills of the Darling Scarp; Seville Grove is 3.3 km away but sits on the Bassendean dune system; Camillo is 3.6 km away but sits on the Bassendean 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 Mount Nasura 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 →
Well inland at 20.2 km from the coast, out in Gosnells, coastal salt is not the first thing an inspection in Mount Nasura chases. The fee buys closer work on footing movement, site drainage and the reactive-ground behaviour of the South East suburbs, with delignification checked only where a tiled roof meets a busy corridor.
Pre-purchase building inspection in Mount Nasura →
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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.
At 20.2 km inland, Mount Nasura carries lower coastal-salt exposure, so delignification is not the first thing we would expect. It remains possible near heavy arterial corridors or industrial emissions.
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