What we look for in Salter Point, and why it differs from the suburb next door. 7.7 km from the CBD, 10.0 km from the coast, postcode 6152.
Salter Point sits on the Canning River, and the water defines it in a way that goes well beyond the view. Salter Point Lagoon and the foreshore wetlands form its low edge, and the ground there is soft and wet.
Blocks near the lagoon carry a high and seasonally variable water table, estuarine silts beneath the sand, and damp working at masonry. Where a large modern home has been built on a low riverside parcel, how the site was prepared and drained matters more than anything above ground. Ask about fill, compaction and subsoil drainage before admiring the kitchen.
The suburb's building history sets up a stark contrast. Salter Point began as modest 1950s and 60s government era housing, built alongside Manning and Karawara under State Housing and War Service programmes, and has since been extensively rebuilt into substantial riverside homes. Two very different propositions sit side by side. Original post war stock with seventy year old services and asbestos era materials. Recent large builds where waterproofing and drainage are the priorities, along with whatever is holding the slope up.
Knowing which you are looking at is not always obvious from the street, because many of the older houses have been extended and reclad rather than replaced outright.
Sloping riverside blocks bring retaining walls and river wall structures into the inspection, both their condition and whether they are the owner's responsibility to maintain. That second question is worth settling before you buy, not after a wall moves.
Wet ground raises termite pressure, and here it is wet by default rather than by accident. A high water table with foreshore wetland alongside means the moisture a colony needs is permanently available, and does not depend on a leaking pipe or an over enthusiastic sprinkler.
On the older houses the subfloor is the priority, and on low blocks it can be damp enough to be difficult to inspect. On the newer large homes the risk sits at the slab edge and in the landscaping, which on a riverside rebuild is usually extensive. Retaining timbers and decking. Jetty and foreshore structures. Planters built against walls. All of it is timber in contact with permanently damp ground. Barriers on anything built before the mid 1990s no longer function.
Damp ground is the common thread, so the two inspections are effectively one investigation into how water behaves on the site. Doing them together in a single attendance gives one coherent picture, which matters more here than in a dry suburb where the two jobs are genuinely separate. Reported under AS 4349.1 and AS 4349.3.
Rebuilding is constant, so building stage inspections are worth having on riverside construction where tanking, retaining and subsoil drainage get covered up early and cannot be reviewed later without excavation. Practical completion inspections follow at handover.
Dilapidation reports apply where a neighbouring block is being excavated on soft ground, which is a genuine risk to an older house next door. We also do pre-settlement inspections and expert witness reports, the latter often concerning retaining walls and drainage between neighbours.
Salter Point sits on the Bassendean dune system — deep leached grey quartz sand, almost pure, and very free draining. Bassendean sand is about as unreactive as a building site gets, so seasonal footing movement is rarely the story here. The water table is the story. Parts of this system sit over the Gnangara Mound and the standing water level can be within a couple of metres of the surface.
What that means in practice, on a house in Salter Point:
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.
Mt Henry Bridge is the fixed point most people in Salter Point 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.
Manning, Rossmoyne, Karawara and Como sit on the same ground as Salter Point, 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.
Mount Pleasant is 1.4 km away but sits on the Spearwood dune system; Applecross 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 Salter Point 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 →
10.0 km inland through South Perth, Salter Point sits between the coastal and inland problems, and the fee reflects it — some salt-corrosion checking on an older tiled roof, but more attention to drainage, wet areas and ground movement across the South Perth area.
Pre-purchase building inspection in Salter Point →
Building and pest inspection in Salter Point →
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.
Salter Point is 10.0 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.
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