What we look for in Scarborough, and why it differs from the suburb next door. 10.4 km from the CBD, on the coast, postcode 6019.
Scarborough was subdivided in 1885 and re-subdivided into smaller lots in 1914, then filled out after the Second World War with holiday homes and workers' cottages. By the 1960s there was little land left. Then in 1986 a twenty four level tower went up on the beachfront for the America's Cup, and the suburb changed again.
The result is one of the widest ranges of building type on this coast. Timber framed workers' houses, frequently asbestos clad. Post war brick sitting on limestone footings that raise the floor above ground. 1960s flats. And modern multi storey units following the tower.
Each of those is a different inspection. Establish the type first. The asbestos cladding on the early timber stock is a documented characteristic of this suburb rather than an occasional find, and it is a health and cost consideration before any renovation. Limestone footings weather and lose mortar and behave nothing like concrete, so they need assessing on their own terms.
The terrain is retained dune, which gives Scarborough its undulating streets and genuinely steep roads. Sloping sites bring retaining, cut and fill and down slope drainage, and wetlands were infilled behind the primary dune, so made ground exists in places.
On the multi storey coastal stock the inspection becomes strata, where concrete condition is the headline. Salt reaching reinforcement causes spalling that breaks concrete apart. It sits in common property. Open Indian Ocean frontage means maximum salt, so delignification leads on any older tiled roof.
Coastal dune sand keeps general pressure lower than inland, and the exposures here are specific rather than general.
The timber framed stock is the first. A timber framed house on limestone or stumps has structural timber close to the ground, so the subfloor takes priority and access varies with how the house sits on its slope.
Limestone footings are the second. Termites cannot eat limestone, but the stone weathers into voids that give concealed routes up to the timber above, so a footing that looks sound can be full of paths nobody can see.
Retaining and decking on steep dune blocks put timber in ground contact, and coastal conditions mean it gets replaced in stages. Infilled wetland ground behind the dune can hold buried material.
Where a house sits on limestone footings, one inspector assessing the masonry condition and the pathways through it at the same time produces a better answer than two forming separate views of the same stone. Reported under AS 4349.1 and AS 4349.3.
Establish what the walls and footings actually are before assuming anything. In a suburb with this range, buyers regularly expect double brick on concrete and find timber frame on limestone.
Beachfront strata is a substantial part of the work, where concrete condition and the scheme's spending history decide whether an apartment is sound. On the older stock we assess asbestos containing cladding as part of planning a renovation, and prepare condition records where rebuilding happens on a neighbouring dune block.
Scarborough's older stock carries a documented asbestos issue: many early timber-framed dwellings are asbestos-clad, alongside post-war brick on limestone footings, so asbestos is a real health-and-cost finding on renovation or demolition of the older homes. The post-war brick homes on limestone footings raising the floor level above ground are a specific footing type worth inspecting for erosion and movement. Establishing the era and construction of a Scarborough house, and its asbestos exposure, is the starting point.
The terrain and the sea define the rest. Retained dunes make for steep, undulating sites, so retaining walls, down-slope drainage and cut-and-fill are common and worth close attention. There is also multi-storey coastal unit and flat stock, which brings concrete cancer, membrane and balcony issues, and common-property exposure into strata inspections. And with open Indian Ocean frontage, Scarborough gets maximum salt: wall-tie corrosion, mortar attack, breakdown of exposed roof timber, and delignification as a first-look item on older tiled roofs. A Scarborough inspection reads asbestos on the old stock, limestone footings, dune slope and retaining, coastal strata issues, and heavy salt.
On the older Scarborough stock the first checks are construction and material: an asbestos-clad timber-framed home is noted for licensed assessment, and a post-war brick home on raised limestone footings has those footings read for erosion and movement. The dune terrain drives a hard look at retaining walls, cut-and-fill and down-slope drainage on the steeper sites. On the multi-storey coastal unit stock the inspection reads concrete spalling, membranes, balconies and common property. And across all of it the open-ocean salt exposure is the constant, driving checks on wall ties, mortar, gutters, flashings and exposed metal, and a batten look at any tiled roof past its first decade for the delignification maximum salt exposure produces.
None of it is guesswork. Reading the stock above into an inspection, these are the checks the Scarborough pattern pushes to the top of the list:
Scarborough 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 Scarborough:
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.
Abbett Park and Butlers Reserve are the fixed points in Scarborough. 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.
Doubleview, Wembley Downs, Karrinyup and Trigg sit on the same ground as Scarborough, 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 2.3 km away but sits on the Spearwood dune system; Innaloo is 2.4 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 Scarborough 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 →
Right on the coast in Stirling, 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 Scarborough →
Building and pest inspection in Scarborough →
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.
Scarborough is on 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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