If you’ve recently put up your home for sale and have found a potential buyer, you might be a little anxious about undergoing a pre-purchase building inspection. As one of the leading providers of a building inspection in Perth, we know how the findings of an inspection can influence the price of your property and a buyer’s decision-making process.
Fortunately, there are several practical ways you can prepare for a pre-purchase building inspection. Make sure you read this blog to learn them all and maximise your chances of getting a great price for your home.
1. Clean Inside And Outside
You want to make sure that it will be easy to manoeuvre both inside and outside of your home. Remove any clutter inside or outside of your home, clear your gutters, and trim your hedges.
2. Clear Access To All Areas Of Your House
Inspectors are required to inspect your entire house, including areas that are less used and perhaps cluttered up. This makes it hard for inspectors to do their job, so clear up anything that may get in the way of your electrical box, water heater, air conditioner, furnace, and attic.
Neat, tidy, and uncluttered homes also look much nicer and have a better chance of getting a higher sale price too.
3. Make Sure Everything Works
Fix anything that isn’t functioning in your house, including light bulbs, doorbells, sinks, taps, toilets, power outlets, windows, and appliances.
To make sure, test them all out and identify what is and what isn’t working. These are issues that are really simple to fix, and doing so will reflect well on the final inspection report.
4. Fix Known Issues
If there are any signs of water damage, mould, or electrical issues that you are aware of, get them fixed by a professional before the inspection. Not addressing these issues can result in prospective buyers walking away from your house or possibly re-negotiating a lower sale price.
The cost of fixing them yourself will be far outweighed by the potential damage that they can do to your sales price. For example, problems that might only cost hundreds of dollars to fix could end up wiping thousands of dollars off your sale price, especially given that the housing market in WA has been rather weak over the last few years.
5. Take A Closer Look At Your Garage Or Basement
These are areas of your house that you probably don’t spend much time in, so you might not have noticed beforehand if they had any cracks or leaks, which may be signs of a water issue or other structural damage.
6. Provide Any Available Documentation
This is helpful in giving your inspector a clearer picture of your property’s condition. So provide them with any documentation or receipts you have on any repair or maintenance work done on your property.
At Bestwest, our years of experience performing building inspections in Perth have given us a great understanding of how to prepare for a pre-purchase property inspection. We’ve also seen the detrimental effect that not properly preparing can have on your final sales price.
If you’d like more information on how to prepare for a pre-purchase property inspection – or need to book one ahead of an upcoming property purchase, get in touch with us today.
