do you always do a building and pest inspection?

hi guys
i'd really like some advice on our situation.

we want to put in an offer on a townhouse (one of only 4 units) for our first IP. the agent told us that they've got an unconditional offer already of 335K.
we're happy to offer a higher price as we've done the research and being quite familiar with the area, we're sure that the property is worth more than that. but we wanted to put in a building and pest inspection clause in, just to be sure that everything's in order. the agent then told us that the vendor wont look at anything with a clause in it, and now we've only got 24 hours to put in an offer.

problem is, we can't get the inspection done within 24 hours. and we havent received sec 32 yet. my friend told me that sometimes body corporate will have insurance for the building, so we'll need to check that it says that in the sec 32. the building itself is quite new, under 10 years old.

what would you do in our situation?
put in an offer without clause (this will sound silly, but we assume that since the other party is willing to go unconditional, that they're sure that the building is in good condition) ? or it's not worth the risk?
 
I think it depends on your circumstances...

We were looking at houses going to auction that needed renovating, so we always bidded keeping in mind that we had a spare 50k to do things like re-stump, replaster, asbestos removal if needed etc.

If you are buying at your maximum budget, and don't have money to spare IF there is something that requires immediate attention, then I would be more precautious.

Ideally, we would have loved to get an inspection on every house before we bought it, but in the end, after 10 months, we'd spent something like $4,000 on building inspections for homes we got outbidded on - mind you, we were bidding up to 100k above reserve and still missing out!
 
I never do an inspection unless the bank wants one. Mind you, hubby is an electrician by trade and is good at everything else. He gets to climb all over the roof and crawl under the house etc.
 
hi guys
problem is, we can't get the inspection done within 24 hours.

I had a similar situation a couple of weeks ago and kept ringing B&P inspectors until one was available to do it within the 24 hours. They inspected while I got contracts signed and organised cheques and then I got a verbal confirmation of the report as I drove to the agent to drop off the offer ...

Regards,

Jason
 
This happened to me today. No building/pest inspection and no strata report. We had to put in an unconditional offer in hope we could beat the other buyer. After discussion with Buyer's Agent (thanks Propertunity) we decided that since the property was substantially below my budget that I could afford to take the risk should there be a problem. It's a risk I decided to take.

I took the same risk once before on a house bought on impulse at auction. I had zero problems over the five years I owned it and it cost me nothing to maintain.

Not suggesting you do it - that is your decision alone of course.
 
It's really a personal decision- your risk, after all. I've heard some horror stories from the other side- buyers not carrying out inspections only to later discover the building had structural faults (needed re-stumping) or termite damage (timber floors in two rooms ended up needed replacing).

Ditto strata searches. At the very least, if you can't get a strata search done quickly enough, ask to speak to the strata manager and have a look at the books yourself or, as a bare minimum, know what's in the admin and sinking funds and reassure yourself there's no special levies coming up that will hurt your cashflow.

I once had a deal fall over at the last minute because the bank valuers inspection revealed concerns about some wall cracking in the underground carpark of the unit complex and held up valuation as a result, until it could be investigated further. Whilst some buyers would have found this inconvenient, it actually stopped my client from purchasing what could have potentially been a complex with structural problems. In the ensuing days, we actually located a superior unit anyway for the same price.

Personally, unless I knew the history of a complex (or house) quite well or had other information that mitigated my risk somewhat, I wouldn't be buying unconditionally, but that's just me. Every investor is different, as is every property, and sometimes the money saved on purchase can make up for unforseen costs further down the track.
 
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