When should you order a pest report? What does a pest report tell you about a property? Does it cover all types of pests? If you are looking to buy a home I answer these questions and more as part of my pre-purchase property inspection video series.
Watch now: https://youtu.be/7slcOeYF6jM
TRANSCRIPT:
This is one of a series of videos I will be presenting on buying a property from the perspective of the purchaser setting out small-ish chunks of the legal process involved, which is also known as “conveyancing”. Today I’m going to talk about Pest Reports, which is one of the property inspections your lawyer will typically recommend you obtain before exchange of contracts i.e. before you enter the contract to purchase the property, which we also call the pre-purchase period. I say ‘typically’ because I will be referring to a standard type of property purchase, so if additional complications are evident after reviewing the contract, additional property reports or certificates may also be recommended by your lawyer, depending on the circumstances. Now, in Australia, the laws around property purchases are state-specific so if you are interested in buying a property located in NSW, this video is for you!
The first point to note is that this video series deals with residential property only, such as a house, unit or block of land and not with any type of commercial property. Also, when I refer to exchange of contracts from now on I will be using the abbreviation ‘exchange’ for ease of reference.
If you would like to know more about exchange and the pre-exchange period generally, I have linked my videos on these in the description box below.
As always please hit “SUBSCRIBE” if you like this type of content and give a thumbs up if you find the information useful – I’ll be posting a new video every week J
- A quick disclaimer that my videos are general and informational in nature only. They are not intended as legal advice, nor should you rely on them as such. Please see the full disclaimer in the description box below.
Now, lawyers typically recommend 4 types of pre-purchase property inspections be obtained before exchange, depending on the type of property you are buying. Some or all of these reports/certificate may be provided to you by the seller, known as the vendor – which may mean you won’t need to consider applying for them yourself, saving you both time and money. The 4 searches are:
(i) Building Report
(ii) Pest Report
(iv) Building Certificate
(v) Survey Report with diagram.
This video will focus on the Pest Report.
Just like for a building report, a pest report is a report is based on a visual inspection of the property. Now I believe that these reports should more accurately be known as “timber pest reports” because when you hear the term “pest report” or “pest inspection” it naturally implies a broader type of inspection for the typical critters and creepy crawlies you would not want in your home BUT that is not the case.
A pest report in this context specifically looks for and identifies pests like termites or other timber pest activity or conditions on the property which are conducive to such activity in the future. This normally includes wood borers and fungal wood decay as well.
And although the pest report is, shall we say, limited to these timber pests, it is really important to know about termites in particular. Why? Termites can chew through anything which is made of wood on the property – from timber floors, the timbers holding up your roof, timber in the walls, timber fences, timber sheds, etc. The timber crumbles to the touch once termites have been at it. So, as you can see it is very important to know whether the property has termites! One alarming statistic I came across from a pest reporting company is that as many as 2 in 5 properties they inspect have termite damage.
It is important to note that the Pest Report (just like the building report) does not actually address or rectify any problems discovered, it just points out any problems the inspector found.
If the vendor provides you with the pest report, apart from checking to make sure that it is current, another problem to consider is that if you find that the company who provided the report was so negligent that you would like to sue them for misrepresenting or omitting important issues from their report, you will not be able to sue them because you were not the person who commissioned the report.
My final tip for you today is that timing is everything. I can’t stress enough the importance of knowing whether a property has any of timber pest problems before exchange. Generally if you discover any of these issues after exchange of contracts there is probably nothing you can do about them – you will still be required to complete the purchase and be left do deal with the damage later.
And that is all I have for you today on Pest Reports. As always – please remember to “SUBSCRIBE” and hit the “Like” button if you liked this video, please share it and if you’d like to make an appointment to engage our services, please follow the link in the description box to contact me. If you have any topics you’d like me to address in future videos, please leave a comment in the comment section as I’d love to hear from you. I hope you found this video helpful and thank you for watching.