Know the Cost of Inspection and Include It in Your Purchase Budget

  • By Design Team
  • 28 Jul, 2015

When you find a property that matches your expectations, you might not want to wait any further and go ahead with the purchase. But in the excitement of purchasing your dream property, you should not miss out on conducting a pre-purchase building inspection. The inspection will give you complete peace of mind that you have made the right choice and it is a safe investment for you. The inspection report will give you valuable insight into the defects of the building and how good is the construction to combat the environmental issues of the place.

Investigate to know

A qualified and experienced building inspector that you can find with companies that offer professional building inspection services, and there are many of them, is the right person to provide a detailed report on the property that will reveal its present condition and unearth possible defects that can affect you in the future. In some property transactions there is often a specified time mentioned by builders within which any defects has to be reported by the purchaser and the inspection report can help in such cases.

Protect your interests

Protection of one’s interest is at the heart of pre-purchase building inspection. The inspection report is not about how good or bad the building is but it only points out the level of compliance of the building’s structure and the construction quality with reference to the laid down building rules and codes as well as the design. There is also another angle to it. You have a budget for the purchase and if you have to spend additional sums for post purchase repair of defects that can surface later, you can use the findings of the report to make such provision. It becomes easy to work out the total cost of purchase.

Scope of inspection

The standard inspection is carried out to ascertain the structural quality and whether there are deviations from the design and structural parameters during construction. It primarily tells about how strong the building is. But as a buyer, you should use your common sense and include some more things in the scope of inspection like plumbing and electrical system; ceramic tiles etc that you feel should also be evaluated. Extraneous factors like measures that are taken to protect the building from environmental damages in specific areas that are prone to floods can also be a part of the inspection schedule.

Cost of inspection

The cost of inspection will vary depending on the location of the property, the level of inspection and the complexity of the structure. The cost of inspection will be higher if the property is located in a metropolitan area as compared to any regional area and inclusion of pest inspection will increase the cost. Making a provision of minimum $250 in the budget can be a starting point that can go up to $1000 if the property is in a metropolitan area.

The spending on inspection will save you from the nightmare of building defects that are detected later.