Inspection Nightmares – Part 1

Jamie and Stacey have a young family. The recent purchase of their first home, which they had been saving for and planning for 6 years, was supposed to be amongst some of the happiest moments of their lives, however soon after taking possession of their Melbourne house, they uncovered the nightmare. The house had been severely attacked by termites. “Being our first home we didn’t want to spend any money on a house inspection. The house looked perfectly fine, and we had my Dad come and have a look through. He even looked underneath the house and said all looked ok”. Stacey said.

After Jamie and Stacey moved into the house they noticed a few things that didn’t seem quite right. “We noticed some timber decking posts had been hollowed out from top to bottom and two of the rooms had fairly bouncy floors. Then we noticed that the door to underneath the house had rotten. The problem is that when we were looking at the house to buy, we were so overwhelmed with the prospect of finally getting our own home, that we didn’t pay enough attention to the structure of the building”.

It turns out that the house was consumed by termites. They had worked their way through most of the structural timber bearers and joists in the subfloor and most of the bottom plates of the walls. What they thought was a rotten door to the subfloor was also termites, and they had even started to eat through various door frames in the house.

The night mare for Jamie and Stacey is that their house insurance does not cover termite damage, which means that they need to cover the repair costs themselves. “Unfortunately, Jamie says, that is money that we just don’t have. We are at our limit financially just paying our mortgage, without needing to repair this damage that we didn’t know was even there”. Melbourne House Check conducted a Building and pest inspection 1 week after Jamie and Stacey settled their first home. A pre purchase house and pest inspection would have identified this termite activity and prevented them from buying the nightmare. For information about pre purchase building and pest inspections, contact us via email here.

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