By Mikayla van Loon
On the hunt for their first home in Mooroolbark, a couple has been left “gobsmacked” after a building inspection found the property’s balcony to be “unsafe” and “unprofessional”.
The first home buyers, who wanted to remain anonymous not to jeopardise the return of their deposit, put in a successful offer on a newly built townhouse in late-March.
Sarah* said she and her partner started looking for their own home at the beginning of February.
“We’ve seen a lot of duds, a lot of low quality builds in our price range. We finally found this house, it just hit all the marks,” she said.
“The real estate agent said ‘this quality build, the quality of utilities put into it is a lot higher standard than a lot of the things you’ll see on the market right now’. We were super impressed.”
With family members also going to inspect the house on their behalf, there was some mention of scratches on the balcony but the couple thought nothing of it.
But that soon changed once the couple sought an independent building and pest inspection for the two-bedroom property.
“Within our contracts we were recommended via our conveyancer to get a building and pest inspection,” Sarah said.
“A lot of people actually tried to tell us not to because this house was only finished being built just after Christmas into the start of 2024. So there wasn’t much point in getting a building and pest inspection given it’s only brand new. Thankfully we did.”
The inspector’s report, Sarah said, stated “the quality of the balcony itself was expected to be on a house that was 10 years older than this house was”.
Sarah said the inspection found evidence of efflorescence in the concrete, something that happens when “mineral salt rises to the surface once water has gotten into it”. This then crystallises on top of the concrete.
“It was all over the place. It looks just like white dust so that’s all we thought it was when we first saw it, we just thought it was white dust.
“But no, it’s actually the salt leaving the materials on the floor. There were also cracks in the slate and they just filled up all the cracks with silicone.
“The building inspector actually said it’s extremely unprofessional. That was the remark he left in his document.”
Major issues with the plumbing were also discovered, with the inspector finding that the pipes from the neighbouring townhouse flowed onto this property’s balcony without any drainage to carry the water away.
“It was just an open pipe sticking out of the roof. Last night (1 April) it rained like crazy here. If we were in that house, it would have flooded through to our kitchen,” Sarah said.
Efflorescence and cracking, according to the Victorian Building Authority (VBA), are common signs of water damage or water ingress, caused by non-complying waterproofing and weatherproofing during the build.
The VBA conducts around 12,000 inspections of new builds per year, with issues relating to waterproofing and weatherproofing continuing to be “areas of high compliance risk”, the website states.
Research completed by Cladding Safety Victoria (CSV), a Victorian Government body, in July last year, which had primarily been looking at the cladding defects and need for rectification, found an extensive issue with non-cladding defects.
The Cladding Rectification Program (CRP) funded 339 buildings for rectification, as at October 2022.
Of those, 25 per cent were found to have “leaking balconies, balustrades and terraces causing structural damage”.
Overall, 550 balconies were defective, with water ingress issues causing 52 per cent of the damage and 19 per cent having poor waterproofing.
Roughly two thirds of the balconies were constructed more than 10 years ago.
Luckily in Sarah and her partner’s case, being somewhat of a naive first home buyer was their saving grace, accepting a building inspection without much thought.
“We were scared. We’re trying to buy our first house, we don’t know what we’re doing.
“When it was asked by our conveyancer ‘do you want this?’ We just said yes blindly because we just thought we should. There was no other thought behind it.”
Incentivised by the Victorian Government’s first home buyers grant scheme and lower stamp duty, Sarah said many of the properties that fall into that price range have balconies but after this near miss the thought of a balcony is scary.
“The thought that one day [the balcony] could just collapse on us is terrifying,” she said.
Not giving up on that perfect property, Sarah said “we’re back on the hunt” but would warn any new buyer to always get a building inspection.
“Get a building and pest inspection. Do not skip out on it, just just do it. I know a lot of people are scared because of the price but $1,000 out of pocket is so much better than $50,000 to $100,000 out of pocket trying to fix something you didn’t know was broken.”
*Sarah was used as a pseudonym.
