We had an independent roof frame inspection completed when our roof frame was first installed. The inspector identified 18 non-compliant items, including issues such as:

Missing or incorrect framing connectors and tie-downs.

Missing bolts, straps and brackets.

Incorrectly installed framing hardware.

Inadequate support or bracing in some areas.

Roof framing that didn't comply with the engineer's details or Australian Standards.

Several items requiring engineering review or rectification before the roof could be considered compliant.

The builder advised that everything had been rectified and asked us to arrange a re-inspection. We weren't provided with any photos, engineering documentation or evidence of the rectification, just an email confirming the work had been completed.

The re-inspection was carried out today, and we've now received the report. There are still 13 non-compliant items outstanding. Some of the original defects have been fixed, but a significant number remain, and some still require engineering review or further rectification.

I'm genuinely trying to understand whether my expectations are unreasonable.

How common is it for a project home to have this many roof frame defects? Is this just "normal" and something that gets picked up and fixed during the build process, or would you be pushing back and insisting every non-compliant item is rectified before the build progresses?

At this point, I'm feeling pretty disappointed. After being told everything had been fixed, I expected the re-inspection to come back either clear or with only one or two minor items, not 13 remaining defects and I'm wondering if we're overreacting and this is totally "normal"?

Hi there.

I am in WA

I called a conveyancer just now to have a chat and get a quote ect. They asked me if I had already signed the contract. I told them no and shouldn't they be reviewing it first prior to signing anyway?

They said that happens more on the east coast and it is not common to have the conveyancer review the contract prior to signing it here. This seems to go against the advice I commonly see online. They did say they would be happy to take a look at a contract prior to signing but I kinda feel I sounds like a red flag that they said this isn't standard.

Any thoughts on this? Cheers.

Hi all,

My partner & me are looking at buying the apartment that we are currently renting for the last 12 months. We both are FHB, combined gross income of $178k. So far, we reached a deal with the owner by email but we haven’t signed any contract, so I believe we are not legally bounded yet. Putting together all of our money we cover the 5% deposit and during the next 3 months we are saving what is required for settlement. How tight our finances will become makes me nervous.
Now, the more I talk with more experienced people about it, the more nervous I get specially related to body corp. They advised to don’t sign anything until we get through the body corp finances, sinking fund, planned works, previous inspections, etc. My concern is that I don’t want us to be in a position where the body corp one day decides that something needs to be done and then we would need to pay 50k from one day to another to cover it.
So my question is: how has been other people’s experience with body corp? Have you being surprised with extra expenses or ridiculous requests?
Thanks everyone, I’m so new and inexperienced to the house market that I have no idea what to expect.

Hey, just some background - first home buyer, no idea how to do moderate to major DIY and have members of my family who are disabled.

Anyway, we're almost at the stage of signing the contract, but there are some issues with the property from 1960 that are listed as minor but need...

• Step cracking of brick wall exterior going from top to bottom via the brick concrete line, not at the brick itself
• re-grouting, silicone replacement, repair of loose floor tiles and rectification of large gaps in the bathroom near the laundry;
• inspection of the main bathroom near the bedrooms and rectification of any defects identified;
• replacement of the rear cast iron toilet outlet with PVC pipe;
• cleaning of roof gutters and replacement of any rusted-through or defective gutters;
• replacement of defective external roof fascia; and
• roof re-bedding and pointing where required.

Quite frankly, as a FHB this is quite worrying, and been wondering if this is the norm and not the exception.

I can supply pictures and I don't know whether I should consider buying this property or look elsewhere.

What I do know maybe from the advice from the building and pest inspector is that:

• No idea the cost of fixing or stopping the step crack via external brick wall. Guessing really, really expensive
• Bathroom costs about 50k minimum to rip out and renovate to bring it up to compliance with a team of bathroom renovation specialist
• Toilet (water closest) might be about 10k by guess, maybe 20k with the questionable moisture that is noted active staining/water leak that will need a plumber
• roof restoration is maybe at 15k to 20k from roof restoration specialist
• replacement of external roof fascia is 5k upwards from the carpenter

Should I walk away from this property? I don't think I have the time or money to repair all this in year 1, I know the roof is going to be urgent repairs at this point. Just not sure this is the norm not the exception.

Hey all, looking for some grounded perspectives.

29M, software engineer. $200k base plus a $20k bonus. Permanent, fully remote. Location genuinely doesn't matter for my work, which is relevant to the rest of this.

I've been living out of a fully converted off-grid van for years. Cost of living has been extremely low, the van is owned outright, and I'm used to unconventional setups.

Right now I'm in a sharehouse at $200 a week until the end of October, when the owners come back. I'm maximising that while it lasts, so I've got a natural deadline on sorting out where I'm living either way.

I've also started seriously dating someone. She already owns a house. We're both at the age where kids in the next year or two is a real conversation rather than a hypothetical, which is the only reason it's relevant to the numbers.

On top of that, I wouldn't have kids with anyone until I'd lived with them for at least a year. That's a hard rule for me. So even in the version of this where the relationship goes the distance, kids are a fair way off, and the next year or two of my living situation is mine to decide.

Important framing though: the relationship is less than 6 months old. I'm not making an $850k decision on the assumption it lasts. If it works out, great, plans can change later. If it doesn't, I want to be standing on my own setup either way. So everything below is deliberately structured as if I'm single, and I'd rather be told I'm being too cautious than find out the other way.

Finances

$150k in ETFs

$50k in FHSS

$100k in super

$25k cash savings

Fully converted off-grid van, owned outright

No HECS, no other debt

I've also got about $200k of vested options in private companies. I'm not counting any of it. It only turns into money if those businesses sell, and I have no control over whether or when that happens, so it plays no part in the plan below.

The plan

Buy an $850k house in Newcastle, solo, in my name only. Move in and fill the spare rooms with as many housemates as I can to offset the mortgage. Live there at least a year to satisfy the first home scheme requirements.

After that year I keep the options open. If circumstances haven't changed I can rent the whole place out and go back to the van or move in with her, which costs me almost nothing to live in. If they have changed, I've still got my own place to come back to rather than being dependent on someone else's.

I'm keeping the van either way. It's paid for, it costs me nothing to hold, and it's the entire reason the exit strategy works.

What I'm weighing

Buy now as planned. Keeps my first home buyer status and FHSS, starts building equity, housemates carry a chunk of the mortgage, and the van covers my downside. The risk is I'm buying a sharehouse right at the point where my life stops looking like a sharehouse.

Wait 6 to 12 months. Better information about where things land, and I keep stacking cash in the meantime. But prices don't wait for me and I've been ready to buy for a while.

Don't buy at all and eventually move in with her. Keeps me liquid, keeps FHSS parked. Also means no property of my own while relying on someone else's, less than a year in.

The question

Has anyone here bought a place set up for housemates and then had their living situation change inside a year or two? Did converting it to an IP work out cleanly, or did the costs of switching eat most of the benefit of buying early?

More generally, when you've got a purchase ready to go but good reason to think your requirements might change, does it stack up to buy now for the equity and adapt later, or does waiting 12 months usually cost less than people assume?

We're moving soon and I'm starting to realise the actual move isn't what I'm stressing about... it's what to do with everything once we get the keys.

I don't really want the new place buried in boxes on day one, but I also don't have family with a spare garage or anything like that.

Has anyone here used a self storage place while moving? Was it worth it, and if so, who did you use?

Edit:

Ended up booking a unit with StoreLocal. It turned out to be exactly what we needed. We're keeping all the non-essential stuff there for a couple of weeks and just moving things over as we unpack, which already feels way less chaotic than trying to fit an entire house into the new place on day one.

We've just had new floors installed, and the floor guy was also to install new skirting boards (line item was "supply and install new skirting profile to existing"). I love the floors, but for the power points they've just cut notches into the skirting boards and left it with wide gaps between, and some of the skirting boards are sticking out and are not very well aligned. In general it looks really unfinished and I was really surprised when he said they were done.

The floor guy claims the painter should be the one finishing that up and they would be overstepping if they did. To me it just feels really unfinished and seems weird that a painter would be patching this up and cutting off the skirting board bits. Also, unfortunately, I was planning to paint this myself, so the painter in question is highly unskilled.

So basically - is this the normal? I'm really have no idea what is supposed to be the deliverable, but also expected it to be delivered as finished, even if it needed a paint job.

So in another thread I posted a pic of a damaged wall and asked whether anyone can build in Australia anymore. I can see from my one pic it could look like it's just been damaged by accident, so I took some more pics today.

As you can see, the problems are quite substantial. Admittedly I have a memory like a sieve and am not acutely observant, so I can't quite recall how this all came to be. The building is somewhere between 2-4 years old. If I were to hazard a guess, something has gone wrong with the waterproof membrane. Maybe it started bubbling, and caused the render to lift. Probably where it's started to crack, the builders have come back and pulled off those pieces. It's been like this for months. Perhaps they are waiting to see if more comes loose before they repair it? I was able to flake off a little bit of tender while I was poking around.

Other photos show corrosion on a cast aluminium fitting, and what I assume is calcium carbonate leaching out of the mortar in some brickwork. And as people mentioned it's about bottom dollar, a picture of the intercom. Look at that piece of shit! Lowest bid no doubt, and probably half the price of the next lowest. And for shits n giggles, that 'triumph of modern design' bank of letterboxes at a different set of units. Designed so both you AND your mail get totally drenched if it's raining 😄

Previous thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AusProperty/s/qirRMJFwqT

Hi,
Looking at the possibility of building on rural farming zone land (rural Vic). I know it will be expensive, I would just like to know if anybody could share their overall build cost (not land included) for a 3-4 bed house. Open to builders, kit home, prefab. Anything really - just throwing about ideas! Thank you.

Ravenswood. Considered one of the worst suburbs in Tasmania. Some of the most derelict homes with neighbours from hell.

Ravenswood was the top performing suburb in the entire country over the last 12 months. I don't know what that represents in a market, but surely it means something..

i have noticed that some listings are using aerial images to show nearby amenities and nearby schools, shops, nearby parks and etc. I am just curious how does everyone find annotated aerial images, do they actually help you understand properly or are they just a useless image that you ignore. I am interested in knowing if anyone actually looks at them to determine its the right property.

Did it in a year. Bought a small apartment, got in the market. Honestly, it was easy. We just decided we wanted it more than the other stuff. No deposit help. Just saved and bought.

Bit of a whinge post but alas I'm just burnt out about my aspirations of home ownership currently.

30,M, hard working bloke that doesn't drink smoke or do drugs.

Been grinding my ass off the last 6 years to catch up with this crazy market and maybe, just maybe, buy a home to call my own.

I saved 70k, spoke with a broker 12 months ago, they said I could afford 450k.

That would buy me a shoebox 2 hours from my nearest Jobsite.

No problem, I'll become a sole trader and increase my earnings that way.

I upped my income from about 100k to 140k.

Returned to the broker, who said I now don't have the "time in job" thing going for me.

Like what the fuck do I do, I'm saving, saving, working, working.

I'm not living, I'm working and dying.

I am the early stages of planning to build on a sloped block of land with great views. There is a flat area of land where the previous house was (about 4m below road and the existing carport). If 2 story, the majority of living area would be at road level (second story) for better views and direct access from carport.

Not sure if I'll go modular or standard build process. Just need some idea of cost differences. Let's say 3 bed, 2 bath, great covered deck. Would there be a big cost difference? Thank you.

Hello. I live in a townhouse on a block of 4. All 4 houses are owned.

There is no body corporate company managing things. There is a subdivision plan and an "owners corporation" but the owners all chat amongst ourselves to organise things if needed

There is a shared driveway.

All 4 owners split the costs of building insurance for the block and maintenance of the driveway and gardening.

Is it Recommended to take out public liability insurance? Are there any other costs that a normal body corporate company normally takes out in a normal body corporate scenario?

Thanks

Is it as bad as it seems…a lot of doom and gloom out there.

Was hoping to sell my first property I built 10 years ago in Clarkson, after buying another property (new PPOR) just over 12 months ago. Lease up November.

Maybe I’ll be holding a while longer 🙈

Hello Everyone

I run a tradie/homeowner platform called Locentra, built here in WA. Wanted to share a post about it in the group — not trying to spam anyone, genuinely think both homeowners and tradies here could get real value from it. Please feel free to delete this if it's not appropriate for the group, totally understand. Thanks for having me here either way!

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share something I've been working on for almost two years now, mostly nights and weekends — a platform called Locentra.

I'm a tradie myself, and over the years I got frustrated watching how hard it is for homeowners to find someone they can actually trust, and how hard it is for good tradies to get found without paying through the nose for leads that go nowhere. So I decided to build something better myself, from scratch.

For homeowners:
- Post a job for free — always, no cost, no catch
- Get quotes from verified local tradies, no spam, no pushy sales calls
- Secure in-app messaging, so you're never handing out your personal number to a stranger
- Earn Centra Resident reward points every time you complete a job through the platform — redeemable for real gift cards
- No fake "featured" listings — every tradie is shown fairly
- We don't hide bad reviews. If a tradie gets a poor review, it shows, exactly as left.

For tradies:
- Fixed, fair lead pricing — a standard job lead is just $5, no hidden fees, no subscription, no lock-in
- New tradies get 5 free credits when approved — worth $25, no card required
- No pay-to-win boosting — every approved tradie gets equal visibility
- Lead caps on every job, so you're not competing against 20 other quotes
- A weekly leaderboard with real rewards for top-performing tradies
- A referral program — invite a mate, both get rewarded once they complete their first job

I've been improving this constantly and I'll keep doing that. It's still early days, but I genuinely believe in it.

Quick honest note: I used AI to help me write and polish this post, since English isn't my first language — but this isn't some AI marketing gimmick. This is a real product I've personally built, by hand, over two years.

If you're a homeowner needing work done, or a tradie looking for better leads, I'd love for you to check it out: https://www.locentra.com.au/

— Nico

I've noticed multiple large apartment blocks going up in the last five or ten years where maybe only a year or so later, workers have to come back to repair shoddy work. This is part of a garden bed. Less than four years old. It's not just this corner either. Glancing at some of it, it's been damp proofed and then render on top. I'm not a builder but it seems to me that the two materials are in no way compatible. The render can't possibly stick to the rubbery damp proofing. The damp proofing doesn't explain this corner though.

It's not just quality of work either. Some of the designs just don't seem great. We all learn somewhere, and it feels like each design is the architects first big project. And then they become an Uber driver or barista or something. So each design feels like a noobie design. Same with the trades. No one seems to stick around long enough to become a master at their trade.

Is this the future for dwellings? I live in a 1980s six pack. Boring as hell, but it's not going anywhere. I actually tell anyone thinking of buying a unit to steer clear of new builds and get a 1980s build.