Victoria

Proposed New Tax To Help Home Owners Remove Asbestos

Did you know that 1 in 3 Australian homes contain asbestos? With home renovations on the rise, many Australian's are purchasing homes built before 1985 with the intention of doing small renos through to complete rebuilds. Unfortunately, many people a...
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A Good Building Inspection Is Better Than An Expensive Cure

Put yourself in Hao’s shoes. He buys his dream home only to discover a buyer’s worst nightmare: most of his buildings are illegal. As the Whittlesea Council says: His bungalow was constructed without a permit. And to add insult to financial in...
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What is a Building Inspection?

A building inspection is designed to give you independent and objective advice about the physical state of a building, enabling you to make an informed decision, generally about whether or not to buy a building. A building inspection is a snapshot...
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Is Your Smoke Alarm Up To Scratch

Fires can spread rapidly (in less than five minutes) through your house, according to findings from a Fire & Rescue NSW report. Interesting also is that homeowners are encouraged to look at how many fire alarms in their house to cover all potenti...
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The Block's Depreciation Schedules And You

So, “investors could claim an average of over $2.2 million in depreciation deductions for each apartment on Channel 9’s 2016 season of The Block,” according to new analysis reported by The Urban Developer. By far the biggest potential deprec...
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What Victoria’s New Tenancy Laws Mean For Landlords

Victoria’s new tenancy laws mean that landlords need to pay extra attention to basic standards, especially relating to health and safety. These include (but are not limited to) providing functioning heaters, stoves and even deadlocks. Furthermore, ...
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Beware Of Unqualified Building Inspections

How to avoid unqualified building inspections? In a Fairfax article, Chris Dyce, president of the Australian Society of Building Consultants, says go with experienced building inspectors. Make sure they’ve work experience in the industry and don’...
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Building Inspectors Break Secrets

Building inspectors break secrets. It’s their job to do so and we wouldn’t have it any other way. They’re in one very real sense property detectives. It’s fraudulent for a vendor to knowingly conceal defects according to the law. This incl...
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What is Caveat Emptor?

Increasingly property buyers are aware of their responsibility to discover building defects before sale – this is known as the Latin principle Caveat Emptor or ‘buyer beware’. The full quotation is ‘caveat emptor, qui ignorare no...
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Buying Off-The-Plan Housing Needn't Be Scary

Buying an off-the-plan house needn’t be scary if you make smart choices. One important choice: Seeking out experts in New Construction – and Jim’s Building Inspections is a good place to start. Buying off-the-plan with professional guidan...
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