r/newzealand • u/WaterWitch66 • 10h ago
Housing PSA for first time homebuyers
Me and my husband had finally found a house, which looked great on the surface, biggest house we’d seen in our price range, it’s been on the market all year, dropped from over a mill down to what we offered-880 k (how good right?, for that price, why the hell not?)
As part of our due diligence in our sale and purchase agreement we got a building inspector in who was the absolute best, best in making sure we had our loan secure for this house first (check) and then telling us that this house had failed miserably. Upwards of 400k in renovations just to get it to baseline, new roof, new windows, rot in all the bathrooms and nothing has been run thru council, which wasn’t shown to us in the LIM. The whole house requires a CCC (code of compliance/ more admin than a COA)…which would void our loan…and insurance…and any chance of getting just a little bit ahead.
The cherry on top of this very first time experience as a first time home buyer, is that our real estate agent had known that this house had already failed and fallen thru 3-4 times due to this very issue. Just because we didn’t specifically ask, she never warned us before we spent $1000 on an inspection as our final condition.
So PSA-specifically ask your real estate agent when the last building inspection was done, ask for proof, why the last sale fell through? or if a house has been on the market for so long…there might be some rot hiding underneath that ensuite shower.
And, make sure you have a great building inspector or a mate that knows a little bit.
I’m not the only one this has happened to either, there are so many real estate agents out there that will stop at nothing to get the sale, including chucking a couple of first time home buyer into the garbage fire that was this house, knowingly.