Building Inspection Council

The biggest problem with shoddy building inspectors is that it will be too late by the time you will come to know about the damage.

According to a survey,  100% of the new and newly renovated apartment and house owners have been found with defects and the average cost to fix these defects is $6,434 and $5,839 respectively*. 1 in 20 apartment buyer has to pay more than $50,000 to get fixed building defects.

The main job of the building inspector is to find out existing, hidden, and potential defects in a building. An unprofessional house inspector may leave some defects undetected. Now, these defects will come to the surface after few years. By this time, it is too late to do anything. Your building inspector is out of any liability for doing improp home inspections.

You have to bear thousands of dollars’ bills and a lot of time to get your dream home fixed. Your lifetime savings are depleted and you are pushed back by 5-10 years in life cause of some incompetent building inspector.

There are many problems with commercial free-quote companies like (oneflare, whitepages, serviceseeking)and these problems arise from the conflict in the purpose of these companies.  On one hand, these companies are supposed to make maximum money for the owners and on the other hand, these companies are supposed to provide the cheapest quotes from the best inspectors. These two tasks are in conflict with each other and cannot be carried out together in tandem.  Here are problems caused by this conflict:

Higher Cost:  These free quote providing companies are pushing up the cost of home inspection. For maximizing profit, these companies sell leads to the highest bidding inspector or sell to as many inspectors as possible.  Thus even if the lead does not turn into the business but it does add to the cost of business.  These leads can cost up to $75 in commission and at the end of the day, this commission is paid by the customer.

Inexperienced building inspectors: It is seen that expert house inspector get their most of work just by word of mouth or reference. They are not happy to pay hefty commission for leads and thus property owners do not get quotes from these expert inspectors.

Unqualified and Unprofessional:  In these free quote companies, there are hardly any formal verification processes to check unqualified and unprofessional building inspector. If you may have seen, any person can register on these sites and start getting jobs. 

As leads are sold to as many property inspectors as possible, there are very good chances that you may be getting quotes from some unqualified and unprofessional inspectors.

For detailed information about the problem with commercial free-quote companies, Please read here

Mushrooming of free quote providing companies is a clear indication of huge money in this business. Although these companies claim to be ethical and work on minimum margins, actually they have devised many schemes to extort money from the building inspectors.

1. Commission from Service Provider: Quote providing companies charge a commission from the building inspectors for providing potential customer details. These potential customer details are called lead in technical jargon. Either these leads are sold to the highest bidder or are sold to as many service providers as possible. Although there is no guarantee of business from these leads, but building inspector has to pay upfront for these leads. The cost of these leads depend on the profits margins of product or service but may range up to thousands of dollar. For building inspection and allied services, the cost of leads goes up to $75.
2. Fee for primary listing: You may have seen special tags in front of companies registered on free quote providing companies like

• • Verified
  • Premium
  • Highly recommended
  • Highlighted etc.

These tags or categories get extra attention from the customers and quote providing company charge premium to add these categories from building inspectors.  

3. Auto bidding fee: Normally building inspection company has to manually send quotes to each customer. But some free quote companies allow automated bidding process and charge extra cost from building inspection companies for it.
4. Rating and Reviews: There are ratings and reviews for each building inspector and free quote company charges for managing these reviews and ratings. There are charges for enhancing the star rating of the building inspector and each star can cost up to $25000. Fake positive reviews can be added or a negative review can be removed by paying extra to the company.

For more details, please read here

Most of the customer reviews and ratings are fake on websites. These fake reviews and ratings are created in two ways.

Firstly by conniving with website owners,  a building inspector can get positive reviews and excellent ratings. These company charges huge sums for boosting star rating, adding positive reviews and removing negative reviews. Sometimes these companies have dedicated account managers for managing fake reviews and ratings.

Second by hiring third-party companies to manage fake reviews and ratings. There is the countless number of companies in the market which manages fake reviews and rating. These companies charge per fake reviews.

We are not saying that all the reviews and ratings are fake but differentiating between fake reviews and genuine reviews are impossible.

According to mozo,  100% of the new and newly renovated apartments and houses have been infested by building defects.

Chances of defects in houses:

Chances of defects in Apartments:

Source: Mozo.com.au

According to research done by choice.com.au, the most common defects found are

1. 1. Internal water leaks – 46% 
   2. Cracking to internal or external structures – 41%
   3. Water penetration from outside – 40%
   4. Guttering faults – 25%
   5. Defective roof coverings – 23%
   6. Defective plumbing – 22%
   7. Tiling problems – 20%
   8. Building movement – 17%
   9. Noise break-through – 17%
   10. Defective balcony balustrades – 15%
   11. Lack of or defective fire safety measures -15%
   12. Electrical faults – 14%
   13. Inappropriate or correctly installed materials – 12%
2. Defective machinery – 12%
3. Other – 5%

yes, according to real estate experts a building and pest inspection is a must for the property buyers.  Building inspection costs between $300 to $600 but this small investment can save you from disaster in form of hidden building defects. 

According to mozo,  100% of the new and newly renovated apartments and houses have been found with building defects that have cost owners  $6,434 and $5,839 respectively*.  Research also shows that 1 in every 20 apartment buyers have folk out above $50,000 to fix the building defects in their newly purchased property and 1 in every 20 house buyers have to spend above $20,000 to repair building defects in their new house*.

So this investment of $300 to $600 is a must to protect the biggest investment of your life.

According to mozo,  repairing building defects has cost Australians a staggering total of $10.5 billion over the past decade*. The report also mentions that  100% of the new and newly renovated apartments and houses have been inundated by defects that have cost them $6,434 and $5,839 respectively*. Professional building and pest inspections can help property buyers in many ways.

1. Protect you from financial pit hole: 1 in every 20 apartment buyers have folk out above $50,000 to fix the building defects in their newly purchased property and 1 in every 20 house buyers have to spend above $20,000 to repair building defects in their new property*. A simple waterproofing defect in a bathroom can cost up to $15,000 to fix. Even if you are a seasoned property buyer,  it is impossible to detect all the defects without proper tools and training. An expert building inspection can save you from such financial sinkholes.
2. Reveal major and minor defects: According to research, 100% of the new and newly renovated apartments and houses in the last decade have building defects*.  The most common defects are internal water leakage and cracking of the internal and external structures. A building assessment report list out all the major and minor building defects for you to make an educated decision about the property.
3. Help you calculate the potential cost of property: According to Jovcevski, “whether you are buying a new apartment or a new house you should budget for repairs for the most common defects that plague properties. Don’t assume you’ll escape these problems, because you won’t”.  As different studies have shown that for 1 in 20 property buyers,  the repairing cost for building defects can go above $50,000 in the case of apartments and above $20,000 in the case of houses*.  An inspection report will enable you to calculate the potential repair cost and arrange a budget for it.
4. Reveal life-threatening risk: These are some building defects that can cause serious or fatal injury to the resident of the building.  These defects may be due to faulty design, faulty material, or the faulty construction process of the building. According to an article in Financial Review, “72 percent to 85 percent of owners corporations in multi-level apartment buildings had major defects or in other words,  life-threatening building defects.” A home inspection can protect you from turning your dream home into the graveyard of your family.

Get free quotes for building inspection now

Building inspection or building and pest inspection costs between $300 to $600 depending on the following factors

• Type of building
• Size of building
• Number of Stories 
• Age of house

There are no fast and hard rules to choose a quality building inspector and most of the free quote providing companies are not honest about their building inspectors. That is where Building Inspection Council plays an important role and provides you with the contact details of qualified and experienced inspectors.

Following observation may help you with the capability of inspectors. 

• Check their construction induction cards
• Check their education credentials
• Ask for Sample reports

You can choose our free quotes service as we are a not-for-profit  organization, and you are guaranteed to get quotes from the quality building inspector

Building Inspection Council is not here for making money. We are a not-for-profit organization with the sole aim of community service. 

At Building Inspection Council, we do not take any donation in any form from any person, business, or organization. Also, we are not involved in any business or monetary transaction. In fact, our total gross incoming revenue is always zero dollars. So when there is no revenue, how can there be any profit.

We are run with help of more than 130 volunteers, a small contribution from the 3 founders, and some help from the government. 

Building Inspection Council works in a very transparent way to provide service to the community. Our working process is open and all the details are available on the website. Besides this, we are open to any scrutiny by any member of society or government.  Neither we take any donation nor we get involved in any monetary transaction. Here are working processes for 3 stakeholders of organizations

For Customer: A customer or property buyer looking building inspector can use our website in  2 ways.

                Free Unbiased Quotes:  You can order free unbiased quotes from our website and your details are sent to all the verified building inspectors in your area. These building  inspectors directly contact you through your chosen medium of communication to provide you a quote

                Building Inspector’s List:  A list of all the verified building inspectors is provided on the website and property buyers can filter through this list based on experience, areas, and other criteria.

For Building Inspectors: A building inspector can register with us for free.  A mandatory verification process is carried out before adding a building inspector to the council’s website. The verification involves

• Qualification verification
• Experience verification
• Knowledge verification
• License verification
• Insurance verification

For Volunteers: We have 130 dynamic volunteers working with us in different positions. Most of our volunteers work from home. Any member of society can volunteer with us. Each volunteer has to go through a simple verification process that involves

• Police clearance certification 
• Identity Verification
• Address verification