Inspect your inspector
Complied by Gill South
Bruce Symon - Manager, Realsure house inspection
There you are, flicking through your Yellow Pages looking for a building inspector, and all those letters after names catch your eye.
But what do they mean? MBOINZ simply means that someone is a member of the Building Officials’ Institute of New Zealand - qualifications not required.
CBANZ, Certified Builders’ Association of NZ, do not permit their members to use their logo or name when undertaking inspections and Master Builders recommends members do not undertake inspections unless they are standard compliant and carry professional indemnity.
Someone who is an accredited building surveyor of the Building Officials’ Institute of New Zealand, on the other hand, is accredited to the building surveyor programme of the institute and has undergone the necessary training, acquired sufficient experience and provided proof of that.
He or she will have gone before a panel of industry assessors who carefully assessed that individual was competent, knowledgeable and suitably skilled to conduct inspections that comply with the standards.
Two years ago, consumer research found that five out of six inspection companies had failed to spot signs of leaky homes. As a company, we see evidence that suggests nothing much has changed.
A buyer recently asked us to inspect some work a vendor had agreed to undertake following a pre-purchase inspection from another company.
It was a monolithic weathertight-risk era home and our surveyor found it had substantially greater problems than the vendor had agreed to fix.
The other inspection company lists all its membership letters in its advertisements but its inspectors are not accredited surveyors.
Another buyer asked us to inspect a home where the vendor had provided a pre-sale report. We had inspected this property about 10 months earlier. The pre-sale report provided to the buyer had been undertaken by another company.
It alluded to only some of the issues we had raised, advised incorrect remedial work and totally omitted problems we had pointed out with the plaster-clad section of the home. The inspector had limited knowledge of weathertight risk and monolithic cladding. While representing himself as a weathertight specialist surveyor, he was neither an accredited nor registered building surveyor and his report suggested serious gaps in his knowledge.
These inspectors should have to prove their standards compliance, qualifications and knowledge by becoming accredited.
Right now, people who are not adequately equipped to do so are inspecting, reporting and advising on the condition of properties.
While the industry remains unregulated, the way to bring about change is to only accept the services of an accredited surveyor.
An inspection won't eliminate all risk when buying property but an accredited building surveyor will conduct a thorough inspection, know what to look for, spot potential issues and go through all accessible areas. Non-accredited inspectors may offer their services a couple of hundred dollars cheaper but a full survey may uncover problems and save tens of thousands in repair bills.
One client rang to tell me a real estate agent had complained that our surveyor had taken over two hours to inspect a property - but what is two hours when it is a building a buyer may live in for the rest of their lives?
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