For an average property, building inspection costs between $300 to $600. Basically cost of the building inspection depends upon the time, it takes to do a building inspection and how complicated building inspection is. Based on this rule, the following factors influence the cost of building inspection for your property.
Size of property:
The cost of building inspection is directly proportional to the size of the property. Obviously, A building inspection for a single bedroom apartment will cost much less as compared to the building inspection of the 5 bedroom mention.
Age of Property:
You may argue about the fairness of it but truth is that with the age of the property, the cost of building inspection goes up. As properties grow older, these tend to develop many problems and make the building inspection complicated and time-consuming. Each building defect needed to be inspected, calibrated, and documented. Whereas are new buildings that have significantly lower chances of occurrence of building defects. This complication and time spent on analyzing the building defect make building inspection of older buildings more time-consuming and hence costlier.
Type of Property:
Again, the type of property influence the time required to do building inspection and complication as explained in the following examples.
Example 1: Simple single-story 5 bedroom house will take much less time to inspect as compare to a duplex house with the same number of rooms. One reason for more time is that a duplex house many extra parts (Staircase, floor slab, safety railing, etc. ) to inspect as compare to the single-floor building.
Example 2: Even if 2 properties have the same number of stories and size, still the property with floors at different levels will take more time to inspect as compare to the property with all the floors at the same levels. Any complicated design will lead to extra time for inspection.
Example 3: Same way a house with colorbond roof takes less time as compared to a house with a tiled roof. In the case of a tiled roof, the building inspector has many more items in the roof to inspect as compare to colorbond roof.
All this extra time required to do inspection lead to higher building and pest inspection price.
Type of Inspection:
The type of inspection depends upon the purpose of the inspection. The purpose of inspection influence the details required out of the inspection and the required details affect the time to do building inspection, which decides the price of building inspection.
A simple standard building inspection will take less time as compared to packaged building and pest inspection. Obviously cost of building and pest inspection would be higher as compared to standard building inspection.
Building Inspection companies are providing inspections at all levels of price point. Some companies are claiming to be providing premium inspection and asking for $800. Whereas are other companies have a starting price of $229. There is no hard and fast rule when deciding the building inspector and we have prepared the following price guidance to protect you from being stitched up by some greedy inspector.
