If you have plans to remodel or renovate your property, it’s an exciting time. Your head is probably filled with endless ideas and dreams. When remodelling, you need to keep a clear head and learn from the mistakes of those before you. As an example, you’re going to learn the importance of a dilapidation report today!
What’s a Dilapidation Report?
Often, when people consider building work, they think about the property itself. Of course, you want to know the condition of the property before putting it through stress. However, you also need to consider the properties surrounding your own home.
Therefore, an independent building inspector will come to your site and generate a written report on the condition of all properties surrounding your own.
Since remodelling projects may require some aspects of construction and demolition, it’s important to consider all other buildings. As you can imagine, the last thing you want is to damage a neighbouring home just because it wasn’t considered in the planning phase. As well as nearby buildings, comprehensive reports also consider driveways, paving, trees, yards, fences, and more.
The commercial demolition Gold Coast ensures a smooth, hassle-free demolition experience by arranging your demolition permit and disconnection and capping of your demolition services.
Impact of Remodelling on Neighbours
When remodelling your property, you might think that the only inconvenience for your neighbours comes with the sound and extra vehicles at the front of the property. In reality, your project can impact them in many other ways too.
As an example, the constant boring or drilling generates strong vibrations – in turn, these could impact the structure of the buildings.
If a neighbour already has cracks in their property, the construction work at your home could cause serious problems for them. In some cases, it leads to structural failure.
Furthermore, the removal of soil can weaken the land stability of other properties while also damaging the root systems of nearby trees.
Importance of a Dilapidation Report
As you’ve seen, your remodelling project can have quite an impact on your neighbours both short-term and long-term. First and foremost, dilapidation reports are valuable because it allows all parties to understand the situation and the potential implication of your project. Put it this way; what happens when you choose to forgo a dilapidation report and a neighbour experiences lots of damage as a result of your renovation?
The best-case scenario is that your builders will need to perform some small fixes, and this adds to the price of the project. Worst case scenario is that you’re forced into a long and arduous legal battle. With a dilapidation report, you can highlight potential problems early, work around them, and ensure that builders perform the remodelling responsibly.
There’s another side to the argument too – what happens if you complete the remodelling, and you get a knock on the door from a neighbour claiming that their home was damaged because of your builders? Without a dilapidation report, it’s their word against yours. With a dilapidation report, you can defend your position against false claims and prevent legal problems.
What’s more, the report is signed by all parties before any building work begins and this again protects you in the future. The building inspector is independent and therefore has no affiliation with any party in the process. Therefore, they will provide their honest opinion and report on what they see (rather than favoring one party over another).
All defects are listed in the report, and it adds a layer of protection for you as the homeowner of the remodeled property.