Top 10 Home Cover-Ups and Renovations

Originally published in the Australian Property Investor magazine (API) and story written by Matthew Liddy, there are some very useful tips on how to spot cover-ups and what to do about it if you are either purchasing or selling a home that requires renovations.

Homebuyers must be on the lookout for sellers who’ve found problems with their home, moved to cover it up and then put it on the real estate market. Here are the top 10 cover-ups that can cost the unwary. Story by Matthew Liddy. Please visit www.apimagazine.com.au for more useful information.

Building advisory service Archicentre warns that buyers must beware the touch-up job, the quick cover-up that conceals a problem with a house but does nothing to fix it. “People who are buying properties may trip up over the situation where the seller has really just done a quick cover-up in order to move the property and get out of the problem,” says Archicentre Queensland manager Ron Tanton. “The new buyer is then saddled with the hidden defects and the hideous further costs involved.”

Cover-ups can prove effective because buyers don’t know what to look for and don’t always get a building inspection, Tanton says. “Typical weapons of mass deception include the use of gap filling products, wall panelling, strategically placed furniture, pot plants or rugs, or newly painted surfaces,” he reveals. Tanton says the top 10 cover-ups can be expensive to fix.

#1. Illegal Building
Typical example are low ceiling heights in habitable areas, dodgy extensions and alterations, and small boundary clearances. Tanton says these issues often don’t’ take too much covering up because many people aren’t aware of the regulations.
The Cost to Repair: Up to $100,000

#2. Cracking
Archicentre says it has seen internal cracking filled and painted and external cracking being hidden behind plants and trellises. Tanton says if a crack has been filled, plastered over and painted, it can even be difficult for a professional to detect.
The Cost to Repair: Up to $50,000

#3. Termites, borers and timber rot
Termites themselves try to conceal their activities but sometimes homeowners help uot by patching up floor damage or concealing it under carpets, Tanton says. “Cover-up merchants are the ones that generally deny access to the underfloor or the roof space,” he says.
The Cost to Repair: Up to $20,000

#4. Roof problems“Quite often the cover-up merchants will simply paint over the top with some sort of gooey stickey stuff and then paint it all in and make it look nice, only to find within two or three months or six months or twelve months, we’re back to where we were, wheras it should have been replaced in the first place,” Tanton says. With tile roofs, silicone is increasingly being used to stick tiles back together in an effort to get a house sold.
The Cost to Repair: Up to $20,000

#5. Rotten weatherboards and windows
Home real estate inspectors have seen rot patched with filler or covered with tin and painted. “It’s a small, inexpensive leap to spend a bit of spare time bogging up a few holes so that people don’t see it but what unfortunately can happen is the timber rot continues even through the paintwork over the top is quite good.”
The Cost to Repair: Up to $10,000

#6. Rotten stumps
One of the telltale signs of rotting timber stumps is a white, salty look to the bottom of the timber. “To cover up those sorts of things, people quite often paint the stumps and make them look nice,” Tanton says, adding that access is also often denied to underfloor areas with problem stumps.
The Cost to Repair: Up to $8,000

#7. Faulty or illegal wiring
Tanton says this is an area where cover-ups get downright dangerous. Cover-ups involve putting furniture in front of problematic power points or painting over them. “Bodgy do-it-yourself wiring”, especially in roof spaces, is also a problem.
The Cost to Repair: Up to $6,000

#8. Faulty or illegal plumbing
Cover-ups include painting or panelling over rusty plumbing that’s visible and homeowners carrying out their own illegal plubming connections and extensions.
The Cost to Repair: Up to $6,000

#9. Damp
Walls and ceilings are at times simply painted or panelled over, concealing the effects of dampness. “They’re very hard to see, particularly if the weather’s not raining a lot. If it is raining a lot then uite often the dampness will manifest itself as a smell.”
The Cost to Repair: Up to $5,000

#10. Guttering and downpipes
Archicentre inspectors see guttering and downpipes bogged up to hide rust. “We see that particularly with people selling homes – a bit of bog and spit and paint, and she’ll be right mate, nobody will get up there and have a look.” And they often get away with it. Some new homes also have secondhand guttering, he adds, an issues impossible to detect from the ground.
The Cost to Repair: Up to $3,000