What should you know before a house inspection?

The short answer: an open for inspection is usually a 15–30 minute window — and most buyers spend it in exactly the wrong state of mind: imagining themselves living there, matching rooms to the listing photos, collecting reasons to say yes. Go in with the opposite job: check the things styling can hide (damp, cracks, water pressure, storage), collect the two documents Victorian law puts in your corner — the Statement of Information and the due diligence checklist — and remember the agent works for the vendor. An open home is not a building inspection; it's your chance to decide whether the property earns one.

Meet Mel, again

When we last met Mel, she'd worked out what one income could actually borrow — and that the 2% single-parent deposit path put a home within reach. Now it's Saturday, the kids are at her mum's, and she has four opens across the outer north between 10:00 and 12:30.

At the first one, she did what almost every buyer does. She'd seen the listing photos the night before, so she walked through recognising rooms rather than inspecting them — there's the kitchen from photo three, nicer than she expected. By the second bedroom she was mentally placing her daughter's bed. She left ten minutes later having felt a lot and checked nothing.

That's not a personal failing — it's what fifteen minutes, professional styling and a hopeful heart reliably produce. The photos primed her to confirm, not to question. Nobody walks in planning to test the water pressure; everybody walks out having imagined a life. The checklist below exists precisely because your brain, in that room, will be busy doing something else.

Mel isn't a real person — but her situation is. Every rule in this story is real and linked to its source below.

Fifteen minutes, used properly

The house will be styled to within an inch of its life; Mel's job is to look past it. Her checklist, in the order she walks:

• Wet areas first. Under the kitchen and bathroom sinks, around the shower base, ceiling corners — stains, bubbling paint, fresh patches of paint in odd places, that musty smell a scented candle is working hard to cover.
• Turn things on. Taps (pressure, and how fast the hot water arrives), light switches, windows — do they open, close and lock. In a 15-minute window nobody minds, and it tells her more than the brochure.
• Cracks and floors. Hairline cracks are common; stepped or wide cracks around doorframes are a question for a professional. A marble from her pocket tells her if the lounge floor slopes.
• Phone reception and power points. Two things nobody checks and everybody regrets. Count the points room by room.
• Storage, orientation, noise. Where does winter sun come from, what does the street sound like with the windows open, and where would three people's actual belongings go.

The two documents the law gives her

In Victoria, two pieces of paper do real work for buyers, and Mel asks for both at the door.

The Statement of Information must be displayed at every open for a residential property: an indicative selling price, three comparable sales, and the median for the suburb. If the indicative price sits oddly below the comparables, that's her early warning about the campaign's honesty — underquoting rules are enforced by Consumer Affairs Victoria.

The due diligence checklist must be made available to would-be buyers of residential property — it's the government's own list of the un-glamorous questions (flooding, bushfire risk, easements, owners corporation obligations) at consumer.vic.gov.au/duediligencechecklist.

Questions the agent will answer — and what the answers mean

The agent is not Mel's adviser — they're contracted to get the vendor the best price. But asked directly, they'll still tell her useful things:

• "Why are they selling?" and "How long has it been listed?" A long campaign or a relisting changes her negotiating position.
• "Have there been offers?" They may not say much — but how they answer says something.
• "What settlement terms suit the vendor?" Flexibility on settlement can be worth thousands in a negotiation, and costs her nothing to learn.
• "Has the price guide changed?" Cross-check against the Statement of Information in her hand.

She takes photos (asking first), notes answers in her phone before the next open, and never decides anything in the driveway.

The part Havenli does for you

Here's Mel's real problem: everything above is a lot to hold in your head at 10:40 on a Saturday, in your third open, with your heart already redecorating.

This is exactly what Havenli's property report is built for. For each home on your shortlist, it turns the listing into your inspection plan: what to check yourself in that specific property — the age-appropriate trouble spots, the things the photos can't show — and what to ask the agent, phrased and ready. And it's prepared around your situation, not a generic list: Mel's report leads with the things that decide it for her — three bedrooms, the school zone, the street — so the fifteen minutes go on what matters for her, not on admiring the lamps.

The street test

The house is half the purchase; the street is the other half. Mel's non-negotiables are a safe street and the kids' school zone — and this is where checking things yourself gets genuinely hard. She's not driving 20 km back on a Tuesday night to stand on a footpath, and no Saturday open will tell her what the street is like after dark.

This is data's job, not petrol's. Havenli's report shows her which school catchments the property actually sits in — zones follow addresses, not suburbs, and the boundary can run down the middle of a road — and the street's actual crime statistics, so "does it feel safe" becomes a number she can compare across her shortlist instead of a guess. If she wants to verify the sources herself, they're the same official ones: findmyschool.vic.gov.au and the Crime Statistics Agency.

What an open home is not

An open inspection is Mel's screening tool — it is not a building inspection. Cracks she can see, but restumping, roof structure, wiring and termites are a professional's job, and that comes at the due diligence stage, once a home has earned it. (That's its own story, coming up with Priya and Dan.) The open's job is simpler: decide whether this house is worth the next hour of her life, and the next few hundred dollars of scrutiny.

How it played out

Four opens, one Saturday — but Mel's real work happened on Thursday night, at the kitchen table. She ran each shortlisted listing through Havenli first, so by the time she locked the front door on Saturday morning she already knew every property and its neighbourhood: the catchment each one actually sat in, the street's crime numbers, what the comparable sales said about each price guide, the building's age and its era's usual trouble spots. She wasn't flying blind into anyone's styling.

That changed what the inspections were for. She wasn't there to discover the properties — she was there to close the gap between what was advertised and what was real, and to do the handful of things only a physical visit can do. Exactly the two lists her report walked in with: check yourself — the wet areas, the water pressure, the windows, the cracks — and ask the agent — why they're selling, how long it's been listed, what settlement suits the vendor.

The first house failed the check-yourself list in five minutes: a musty laundry under a freshly painted ceiling, in a home the report had already flagged for its era's damp-prone construction. The second she'd nearly skipped from the crime numbers alone; the drive-by confirmed the report was polite about it. The third was lovely, and still $60k past her range — no inspection changes arithmetic. The fourth: three bedrooms, right zone on the actual catchment map, decent light — and this time her fifteen minutes produced answers, not feelings. Taps run hot fast, windows lock, no cracks past hairline, agent says the vendor wants a long settlement. Advertised, meet reality.

One Saturday, four opens, one shortlist entry — and not a single decision made on lamps.

If you're like Mel

Know your budget before the Saturday circuit — check what one income can really borrow — and which schemes could back you at the scheme checker. And when you're shortlisting real homes, Havenli's report walks into every inspection with you.