Frank Advice

A woman rang me from a footpath once. She was standing outside an open home, and she said, "I'm looking at it right now. Is this one of those leaky homes?"

I had to tell her I couldn't answer that. Nobody can, not from the street. Anyone who says they can spot a leaky home from the footpath is guessing.

But I said, "Describe it to me, and I'll tell you whether it's the kind of house where I'd want to find out." So she did. And I said, "Right. Let's find out."

This week: what a leaky home actually is, what you can and can't see from the footpath, and why the warning signs most people watch for are the ones that turn up last.

In this episode:

• Why "leaky home" isn't a type of house, and what it actually describes
• Five things you can spot from the footpath, and why one on its own tells me very little
• Why the signs people watch for are usually the last ones to show up
• The discovery that makes most buyers panic, and why it can be good news
• What a moisture reading can tell me, and what it can't
• A word for anyone who already owns a house from that era

The three practical tips:

1. What to check before you fall for a house, and why you don't need to be an expert to do it
2. The paperwork to ask for before you let one thing worry you
3. The one situation where "we'll sort it out later" is the most expensive sentence in the purchase

Got a question about your own place? Send it through. I'm @getfrankadvice on all the socials, and I answer the good ones on the show.

Listen and get in touch: getfrankadvice.nz
Book an inspection: jbitakapuna.top
Follow @getfrankadvice everywhere.

Next week: weatherboard, brick or plaster. The three claddings that make up most of Auckland, and what you're actually buying with each one.

A bloke followed me out to the driveway halfway through an inspection. He said, "I asked the agent whether this house had ever leaked, and she went all vague on me. I reckon she knows something."

He'd been sitting on that for three days. Hadn't slept much on it either, by the look of him.

She wasn't lying to him. But from where he was standing in that driveway, careful and evasive look exactly the same.

Most buyers ask the right questions. They just put them to the wrong person, and then they read the answer wrong and spend a week worrying about nothing. This week: five questions nearly every buyer asks, and who actually holds the answer to each one.

In this episode:

• Why a careful answer usually isn't the answer you think it is
• The most asked question in New Zealand property, and the three places the answer actually lives
• The question people ask in a hallway that takes me two hours and a torch to answer
• The one question I'd tell you to stop asking, and the better one to ask instead
• The easiest answer to get in the whole episode, and almost nobody goes looking for it
• What the agent is far and away the best person to ask, and why buyers underuse them

The three practical tips:

1. The follow-up question that turns a vague answer into a useful one
2. Two minutes, costs nothing, and you'll come away with things that are not in any document anywhere
3. What to order before you ask anybody about consents, and why the order matters

Got a question about your own place? Send it through. I'm @getfrankadvice on all the socials, and I answer the good ones on the show.

Listen and get in touch: getfrankadvice.nz
Book an inspection: jbitakapuna.top
Follow @getfrankadvice everywhere.

Next week: the first question on today's list gets an episode of its own. Has this house ever leaked, what a leaky home actually looks like from the footpath, and why the warning signs are not the ones most people are watching for.

A client asked me to meet her at an open home a while back. Not an inspection, she hadn't got that far. She just wanted a second pair of eyes.

By the time I'd walked from the letterbox to the front door, I'd stopped three times. Inside, the agent was doing a good job on the kitchen, and my client turned to me and said, "So? What do you think?"

I said, "I think I've got three questions, and I haven't been inside yet."

She hadn't seen any of them. Nobody does. Not because they're hidden - because nobody's ever told them they're worth looking at. This week I'm giving you all seven: three from the path, four from inside. Take them to the next open home you go to and you'll see the place differently.

In this episode:

• The one rule that stops a red flag turning into a reason to panic
• Three things you can spot before you've touched the door handle
• The three seconds you've got when you walk in, and what to do with them
• The one you can actually test while everyone else is admiring the benchtop
• Why I'm careful with number six, and what I'm not accusing anyone of
• The room everyone rushes through, and the question you can't answer from inside it

The three practical tips:

1. What to do while everyone else is queuing in the hallway with their shoes off
2. The difference between a buyer who looks at a door and one who opens it
3. Where to write your list, and why the car on the way home is too late

Got a question about your own place? Send it through - I'm @getfrankadvice on all the socials, and I answer the good ones on the show.

Listen and get in touch: getfrankadvice.nz
Book an inspection: jbitakapuna.top
Follow @getfrankadvice everywhere.

Next week: you've got your list of questions. Now, who do you actually ask? Some of them the agent honestly can't answer - and that's not their fault. I'll tell you who can.

A builder rang me a while back. Not for a client - for himself. He was buying a house.

Twenty-odd years in the trade, runs his own crew, has probably built more houses than I've inspected. And he said, a bit sheepishly, "Frank, I feel like I should know the answer to this. Do I need an inspection? I mean - I'm a builder."

I asked him what he was trying to find out. He laughed. Then he stopped laughing, because he realised he didn't know.

This week I'm asking the opposite question to the one I usually get asked, and answering it honestly. There are different ways of checking a house. They cost different amounts, and they get you different things - so whichever one you choose, you can choose it with your eyes open.

In this episode:

• The question to ask yourself before you decide what kind of check to get
• Four questions hiding inside "is this a good house" - and why most buyers never separate them
• What a builder mate's walk-through genuinely gets you, and the one thing it can't
• The five things that make the gap between a cheap check and a full one get much bigger
• The thing I'd want you to hear from an inspector, which isn't what you'd expect

The three practical tips:

1. What to write down before you decide what level of check you're paying for
2. What to ask for even if you go with the cheapest option
3. The one thing that shouldn't be making this decision for you

Got a question about your own place? Send it through - I'm @getfrankadvice on all the socials, and I answer the good ones on the show.

Listen and get in touch: getfrankadvice.nz
Book an inspection: jbitakapuna.top
Follow @getfrankadvice everywhere.

Next week: the red flags buyers walk straight past at open homes - seven things I notice in the first ten minutes that most people never see.

I inspected three houses for the same couple in about nine weeks.

The first one, the bidding went past what they had, and they drove home. The second one, same story. Two inspections paid for, two houses gone to somebody else - and the wife said to me on the phone, half laughing and half not, "we're spending a fortune on houses we don't own."

Then came the third house. And what I found in the first forty minutes changed the number they were willing to go to. They bought it.

This week: buying at auction - where every safety net you're used to is gone, and everything you'd normally do after you sign has to happen before you bid.

In this episode:

• The one sentence that explains the entire challenge of buying at auction
• Four jobs that all have to be finished before the auctioneer starts - and whose is whose
• The two words on your loan paperwork that don't mean what most bidders think they mean
• What I found on the third house, and what it changed about the way they bid
• The honest answer to "what if I pay for an inspection and don't get the house?"

The three practical tips:

1. When in the campaign to book your inspection - and why the usual timing leaves you with a report you can't use
2. Where and when to set your maximum number, and what to take off it first
3. The two free phone calls to make before you bid, and the question to ask each person

Got a question about your own place? Send it through - I'm @getfrankadvice on all the socials, and I answer the good ones on the show.

Listen and get in touch: getfrankadvice.nz
Book an inspection: jbitakapuna.top
Follow @getfrankadvice everywhere.

Next week: should you ever skip the building inspection? I'm a building inspector, so you can probably guess what you think I'll say. You might be surprised.

The phone went at about half past eight on a Sunday night. A woman I'd inspected for that week, and she was upset - not angry, just upset, the way people get when they've been staring at something for two hours and it's grown teeth.

She'd read her report properly for the first time, cover to cover, the night before she was due to settle. And one line in the middle of it had convinced her the house was falling down.

We were on the phone about ten minutes. She settled two days later, relieved instead of panicked.

This week: your inspection report. What it is, what it isn't, and how to read it without losing an evening to the wrong line.

In this episode:

• The one thing a report can never be, no matter who writes it
• Why your report doesn't mention the kitchen, and what that actually tells you
• The four things every finding should tell you - and what most reports leave out
• The section at the back almost nobody reads, and why it matters more than it looks
• The question buyers are too polite to ask their inspector

The three practical tips:

1. What to do with the report before you react to a single item in it
2. The two-column trick that turns forty pages of findings into something you can act on
3. Where the report belongs afterwards, and why it's worth more than information

Got a question about your own place? Send it through - I'm @getfrankadvice on all the socials, and I answer the good ones on the show.

Listen and get in touch: getfrankadvice.nz
Book an inspection: jbitakapuna.top
Follow @getfrankadvice everywhere.

Next week: buying at auction. The report you've just learned to read needs to exist before the hammer falls, not after.

A client rang me to book an inspection, and on the day he was waiting by the letterbox. He stayed there. The whole time. Two hours later I came out the front door and he looked at his watch like he'd caught me doing something wrong.

"You're still here? I thought this was a twenty-minute job."

He wasn't being cheeky. From where he was standing, all he'd seen was a bloke walking in and out of doors, up a ladder, and under a house. This week I walk you through the whole thing - an ordinary inspection on an ordinary Auckland house, start to finish, so you know exactly what's happening the next time you see your inspector's car in the driveway.

In this episode:

• What happens before I even knock on the door
• Why I'd rather inspect your house in the rain than in the sun
• Everything that comes out of the car with me, and what each thing is for
• Why I always start outside, whatever the house
• The reading on a window sill that looked completely fine, and what I did about it
• The part of the job that happens after I've driven away

The three practical tips:

1. The fifteen minutes of the inspection worth turning up for, if you can only make part of it
2. The five-minute phone call that stops things being marked "not accessible"
3. Why the gap between your report and your deadline matters more than you'd think

Got a question about your own place? Send it through - I'm @getfrankadvice on all the socials, and I answer the good ones on the show.

Listen and get in touch: getfrankadvice.nz
Book an inspection: jbitakapuna.top
Follow @getfrankadvice everywhere.

Next week: your report lands in your inbox - and how to actually read it, so you know what matters, what's routine, and what's worth a phone call.

A fella rang me on a Tuesday to book a building inspection. I asked the question I always ask - when do you go unconditional? There was a pause. "Oh no, we've already bought it. We settled two weeks ago."

He already owned the house. And he already owned the problem underneath it.

This week I walk through the five mistakes I see home buyers make over and over - not made-up ones, the five I actually find doing this job week in and week out. Every one of them is cheap to avoid before you sign, and expensive to discover after.

In this episode:

• What I found under the floor of a house that had already settled - and why finding it a month earlier would have put thousands back in the buyer's pocket
• Why an open home is a performance, and what you're not seeing in those twenty minutes
• The document most buyers think they already have - and usually don't
• What separates the buyers who make good decisions from the ones who panic

The three practical tips:

1. Where the inspection belongs in your offer, and what changes if you're buying at auction
2. The three questions to ask your inspector once you've got the report
3. The one document to order early, and why it isn't the one the agent gives you

Got a question about your own place? Send it through - I'm @getfrankadvice on all the socials, and I answer the good ones on the show.

Book an inspection: getfrankadvice.nz or jbitakapuna.top
Follow @getfrankadvice everywhere.

Next week: what actually happens during a building inspection - a real one, start to finish.

A buyer once told me inspecting her brand-new home would be the easiest job I'd do all week. Forty minutes later, nobody was joking any more.

In this first episode of Frank Advice, I walk you through a real pre-settlement inspection on a brand-new Auckland home - and what a thermal camera found behind a shower wall that looked absolutely perfect.

In this episode:

• The one sentence that changes how you look at a brand-new home
• Ground levels, path falls and the damage landscaping can do after the builder leaves
• What spot-fixed tiles look like through a thermal camera, and why it matters
• The insulation gap nobody could see from the room below
• Why a council sign-off and an independent inspection are not the same job
• The legal protection you've already paid for - and why most buyers never use it

Three practical tips:

1. When to get the inspection done, and why the timing changes if you bought off the plans
2. The one folder that decides whether your warranties are worth anything
3. The free ten-minute check to do in the first few months - and what to watch for

Every item found in this inspection was fixed by the builder before settlement. The buyers paid nothing.

Book an inspection or get in touch: getfrankadvice.nz
Follow @getfrankadvice

Frank Murray is a certified building inspector and Category 1 Thermographer with Jim's Building Inspections, Auckland.

Before you buy, before you build - Get Frank Advice.

New podcast launching Tuesday 4 August.

Frank Advice is honest answers about Kiwi properties, hosted by certified building inspector Frank Murray of Jim's Building Inspections in Auckland.

Every week: a real inspection story, what it means for your own property, and three practical tips you can use straight away. Homes, commercial and industrial buildings. No jargon, no scare tactics.

Episode 1 asks the question I hear more than any other: do brand-new homes really need a building inspection?

Follow now so it's waiting for you on Tuesday.

Book an inspection: jbitakapuna.top