Welcome to the Restumping Melbourne blog – where we share everything that you need to know about the ins and outs of reinforcing your foundation at home or at work. No pun intended, we truly believe that when your foundation is constructed well and cared for properly, you’re set up for success from the ground up. This blog is our outlet for not just news about us, our products and services; rather, we feel that it’s in everyone’s best interests to share our passions and knowledge with our valued customers. These passions are rooted in your foundation and our restumping, reblocking and underpinning services, but they extend far beyond that. We want to know the industry trends in home renovations, in construction, in landscaping and more, and then we want to share them with you.

In our last post, we kicked off a series discussing the pitfalls that homeowners tend to run into when they bypass home inspections. You wouldn’t believe the costs that you can incur, just by saying no to a home inspection after signing on the dotted line, purchasing your next home.

Today’s post focuses on three areas that you need to keep an eye on during the process of buying a home and definitely follow up on after the process is complete. They are restumping, roofs and plumbing.

Restumping is up first, by no means of playing favourites. Looking for signs? A home for sale is probably staged. If you’re walking through it and the glasses on the shelves are rattling, you know that you’re walking through a home that needs a new foundation. This is a key moment to request to look at the sub-floor and do a full inspection so that you can determine the state of the stumps. Restumping can cost around $100 a stump within the Melbourne and surrounding areas. This can total up to thousands of dollars, if all of the stumps need to be replaced. This is definitely a cost that the previous owners should be responsible for.

Next on the agenda is roofs. Roofs get an underrated amount of attention, since they’re not something that you encounter all day. Think about the weather – heavy rain and wind is not something that you can anticipate, and it can create a huge amount of damage. Less invasive but still worth calling out is the influx of leaves when the trees start to shed for colder months. The big question to ask during an inspection is the structural soundness, otherwise you could be looking at up to $10,000.

Finally, let’s discuss plumbing. It can be the bane of many homeowners’ existences when it’s not properly looked after. Luckily for you, you visited the Restumping Melbourne site, so you can know to look for the following red flags – makeshift drains, leaking pipes, termites and damp areas in your crawl spaces.

Stick with our team and you’ll be in good shape as you navigate the home inspection process and move forward with your next dream home.

It’s a bit of a minefield out there when it comes to home ownership. There are so many question marks, so much uncertainty, so many leaps of faith as you make decisions that impact your wallet, your family, your entire livelihood. We know that we sound a bit dramatic, but we’re in the business of setting you up for success, and for us, that means reinforcing your home from the ground up. We have decades of experience, here on the Restumping Melbourne team, of working with every sort of property imaginable. We’re talking about size of property, shape of property, condition of property and beyond. That means that we’ve unfortunately seen our fair share of faux pas, everything ranging from easily-fixable, to full-blown nightmare. It’s our job here on the blog to educate you in a timely manner, so that you always avoid these mishaps. Let’s dive in to our first of two posts – today, we highlight exactly why you need to avoid these pitfalls. Tomorrow, we explain how.

Today’s post is very much a “by the numbers” type post. According to the Herald Sun, “Things such as restumping, repairing termite damage and rewiring generally come in $5000 and $10,000 lots and unbudgeted repair bills can bring financial ruin to buyers already stretched to their limit.” This is beyond mortgages, interest rates, down payments and more. It’s absolutely vital to incorporate these into the planning process.

It’s unfortunate but true that many a time, vendors know the defects that are common in different styles and ages of homes. Instead of creating long-term solutions, they instead opt to patch with short-term fixes, which mean that you’ll just spend more money over time. That’s why it’s key to do a home inspection before you ever sign on the dotted line. Here’s another fun fact – more than 80% of home purchases in this country take place sans home inspection. Once you bypass a home inspection, you’re basically giving up your power to ask the previous owners to make any sort of adjustments or improvements. While you may be enthusiastic about racing to the finish line of purchase, it should never come at the cost of emptying out your wallet over years to come.

The challenges are amplified when you aim to purchase a period home. Yes, they’re beautiful, and yes, they have many stories to tell. But you want to be able to repeat stories of the past, not have to create your own when you add on surprise maintenance costs. Families around the area have been doing this more and more frequently, spending up to 50% more than they anticipated when they kicked off the process.

We’re teasing you a bit today, ensuring that you’ll come back for the next post. Looking for tips on avoiding these pitfalls, these will definitely be coming shortly. Questions? Comments? Give us a shout. The Restumping Melbourne team would love to hear from you.