Australians’ home buyer regret will worry conveyancers

A third of Australian home buyers admit their biggest purchase regret was not looking hard enough for faults.

A new survey by Compare the Market that will horrify conveyancers and property lawyers found 32 per cent fell into that category.

In all, almost 40% of homeowners have regrets about the house they bought

Not looking hard enough for faults was top of the list of biggest regrets, followed by sacrificing on the number of bedrooms

Almost one-in-five received bad advice about buying, with many told to “wait for prices to come down”

The biggest regret was not being vigilant enough when looking for faults in the home, with almost a third of regretful homeowners listing it as an issue at 32%.

Buying too close to a train line was another regret.

Yard space was another regret with 19% of homeowners saying they regret sacrificing on backyard space to save money.

Compare the Market’s survey also revealed 17% of Australians said they had received bad advice on purchasing a house.

The number one most common bit of bad advice was “wait for prices to come down”.

Other nuggets of fool’s gold included “don’t worry about an inspection report” and “buy the biggest/most expensive home you can afford as it will go up in value”.

Compare the Market’s Stephen Zeller said that while there was lots of pressure on Aussies to buy homes, he said they should never skip on a building inspection report.

“It’s really interesting to see that overlooking home defects was the biggest regret for Aussie homeowners,” he said.

“Sometimes they miss things that come up later, but usually inspectors are really good at finding issues with a building, particularly ones that could cause a lot of grief later on.

“You may decide to withdraw from buying to buy due to the condition, you might want to negotiate some work being done on the home before you buy, or even to reduce the price as you’ll need to spend money to fix it.”