First home: Survey & checks to do an apartment?

[Lindy]

Hello,

I hope to buy my first apartment in Auckland to live in early this year

Although this is exciting I am a little nervous and want to make sure I',m not buying a lemon. i.e water issues, drug use etc.

What general checks and survey's do people recommend doing before they purchase an apartment.

I welcome any recommendations of people you have used as well.

Thanks
Lindy

[Nick G]

Are you buying a new or existing property?

[SometimesSane]

Anything built in the late 90s early 00s was built to a building code that has proven to be deficient.
If a property was built in that era and not remediated I'd leave it.

Personally I'd choose something that already has had issues identified rather than pay top dollar and find out the building has issues later.

[Lindy]

I was looking to buy an existing apartment....so if you know any apartment buildings that I should put on the "no go " list please let me know.

SometimesSane - thank you for your tip. I had no thought of it that way before, but that is good way of looking at it. Especially as many real estate agents gloss over water issues etc

[marklowes]

Best thing to do would be to find a great lawyer experienced in the auckland apartment market. They'll have stock clauses to put into the S and P to cover many of your concerns, and will advise on what to check.

[MikeC]

If you're interested in an apartment, get the last 3 years of body corp minutes from the agent, and read them all carefully. This will let you know about any known issues with the building.

[eri]

The Home Owners + buyers Association of NZ (Hobanz) suspects the majority of multi-storey apartment buildings built between 1991 and 2005 are probably non-compliant and never were. doesn't mean don't buy, but do check them out more thoroughly

[SometimesSane]

Hi Lindy
I tried to private message you but got this reply

• Lindy has exceeded their stored private messages quota and cannot accept further messages until they clear some space.

[Kbkiwi]

Hello,

I hope to buy my first apartment in Auckland to live in early this year

Although this is exciting I am a little nervous and want to make sure I',m not buying a lemon. i.e water issues, drug use etc.

What general checks and survey's do people recommend doing before they purchase an apartment.

I welcome any recommendations of people you have used as well.

Thanks
Lindy

Perosnally I would rent an apartment and use whatever money you were planning to buy an apartment with and put it into an investment property (house).

if you really want to buy an apartment, I would go for a new/very recent build still under warranty.