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It all started with a Sydney terrace in 1976
June 1, 2010 Author: Jerry Tyrrell
Jerry Tyrrell talks about the first of more than 75,000 inspections
I inspected my first property in Glenmore Road, Paddington, Sydney in 1976. It was a beautiful two storey terrace with side driveway and the advantage of windows in the wall facing north.
I didn’t know a whole lot about property but I’d been working as a painter and handyman every spare moment since leaving school and had finished my first degree to become an architect.
Wow. I knew this work wasn’t childs play but I was hooked. The building was old. Materials were aging. The walls were solid brick. The floorboards had little holes, which I later found out were borer. The roofs flashing ‘zippered’ down the parapet. The electrical wires from the street pole were shared with the adjoining terrace.
2 years later my brother and I were looking to buy 3 run down terraces in inner city Sydney. I inspected these carefully even though they’d been squats and smelt really bad.
By then Peter Ellis, my best building mate, and I were working together and felt we could offer purchasers good quality consumer protection. In 1983 we worked out how to find what was really important to potential buyers and, more importantly, how to explain it clearly.
We included all the unexpected things like deteriorated roof slates, rising damp and concealed termite damage. We were ridiculed because we also reported safety problems such as low railings, unsafe glass and asbestos risk. And we dared tell unit buyers about future maintenance costs if they were buying into a neglected complex.
In the mid 80′s we became the first company in Sydney to offer Timber Pest Reports with all of our building consultants obtaining timber pest qualifications. This saved consumers thousands of dollars in toxic chemical use when they were ill advised by a pest control company subsidizing their cheap pest inspection with a quote for unnecessary work.
Peter and I were joined by Tony Ransley and Craig Singe in the early 1990s and together we worked how defects occur in Sydney properties and how best to describe them reliably. So we summarized and prioritised these into 3 groups – unexpected serious problems which needed action, unexpected issues most people live with and potentially serious things needing checking.
We have constantly improved and developed this system which has now been used to inspect over 70,000 properties and our taxonomy for classifying building defects is unique and used by our team of 15 consultants. The same science is used when we give advice on new building work, maintenance or even due diligence of large commercial properties.
That first inspection was love at first sight and to me the romance of inspecting and reporting on Sydney properties never dies.
If you need a property inspector in Sydney please don’t hesitate to give Tyrrells a call on (02) 9816 9900.
Fell in love with your first property? Let the world know about your first love in the comments.
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