Owner Builder Works and Selling a Home

An owner-builder selling their home within six years and six months of completing the building work has certain responsibilities.

An ‘Owner Builder’ is someone who takes responsibility for domestic building work carried out on their own land. The responsibility is not just with respect to the actual work but for the legal obligations also.

When selling a property in Victoria, Vendors, are required to disclose whether any building work was performed on the property within the last 7 years.

Additional disclosure requirements are to be satisfied where the homeowner rather than a registered builder undertakes building work. An owner builder is defined by the Building Act 1993 (Vic), as a person who personally builds, alters, and extends a building or manages and organises for building works to be completed by another whose name is not listed on the relevant building permit.

Owner builder projects include the construction/ alteration of pools, garages, sheds, decks, and fences. When selling your owner built property within 6 years and 6 months of the completion date, the Contract of Sale must include; Domestic building Insurance and a Defect Report.

Domestic building Insurance

As an owner-builder, if you're planning to sell a home you've built or renovated, you must purchase domestic building insurance for the work you carried out if:

• the building project was completed less than six and a half years ago from the date of issue of your occupancy permit or certificate of final inspection, and
• the value of the building project was over $16,000.

Defects inspection report

You will need to engage a registered building practitioner, such as a building surveyor, building inspector or an endorsed building engineer, to provide you with a defects inspection report. The report must be less than six months old when you sell your property.

This requirement does not apply if the owner-builder is a registered building practitioner.

To find out more about Owner builder responsibilities when selling a property, please visit: Victorian Building Authority

If you're looking to sell a property, you'll need a conveyancer.
Walsh Conveyancing would be happy to guide you through the conveyancing process.

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