Inspecting properties
When to walk away after a property inspection
Five real decisions — proceed, proceed with conditions, investigate further, renegotiate, or walk away — and when walking away is genuinely reasonable.
- There are five real post-inspection decisions, not a simple pass/fail verdict.
- Walking away is reasonable when a risk can't be adequately bounded before you'd need to commit.
- Almost every property has some defect — the question is whether it's proportionate, priced and understood.
- Deadline pressure (auction day, an offer expiry) is not a substitute for actually resolving uncertainty.
Five decisions, not a pass/fail verdict
After inspecting, reading reports and checking documents, a buyer reaches one of five real decisions: proceed; proceed subject to defined checks or contractual protection; obtain further specialist evidence; renegotiate price or assumptions; or walk away. None of these is automatically correct — the right one depends on your hard requirements, the specific findings, and how much uncertainty you're genuinely willing to carry.
Reasonable grounds to walk away
A hard household requirement fails outright. A major defect exceeds your financial or practical capacity to fix. Required evidence — a document, a specialist report — genuinely cannot be obtained in time. A critical area remains inaccessible with no way to resolve that before you'd need to commit. Several linked defects compound into a risk larger than any one of them alone. Necessary specialists can't report before your deadline. Repair costs can't be bounded with any confidence. Insurance can't be obtained on acceptable terms. Unapproved work creates unresolved legal or finance risk. Owners-corporation liabilities are unaffordable. The vendor refuses reasonable access or information. Auction timing is forcing you to accept uncertainty you wouldn't accept with more time. The purchase only makes sense if every optimistic assumption about renovation or development turns out to be true.
Worked scenario
A buyer inspects an older apartment and observes water staining in a common-property stairwell. The building report notes the stairwell as outside its scope (common property, not the lot). The owners corporation certificate — requested as a specific follow-up — reveals an unresolved waterproofing defect with no funded remediation plan and a live prospect of a substantial special levy. A structural engineer engaged to assess the likely scope estimates a cost range the buyer can't absorb on top of the purchase price. The buyer withdraws, having converted a vague observation into a specific, bounded reason not to proceed — rather than either ignoring the stain or rejecting the property on the stain alone without following it up.
Walking away is reasonable when a risk cannot be adequately bounded before you'd need to commit — not simply because a property has any defect at all. Almost every property has something. The question is whether what you've found is proportionate, priced, and genuinely understood, or not.
Practical checklist
Before you decide
- List every unresolved risk and whether it's actually been bounded (cost, scope, likelihood)
- Check whether your hard requirements are genuinely satisfied, not just 'close enough'
- Confirm whether required specialist evidence can realistically arrive before your deadline
- Decide explicitly between proceed, proceed with conditions, investigate further, renegotiate or walk away
Questions for a professional
- Based on what's been found, can this specific risk actually be bounded in cost and scope?