Home Buyers - Pre-Purchase Electrical Inspection

Looking at purchasing a property in Auckland? Do your due diligence and make sure your new home is electrically safe before settlement.

Most building inspectors are ex-builders with limited electrical knowledge. Re-wiring a full home can cost $20,000 to $30,000 including GST, something to know before you settle, not after. Our clients have saved tens of thousands and negotiated significant sale-price reductions on the back of our reporting.

We carry out a full electrical system check with a complete suite of testing, then issue a report on the safety of the installation that you can use in vendor negotiations and share with your conveyancing lawyer. Formal quotes for any remedial work give you exact repair costs.

eCertify's fixed Auckland price is all inclusive: callout and mileage, inspection and testing, full electrical report.

A building inspection is not an electrical inspection

This is the single most useful thing to know before you commit. Most building inspectors come from a building background, and their report will tell you about the roof, the cladding, the piles and the moisture. What it will not do is test the installation. A building report that says nothing alarming about the wiring is usually a report where nobody put an instrument on it.

That matters because the electrical is one of the few defects that is both expensive and invisible. A full re-wire runs to tens of thousands, and unlike a leaking roof there is nothing on the surface to warn you.

The standard says to check when the house changes hands

AS/NZS 3019, the standard covering periodic assessment of an installation, notes that a verification is strongly recommended when the occupancy of a domestic dwelling changes. Settlement is that moment. It is also the last moment at which somebody other than you is still responsible for what the report finds.

What we do on site

We work through the full installation: the meter box and main switchboard, consumer mains, the main earthing system and electrode connections, protection and RCDs, then circuits, socket-outlets, switches, light fittings and fixed wired appliances, with a complete suite of testing alongside. We look hardest at the things that date a house: rewireable fuses, missing or absent RCD protection, old cable types, a switchboard that has been added to until it has run out of room, and the state of the earthing.

How long it takes

About an hour on site for a standard home, and the report follows. Book it as early in your due diligence period as you can. The value of the report is in the time it leaves you to act on it.

What you can do with the report

The report tells you the safety of the installation with the severity and risk of each item spelled out in plain language, and it comes with formal quotes for any remedial work, so you have exact costs rather than an estimate. That is a document you can hand to your conveyancing lawyer, put in front of the vendor's agent, or use to reset the price. Our clients have negotiated significant reductions off the back of it.

It also survives the purchase. If you go ahead, the report is your starting list for what to do in the first year, in the order that matters.

What the price includes

The price is fixed and includes GST. It covers callout and mileage anywhere in Auckland, the inspection and full testing, and the written electrical report. If your insurer also wants certification before confirming cover, that is a different document and our insurance energy works certificate covers it.