Home inspection across Johannesburg

What inspectors actually find in Johannesburg

Ageing electrical installations

Pre-1990 installations often carry old wiring, no earth leakage protection, and boards extended piecemeal over decades. A certificate of compliance is a legal requirement on transfer and is frequently the largest unbudgeted cost in an older-suburb purchase.Checked: Distribution board, earth leakage, visible wiring, bonding

Expansive clay heave

Clay soils swell through the rainfall season and shrink through the dry months. Foundations move with them and brickwork cracks where it cannot accommodate the movement. Large trees and slow under-slab leaks turn seasonal movement into differential movement, which is what actually causes damage.Checked: Crack pattern and width, door and window squareness, floor level, tree proximity

Hail and summer storm damage

Highveld storms drive rain horizontally into elevations that shed ordinary rainfall without trouble, and hail bruises roof sheeting and tiles in ways that only leak months later once the coating has failed.Checked: Roof covering, flashings, parapet junctions, gutter and downpipe capacity

Rising damp through absent or bridged DPC

Older stock was built without a damp-proof course, or has one that later paving, a screed, a raised bed or plaster carried over it now bridges. It reads as a tide mark up to about a metre with salt bloom at the top edge.Checked: Skirting-level moisture readings, external ground levels against the wall

Areas we cover

• ParkhurstSmall original cottages almost universally extended, so the join between old and new structure is where the cracking appears.
• Parktown NorthOriginal electrical installations extended piecemeal for eighty years, and roof timbers that have never been inspected.
• MelvilleHeavy conversion to rental use has layered plumbing and wiring alterations with no coherent record behind them.
• GreensideConsistent inter-war stock where original steel windows and roof coverings are reaching end of life together.
• EmmarentiaMature tree cover on clay soil, with the added complication that removing a large tree can cause as much movement as leaving it.
• NorthcliffRidge-top sites where retaining walls and stormwater management matter more than the house itself.
• HoughtonGrand older stock with substantial roofs, and service installations that have been extended rather than renewed.
• LindenPost-war stock now at the age where roof, electrical and plumbing all reach end of life within a few years of each other.
• Auckland ParkLong-term rental use with deferred maintenance, and alterations that rarely went through approval.
• ObservatoryRidge position with steep stands, where stormwater against upslope walls is the usual source of damp.

What it costs

Indicative market ranges for guidance, not quotes. Full cost breakdown →