A building inspection checklist for NZ, area by area

This is a working checklist for a residential pre-purchase inspection in New Zealand, organised by area in the order most inspectors walk a property: site, exterior, roof exterior, subfloor, interior, roof space, then services. It follows the shape of a visual, non-invasive inspection as NZS 4306 defines one: you record what can be seen and reached on the day, without dismantling or opening anything up. Copy it, print it, or adapt it. If you run an inspection business, your own refined checklist is worth more than anyone's generic one, and the last section is about exactly that.

Site and grounds

• Boundaries, fencing and retaining walls, especially retaining over a metre or holding back a driveway
• Surface water: where does rain go, and does the ground fall towards the house
• Driveways and paths: cracking, settlement, trip edges
• Decks, steps and balustrades: fixing, rot at post bases, barrier height
• Vegetation against cladding or over the roof

Exterior

• Cladding condition by elevation: cracking, damage, coating failure, and the ground clearance at the bottom edge
• Joinery: window and door condition, sealant, evidence of leaks at sills
• Flashings at heads, sills and penetrations
• Signs of movement: cracking that steps through brickwork, doors out of square
• Additions and alterations that do not match the era of the original build, which prompt the consent question later

Roof exterior

• Roof covering condition: corrosion, cracked tiles, lifted laps
• Flashings at ridges, valleys, penetrations and junctions
• Spouting and downpipes: falls, leaks, discharge to drainage rather than to ground
• Chimneys: mortar, flashings, movement

Subfloor

• Access and ventilation
• Piles and bearers: packing, borer, rot, moisture staining
• Ground moisture and ponding
• Insulation presence and condition where visible
• Plumbing and drainage runs visible from below: leaks, falls, supports

Interior

• Room by room: ceilings, walls and floors for staining, cracking and moisture readings where warranted
• Windows and doors: operation, catches, glass condition
• Kitchen and bathrooms: extraction, sealant, signs of leaks under sinks and around wet areas
• Floor levels: out-of-level readings worth recording rather than guessing

Roof space

• Access and what portion was actually viewable, which the report should state
• Roof framing: sagging, borer, moisture staining on the underside of the covering
• Insulation coverage and condition
• Wiring visible in the space: era and condition, noted for an electrician rather than assessed
• Flue and penetration clearances

Services

• Switchboard era and visible condition, recorded for referral, not certified
• Hot water system: age, restraint, relief drainage
• Visible plumbing: materials, era, leaks
• Heating: what is installed and whether it is fixed or portable
• Smoke alarms present

What the checklist cannot do

A checklist tells you where to look. It does not write the finding. The value of an inspection report is each finding stating what was observed, where, why it matters and what to do next, which is the difference between a report and a filled-in form. Weathertightness in particular deserves more than a checkbox: BRANZ publishes extensive material on the failure patterns worth knowing by era and cladding type.

Already have your own checklist?

Most established inspectors do, refined over years, and it usually lives in a Word document or a PDF. That checklist is exactly what ducksoup takes as its starting point: import the document and your areas, items and standard wording become the template you capture against on site, instead of you re-typing them into somebody else's structure. Bring the checklist you trust; the software should adapt to it, not the other way around.