The five sheets · Sheet 01 · The front door
Buying a home in NSW: pest and building reports
In New South Wales, a building inspection report records a property’s significant defects and should pick up visible termite damage, but it will not tell you whether termites or other timber pests are still active, so the NSW Government suggests a separate pest inspection. A building report is usually done before contracts are exchanged, and an inspection can also be fitted into the 5 business day cooling-off period that follows, unless the buyer waives it with a 66W certificate.
- Sheet
- 01 of 05
- Applies to
- New South Wales
- Drawn from
- NSW Government buying pages, CSIRO, NSW EPA
- Checked
- 8 October 2026
General information, not legal or building advice. For your own purchase, ask your solicitor or licensed conveyancer, and check the NSW Government’s buying pages listed at the foot of this page.
Two reports, two questions
A building report asks what state the house is in. A pest report asks whether something is living in it now. The NSW Government’s page on inspection reports keeps the two apart, and so should a buyer’s timetable.
The building report
The NSW page calls it “a written account of the property’s condition”. It will include significant defects or problems such as rising damp, cracking from movement in the walls, safety hazards or a faulty roof.
The inspector should check every accessible part: inside and outside the building, the roof space, the under-floor space, the roof exterior and the site.
Among the things the page says the report generally will not include: minor defects, an estimate of repair costs, and termite detection.
The pest report
“While the building inspection report should identify any visual damage caused by termites, it won’t include whether termites and other pests that destroy timber are still around,” the page says. Its advice is a pest inspection too, “especially if the property is located where termites are a known problem”.
The CSIRO’s termite guide gives the same advice from the science side: a termite inspection before buying a home is advisable.
Who does each one matters. For the building report, the NSW page says to use a licensed builder, a surveyor, an architect or another suitably qualified person, and to make sure they have adequate insurance, particularly professional indemnity. For pest inspections, the EPA notes that someone who only inspects for timber pests, without using pesticides, needs no licence from it. Treating termites with pesticides is different: that work needs an EPA licence, and sheet 05 explains what the termites are doing to the timber.
Reports that already exist
A buyer may not be starting from nothing. “As a prospective buyer, when you ask for a contract of sale, the agent must inform you about previous property inspection reports that have been commissioned,” the NSW page says, and you might be able to negotiate a cheaper price to buy a copy.
A seller may also have commissioned a building report to show buyers. That can help, the page says, but it does not replace a report of your own.
In a strata or company title property, a building inspector will normally look only at the inside of the unit and its immediate exterior; inspecting other common property takes a ‘special-purpose’ report, which you ask for.
Where the reports fit in a purchase
The order below is the NSW Government’s, from its pages on contracts and on inspection reports.
- Before exchange
Ask for a copy of the contract as soon as you are interested, so your solicitor or conveyancer can review it. Get the seller’s permission to inspect as early in negotiations as you can: most consultants need at least 2–3 days’ notice.
- Exchange
Exchanging contracts legally completes the process of buying, and the deposit is paid at that point. Until then, the agreement is usually not binding on either side.
- Cooling-off: 5 business days
It runs from the moment of exchange until 5pm on the fifth business day after exchange day. The NSW page’s example: exchange at 10am on a Tuesday, and cooling-off ends at 5pm on the Tuesday of the following week.
To have an inspection done in this window, give the consultant as much notice as possible: they have to inspect, write the report, and still leave you time to decide.
- If you withdraw
Withdrawing during cooling-off takes written notice, and you pay the seller 0.25% of the purchase price, which the page works out as $250 for every $100,000.
- Settlement, about 6 weeks on
Settlement usually takes place around 6 weeks after exchange. On the morning of settlement, the page suggests a final inspection to check the property is in the same condition as when contracts were exchanged.
Two exceptions change the timetable. Off-the-plan contracts carry a 10 business day cooling-off period. There is no cooling-off at all if you buy at auction, or exchange on the day of an auction after the property is passed in. In those cases, any report you want has to come before you commit.
The 66W certificate
“You can waive the cooling-off period by giving the vendor a ‘66W certificate’. It is also possible to reduce or extend the cooling-off period by written agreement with the vendor. You should always seek advice before you waive the cooling-off period.”
NSW Government, contracts and deposits when buying property in NSW
For pests, the effect is simple to state. Waiving cooling-off removes the five business days in which the NSW page says an inspection can still be fitted in, so any building or pest report has to be done, read and understood before exchange.
If a report missed something
A building report’s role is to identify major problems visible at the time of the inspection, and conditions on the day can hide some, such as rising damp and leaks that weather makes hard to detect. The report is not a certificate of compliance, a warranty or insurance against future problems.
If you are unhappy with a report, the page’s first step is to try to resolve it with the consultant; if they belong to an industry association, it may offer a free complaint service. If you buy and later find problems the report did not identify, it says legal advice is worth getting, especially if the consultant’s negligence proves expensive.
Sheet 02 sorts out which cockroach is which, and if the pest report finds drywood termites, sheet 03 covers who may fumigate.