7 Things to Check Before You Buy
a 'Fixer-Upper' in the Illawarra

Any property built before 1990 in the Illawarra should be treated as potentially containing asbestos until proven otherwise. Fibro cladding is the obvious one, as it was extremely common in 1950s and 1960s construction across the region. But asbestos also turns up in roof sheeting, eave linings, floor tiles, pipe lagging, electrical switchboard backing, and ceiling insulation from certain periods.

A standard building inspection will note obvious fibro cladding but won't tell you about asbestos inside wall cavities or under floor coverings. For a renovator you're planning to significantly alter, you need an asbestos assessment from a licensed assessor before you commit, not after you've started work and found it everywhere.

The cost to safely remove and dispose of asbestos from a typical Illawarra fibro home ranges from $10,000 to $45,000 depending on the extent and type. Knowing this before you buy changes your numbers substantially.

If you're buying within about two kilometres of the coast (which covers a large portion of the Illawarra's most desirable property) you need to understand what the salt air environment does to buildings and what it will do to your renovation costs.

Standard steel fixings, standard framing connectors, standard roofing components, and standard window and door hardware all corrode significantly faster in a coastal environment. The Building Code of Australia has specific requirements for construction in coastal zones, and those requirements translate directly into higher material costs.

The existing structure may also show the effects of years of salt exposure: rusted stirrups in concrete footings, corroded tie-down fixings, deteriorated flashing. These aren't always visible during a standard inspection but they surface immediately when you start construction.

The Illawarra has significant flood-affected land, particularly in the Wollongong, Shellharbour, and Kiama floodplains. Before you buy a property on which you're planning to renovate or extend, check whether it sits within a flood planning area, an overland flow path, or a coastal hazard zone under the Wollongong LEP and DCP.

If it does, this affects what you're allowed to build and where. Minimum floor levels, restrictions on habitable rooms below the flood planning level, limitations on certain building types. These constraints can significantly limit what's possible on a block that looks perfectly buildable from the street.

The Section 10.7 (formerly 149) planning certificate attached to a property purchase gives you some of this information, but it's worth having someone who understands WCC's planning controls look at it specifically in relation to what you're planning to do.

A lot of the Illawarra's most spectacular properties sit on or near the escarpment. Slope adds visual drama and sometimes extraordinary views. It also adds construction cost, and in some cases adds geotechnical risk that needs to be understood before you buy.

Steep sites typically require retaining walls, engineered drainage, and crane access for construction — all of which add real cost. In some escarpment locations, the underlying geology creates risk of ground movement that requires geotechnical investigation before you can even determine what type of foundation your extension or renovation will need.

A geotechnical report costs $2,000–$5,000. The remediation for a foundation failure or retaining wall collapse can be an order of magnitude more.

Wollongong has a number of heritage conservation areas: parts of Thirroul, Corrimal, parts of the Wollongong CBD, and various individually listed properties. If a property sits within a heritage conservation area, or is individually listed, this significantly constrains what you can do with the exterior of the building.

Changes to rooflines, window proportions, external cladding materials, and additions that are visible from the street can all require heritage assessment and, depending on the proposal, may be refused outright or require expensive design modifications to achieve council approval.

Heritage constraints don't make a property unrenovatable, but they do make a property more complicated and more expensive to renovate than an equivalent property without those constraints.

Before you plan any extension or new structure on a property, you need to know where the sewer main runs and whether there's a Sydney Water sewer easement on the title. Building over or within the easement zone is restricted, and any structure that needs to be built within that zone requires approval from Sydney Water, which is not always granted and is never fast.

Similarly, stormwater pipes and drainage easements can sit anywhere across a block. I've seen extension plans that required fundamental redesign because the sewer line ran directly through the proposed footprint. Nobody checked until the builder started excavating.

You can access sewer diagrams through Sydney Water's online portal before you exchange. It takes twenty minutes and can save you from a very expensive surprise.

Older Illawarra homes often look more solid than they are. Brick veneer from the 1960s and 1970s can have inadequate subfloor ventilation, corroded wall ties, undersized roof timbers, and ceiling frames that were designed for plasterboard that's now two layers thick and sagging.

A standard pre-purchase inspection will assess what's visible. It won't inspect inside walls, under floors, or in ceiling spaces unless specifically instructed to. For a property where you're planning significant structural work, consider commissioning an inspection specifically focused on the structural elements you'll be keeping and connecting to.

The cost of discovering that your planned extension needs twice the structural remediation you budgeted for is very significant. The cost of finding this out before you buy — or at least before you finalise your renovation budget — is manageable.