Home Inspections Adelaide

Adelaide's established suburbs are dominated by late nineteenth and early twentieth century character housing: bluestone and sandstone villas, workers' cottages and bungalows, typically on masonry footings with timber-framed floors. Through the middle of the century, brick veneer construction spread across the plains, and much of the 1960s and 1970s housing stock in suburbs such as Salisbury, Tea Tree Gully and Morphett Vale follows that pattern. Newer estates to the north and south are predominantly slab-on-ground brick veneer or lightweight clad construction.

Two features of the local environment matter to buyers. Much of metropolitan Adelaide sits on reactive clay soils that shrink and swell with seasonal moisture changes, which over time can show up as cracking or movement in masonry and internal linings. Older masonry homes are also prone to salt damp, where ground salts migrate into bluestone and sandstone walls and gradually break down mortar and plaster — a genuinely common concern in Adelaide's character suburbs.