Council record showing not requested not inspected on 25 yr-old house final inspection.Implication?

We requested council records (Brisbane) of our house building plans and got it this week. Owned the house for a year and got the old plans just for a layout and engineering plans to help with renovations. This house is built between 1990-1997. With the building plans came some paper work including inspection records. All ticked satisfactory except the final inspection part. There is date stamped but it was ticked "not inspected, not requested" with a date following an F heading. To the side all the requirements were ticked for the final inspection with a written comment, with a different date, stating " subject to usage within approved plans" and some illegible writing about utility room being used as study I think. To me that meant it must have been inspected?

Anyone knows what this could mean ? House has changed hands twice, conveyancing process for us has been smooth and house is now about 25 years old. My partner is now worried that our house is illegal and before I get too anxious about it all I just want to know if this is something we actually need to worry about. We are mainly concern with home and landlord insurance in future, and council troubles when we submit plans for approvals for our own renovations. My home content insurance does not mention anything about not insuring unapproved structures and all other inspections, before the final inspection, had the satisfactory tick.

I cross-posted on the ever popular whirlpool forum.
It is the news article below that got us worried about our findings. Our friends bought houses from that era or older and never heard of final inspections so could not help us. I understand with newer built a Form 21 is needed but that would not have existed in that time.

No Cookies | Gold Coast Bulletin

Thanks people.
Nick

 

Your solicitor should address the question as part of their advice.

 

Thanks for that.
Unfortunately as mentioned in my post we owned the house for a year. During the conveyancing process our solicitor did not recommend a building plan search as there is no unapproved structures and it is not part of a standard search. We used a reputable law firm. Being first time buyers then we did not even know such a search exist. We only found out about it recently as we were told we could get old plans from council to help with renovation process and found this info attached to the building plans. Brisbane Council.

Does this mean this issue is serious enough that you'll recommend we speak with a property solicitor?

 

Property solicitor here - feel free to email the documents and I'm happy to take a quick look without charge.

Either you have a final inspection certificate or you don't. It needs to be determined whether your quasi inspection certificate with certain things ticked and comments amounts to a final inspection certificate which is hard to say without seeing the document.

If the structure does not have a final inspection certificate, insurance is the main issue and then on-sale a smaller issue.

To be honest with you, clients are so focused on the lowest price conveyancing that most choose not to do the level of searches required to discover this issue. From a guess, probably only 2 in 10 buyers would probably pick this issue up.

 

Thanks for the replies, and thank you JDM for offering to help. We rang council, paid some money, building inspector came out and approved everything. Partner is happy. Good outcome. I am feeling a little silly writing the post.

 

Great you did it for peace of mind. And don't feel silly for posting it as others may be in the same situation as yours and it could help them! Who knows, I just learnt something from reading it so if that ever comes up for myself or a friend....