Would you buy a non-fluffy house in a fluffy area?

Looking to buy a property soon and it’s a minefield.
For homebuyers, there doesn’t seem to be any easy way to check whether a property is affected or not.

If you can prove a connection to a property as a former owner or tenant, there is a search process through ACTPLA.
As a current owner “who is aware” of asbestos, there’s an obligation to inform affected people and real estate agents who may be selling the property.
Obviously, the way to get round this is to plead ignorance and pretend you didn’t know.

I was reading the article in the CT last week where it said 13 of these properties had been sold this year, including one of them which sold twice in 4 months. No real estate agent mentioned anything in their sales listings.
Is this what’s been happening, a giant game of pass the parcel?

Do me a favour and stay away from Curtin. I’m trying to buy a home there at the moment and finding something that isn’t overpriced for what it really is, is getting difficult.

To answer your question, no it wouldn’t bother me. As long as the house was never a Mr Fluffy why would it bother me if others are or were. As another poster said, they’ll knock down those houses and rebuild making Curtin even more bloody expensive.

sepi said :

It seems unlikely that anyone would have bothered removing Mr Fluffy insulation before the govt program to remove it. No body who had it would have thought there was anything wrong with it at that point.

I read it is suspected that some houses have had it removed as part of renovation and the like. Those houses may not be known to be listed as Mr Fluffy houses. But they would be few I imagine; I hope.

It seems unlikely that anyone would have bothered removing Mr Fluffy insulation before the govt program to remove it. No body who had it would have thought there was anything wrong with it at that point.

What would worry me about buying an older house is that it might be an unidentified Mr Fluffy house. Not so much that it still contains Mr Fluffy insulation – that can be checked – but that it might have been removed before the official checks and so there is no record of it ever having been a Mr Fluffy house. The remnants could still be there though.
I have owned a couple of older houses and I don’t know if they ever had Mr Fluffy type insulation. They didn’t when I bought them and they were never identified as Mr Fluffy houses, so chances are they weren’t, but I can never be 100% sure. They were ex-govies and minimally maintained though, so in this case this is probably a good thing. Less chance they ever had insulation.

Given that most older suburbs would contain Mr Fluffy houses, your only options for non-fluffy suburbs would probably be a tiny block with a hastily constructed box in the far flung reaches of Tuggeranong or Gunghalin.

I would say it’s probably even a good investment as you have to think that eventually all those fluffy homes will under go knock down rebuilds, creating lots of desirable new housing stock and driving up prices in the area… etc

Mr Fluffy houses are old but look like any other house, why would it effect the value of any other non-mr fluffy house? The value of most property is actually in the land rather than in the house. Most of them will likely be knocked down and a nice new shiny house will be built in its place, then your house will probably be worth less because while you have valuable land, you will have a old house needing refurbishment.