A guide to the house itself
Canning Vale Real Estate is a guide to the established family home in Western Australia and the safety rules that go with it when it changes hands, written and published by Dotto. It reads each rule from the law that sets it and from the official page that explains it, and says plainly what falls to the seller and what falls to the new owner.
Canning Vale lies partly in the City of Canning, a local government area roughly 10 kilometres from the Perth CBD, on the south-eastern side of the metropolitan area. The name runs back to the Canning River, named after George Canning, the British statesman who was Prime Minister in 1827; the City’s local history follows it into Cannington, Canning Highway, Canning Vale and the City itself.
The rules on these pages are Western Australian laws, and for the part of Canning Vale inside its boundary the City of Canning is the local government that applies several of them on the ground: its inspectors check pool barriers, and its building team holds building records an owner can ask to see and takes applications for building approval certificates.
Seller and new owner: who carries what
The five lots, read for the moment a house changes hands. Each row is summarised from the law behind it; the guides give the detail and the exceptions.
| Lot | Before the change | After it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Smoke alarms | The owner must, as far as practicable, have compliant alarms in place at the time of transfer. | If they were not, the new owner must fit them within 12 months of the transfer day, or 6 months where a demolition declaration was given. |
| 2 · RCDs | The owner must have RCDs properly installed before title is transferred. | If they were not, the new owner has 2 months from the transfer, or 6 months after giving a notice of intended demolition. |
| 3 · Pool barrier | Each owner and occupier must keep a compliant barrier around a pool holding more than 300 mm of water. | The same duty sits with the new owner and occupier, and the City’s inspections carry on at intervals of no more than four years. |
| 4 · Dividing fence | Adjoining owners share the cost of building and repairing a sufficient fence in equal halves. | Half the value of a fence built without notice, and never half-paid by the owner next door or any earlier owner, can be claimed in the cases the Act sets out. |
| 5 · Unauthorised work | Building work done without a building permit, where one was needed, is an offence. | The City of Canning says the offence stays with whoever did the work, not a later owner; a building order, though, can be directed to the owner or occupier of the land. |
Where this guide stops
These pages stay with the house and the land it stands on. The price, the contract and its special conditions belong to the sale itself; Consumer Protection WA publishes a guide to the offer and acceptance, the form a WA home sale is usually agreed on. For what any of these rules means for one particular sale, a lawyer can advise.