Homeowners spend five years and 'all their money' repairing horrifying find in walls
Shaun and Zara Sarson are still 'picking up the pieces' after discovering their dream home was riddled with termites.
Five years after buying their dream home with the hope of settling and raising their kids, Shaun and Zara Sarson are still "picking up the pieces" after an inaccurate building and pest report left them "financially ruined".
Three months after moving into the Gold Coast home in 2019, the couple, who have three kids now aged 3, 5 and 7, discovered it was riddled with termites and at risk of falling down, despite a pre-purchase building and pest inspection saying there was no visible evidence of active termites and no visible evidence of termite activity or damage.
Speaking to Yahoo News Australia, Zara said they purchased the property for $660,000 which was "all the money we had" and had plans to "renovate little by little". They’d also factored in the rent they would receive from the granny flat in their backyard which would help with the repayments.
But their dreams came crashing down when the 41-year-old attempted to plug in a phone charger in the bathroom and noticed some "dirt" coming out of the power socket. At the time her husband was working as a boilermaker in Western Australia and they'd just found out she was pregnant.
"I thought ‘oh, that is so weird' and when I pulled it out I had termites coming out of the power plug," the mum of three told Yahoo.
Pest expert confirms 'the whole house had been eaten'
Zara admits while she’s "no expert" she was "pretty sure" they were termites but called in another pest inspector. Within minutes of arriving, he confirmed there were obvious signs of termite activity, but how bad the situation was at that point unknown. They soon discovered "the whole house had been eaten" and "the main hardwood beam that held up the ceiling was hollow".
"Every beam in this house was eaten and there were a few parts where you could see that someone tried to fix it up," she claimed.
With nowhere else to go, the family decided to stay put for a while but "the more and more we looked and every wall we opened up, we found more". Eventually, the Sarson family was told the property was unsafe and they were forced into a rental.
What they didn’t know at the time was that it would be the first of five houses they'd live in before they could eventually move back home close to five years later, but only after it was demolished with a new house built for an additional $500,000. The situation was made worse when, during the Covid pandemic, Shaun lost his job.
Second blow for struggling couple
The couple made plans to start over with a "small and simple build" — whatever they could afford. But this too came to a halt when, due to a surge in the cost of supplies, the builder pulled out at the last minute. So once again they were "stuck with nothing".
"We moved from rental to rental because the rent was going up so much and we still had to pay our mortgage. We also lost the income from our granny flat," Zara, who was at this point "mentally drained", explained.
"We then tried to sell the block and move to WA because that's where my husband would be able to work, but an hour before the cooling off period the buyer pulled out. After that, the market crashed and we could not find another buyer.
"We were just with our back against the wall".
Major claim from interested buyer
The couple allegedly settled with the pest company responsible — which they picked themselves based on "really good reviews" — and because of this can not reveal the name or the amount they were paid. Zara also claims the real estate agent who sold them the property was made aware of the damage after an interested buyer pulled out of the sale just days before the Sarsons swooped in and bought it.
This came to a head when, by chance, the mum of three ran into the interested buyers who claimed they received evidence of termites through a pest inspection of their own. It's been claimed that pest report was passed on to the agent.
Couple move into newbuild home after five years
The Sarsons eventually found a builder who agreed to the job of building the new house, roughly four years after purchasing the property. Although it’s certainly "not finished yet" because they’ve run out of money.
"The garden is just a mud pit because we just can’t afford it," Zara explained admitting "it's still really hard for us to understand how this [actually happened]"
"We're basically still working 18 hours every day — we work our normal jobs, and then we come home and we work on the house," she said. "And it's crazy to think that people not being honest or being greedy put us in this position".
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