30 per cent of listed Sydney properties with pools do not have required certificates

At least a third of listed Sydney properties with a swimming pool do not have the required certificates of compliance or non-compliance, according to property specialists Aitken Lawyers.

The claim was made in a Fairfax article, in which Julian Peters, special counsel from Aitken Lawyers, analysed data on Domain, the Fairfax property website.

In the article by Julie Power, Peters found that 20 of 60 pools in homes put up for sale on Domain did not comply with the regulations, yet only one of those non-complying properties had a non-compliance certificate. Aitken Lawers compared listings with government records on the Swimming Pool Register and reviewed sales contracts.  They said a similar search for homes with pools on other property websites had similar results.

Peters said that failure to comply with the current regulations poses risks to both vendors and buyers. "If the certificate (of compliance or non compliance) is not attached, the buyer has the right up to settlement to rescind and walk away," he said.

If the property had a non-compliance certificate, the buyer had 90 days to fix problems, otherwise council can come after the owners.

He said if a pool remained non-compliant it was likely that a home owner's insurance would not protect the owner if he or she was sued by someone who was hurt, such as a child who falls into a pool.

Survey

The article also mentioned the recent survey of pool certifiers conducted by SPASA NSW & ACT, highlighting the confusion about interpretations, and  quoted CEO Spiros Dassakis as saying he gets calls from confused homeowners just before properties go to sale.

Dassakis says he wasn't surprised by the confusion or conflicting opinions on whether a pool complied or not, as the survey of more than 100 pool certifiers found widespread confusion which is also evident in relation to the out-of-ground pool walls issue.