Pre-auction condition report template
Buying at auction means no cooling-off period, so buyers and buyers agents want a condition summary before the hammer falls — often on a property they have seen once. The pre-auction report is shorter and faster than a full pre-purchase report: the top issues, a cost range, and a recommendation on whether a specialist should look before Saturday. SurveyThanks lets you send that summary within hours of leaving the open home.
Built for buyers agents running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample Condition summary report
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
Condition summary report
Condition summary — 63 Auction Example Road
- Auction date
- Saturday 14 November 2026
- Inspected
- Thursday 12 November 2026, during open home
- Prepared for
- Buyers agent (fictional)
| Item | Issue | Indicative cost |
|---|---|---|
| Roof | Corroded valley iron above the kitchen | Indicative cost: $1,500–$3,000 |
| Bathroom | Shower screen leaking onto the floor | Indicative cost: $800–$2,500 |
| Electrical | Original switchboard, no safety switches | Indicative cost: $1,200–$2,000 |
| Structure | No significant cracking observed | Indicative cost: — |
Fields captured on site
Your firm builds the form in-app, so these are a starting point rather than a fixed schema. Every field is captured on the device, with or without signal, and lands in the condition summary report where your template puts it.
Visit
- Auction date
- Inspection constraints (open home, time limit)
- Areas not accessed
Per issue
- Element
- Description
- Indicative cost range (low / high)
- Specialist referral needed
- Photo
Summary
- Overall condition rating
- Total indicative cost (calculated)
- Recommendation before bidding
Standards the report works to
- AS 4349.1-2007Inspection of buildings — Pre-purchase inspections — Residential buildings
- A pre-auction summary is a reduced-scope inspection; your template should state how its scope differs from a full AS 4349.1 report.
Load the standards you hold into your reference library and the drafted prose is written against them rather than against a general model.
How the condition summary report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the pre-auction inspection form in-app — 25 field types, nesting repeatable groups, compound AND/OR visibility rules, reusable modules and calculated fields. Field capture works with no signal: jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio all queue in an idempotent outbox that only clears once the server confirms receipt.
Link it to your rooms and external areas
Enter rooms and external areas once, as a register. Every one of your defects, photos and timber pest findings then points at a stored row rather than a name somebody typed — and the links survive a disconnected device.
Render your own template
The condition summary report renders into the Word template you already use — your letterhead, your section order, your clause library — with conditionals, loops over repeats, composable sub-templates and photo grids.
Reviewed before it leaves
You write the review framework: a checklist of what a condition summary report must contain, plus the prose standards you would mark a junior against. Link it to a report template and it runs every time that template renders. Each finding comes back graded info, minor or major, quoting the sentence at fault, and a person accepts or dismisses every one.
Because the structured submission behind the report is held too, the review is a comparison rather than a proofread: The summary says no major defects were found; the form carries a major structural defect on the rear wall.
Checks a residential property framework usually carries
- The standard’s required wording, limitations and exclusions are all present
- Every area is either reported on or listed as not accessed, with a reason
- Each defect in the summary appears in the body at the same severity
- Timber pest findings carry the risk statement the standard requires
Questions
- Can we total the cost ranges automatically?
- Calculated fields can sum the low and high estimates across every issue, so the summary total always matches the itemised list.
- Can we upgrade a pre-auction job into a full report later?
- The same job can be completed with a fuller form, and the data already captured carries across instead of being re-entered.
- How fast can the summary reach the buyers agent?
- As soon as you are back in signal and the report renders. The capture itself works offline at the open home.
What this is not
Worth knowing before you book a demo, so neither of us wastes the half hour.
- Not field-service dispatch. No timesheets, no parts, no inventory. Scheduling exists to get an inspector to a site.
- No signature capture. If your deliverable has to carry a signed sign-off on the artefact itself, this is not the tool yet.
- Field capture is what works offline — jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio. Reports, chat, scheduling and the inbox need a connection.
- No client portal. Reports go out as a file or a password-protected link.
Other residential property work we cover
- Mould inspectionsMould assessment report
- New-build handover inspectionsPCI defect report
- Owner-builder defect inspectionsDefect schedule
- Pre-purchase building inspectionsBuilding inspection report
- Pre-settlement inspectionsSettlement checklist report
- Property photography ordersPhoto floorplan package
- Rental entry condition reportsEntry condition report
- Rental exit and bond inspectionsExit condition report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your condition summary report in SurveyThanks
Bring the Word template you already send clients. If you are coming off another field-forms tool, a filled report can be uploaded, read field by field, and re-rendered into your template.