From Guest Blogger Lizzie Weakly: Why You Need to Have an Environmental Assessment Before Your Purchase Property

When purchasing a property for business, there are a lot of inspections that need to take place before making a final decision. One important step that should never be overlooked is an environmental assessment. This assessment is an inspection of potential environmental hazard or existing issues that you, as the buyer, need to be aware of before taking ownership of any property. Here’s a short primer on why this is important.

Environmental Due Diligence

You should always do environmental due diligence prior to purchasing a piece of property. Assessing the environmental issues and risks with a piece of land and property can have a major impact on how you choose to proceed with a property; it may even cause you to rethink your decision. And businesses who do due diligence are often seen as leaders in their community, increasing the chances that other businesses will partake in the same assessment and decrease the risk of environmental catastrophe.

Responsibility

As the property owner, you are responsible for any environmental situation that may occur on that piece of land, regardless if you had an environmental assessment done. Even if your country does not require an environmental assessment, you are legally obligated to complete cleanup of any disaster and put into place more sound environmental factors. You will also incur the costs of cleanup and may even become responsible for lawsuit settlements if your property’s environmental situation affects citizens.

This responsibility should never be taken lightly. You must always require an environmental assessment, such as the service offered by Geotech Testing Pty Ltd., before making the decision to purchase a property. Even if you’ve done a preliminary inspection of the premises, environmental assessment specialists may find underlying issues that could cause problems in the future, which may change your viewpoint on purchasing the property.

Decisions after Environmental Assessment

Once an environmental assessment is completed, you will review the report and make a decision about whether or not to go ahead with the purchase of the property. The report will detail any environmental damage that exists or potential risks, so it’s important to review it before you make a decision. It’s also important to speak with your assessor to see if any potential risks could be mitigated prior to the purchase of the property.

After you review the report, you can decide to buy the property or back out of the sale. If you choose to buy the property, you have two options. The first is to discuss the environmental complications and require the risks to be dealt with prior to the sale. The second is to buy the property as-is and assume responsibility for environmental cleanup.

Environmental assessments should never be an afterthought, especially for business owners like yourself. Because the law states you are responsible for environmental damage caused by issues on your property, it is your duty to ensure you understand the risks before making your purchase. While an assessment could be an added fee to the purchase price, it will give you the peace of mind of having done due diligence.