You’ve found the house, the price is right, and you’re ready to sign. Before you do, spend twenty minutes on one thing most buyers skip: a termite check. Subterranean termites eat timber from the inside out and hide for years, so a house can look flawless at a viewing while a colony quietly works through the door frames — and once you own it, the treatment and repair bill is yours. The good news is that a lot of the warning signs are visible to anyone who knows where to look. Here’s the pre-purchase checklist: what to spot yourself, what needs a pro, and what to do if you find them before the deal is done.

Why do second-hand houses need a termite check?

A new build has (or should have) a fresh soil barrier under it. A second-hand house has history you can’t see — and in Malaysia, three parts of that history matter. Many older homes sit on land that was rubber or oil palm estate a generation ago, where termite colonies were established long before the house was. The previous owner may never have treated preventively, or let a warranty lapse decades back. And by the time a house goes on the market, any damage has often been quietly patched and painted over.

That last point is the one that catches buyers. A seller isn’t always hiding something on purpose — sometimes they genuinely don’t know — but a hollow door frame filled and repainted looks fine at a viewing and becomes your problem after completion. Termites don’t show up on the valuation report. The only way they get found before you sign is if someone actually looks.

A couple in Puchong moved into a lovely renovated terrace and called us three months later — mud tubes had appeared behind the TV console on a freshly painted wall. The colony had been active before they bought; the renovation just covered the evidence. A RM40 tap-test on the skirting at the viewing would have flagged it before they signed.

— Job notes, Nomobug field team

What signs can you spot yourself?

You don’t need equipment for the first pass — just your eyes, your ears and a knuckle. Run through this list at the viewing:

• Mud tubes. Pencil-width tunnels of dried mud running up foundations, walls, or the outside of the house. This is the clearest sign of subterranean termites — they build tubes to travel from the soil to the timber without drying out.
• Hollow-sounding timber. Tap along skirting boards, door frames and window frames with a knuckle or a coin. Termites hollow wood from the inside, so a solid-looking frame can sound papery and empty.
• Discarded wings. Small piles of equal-length wings on window sills, near doors or under lights — left behind when winged termites (alates) swarm, usually after rain. Wings inside the house mean they’ve already been in.
• Bubbling or rippled paint. Paint that looks blistered or uneven over skirting or a frame can be termites tunnelling just beneath the surface.
• Frass. Fine, sawdust-like droppings collecting below a skirting board or window frame.
• Doors and windows that stick. Frames warped by termite damage or the moisture that comes with it stop closing cleanly.

One extra thing to watch for on a house that’s been done up to sell: fresh paint on the skirting only, a single newly filled crack near the floor, or a run of new timber trim. It might be nothing. It might be a patch job over the evidence. It earns a closer look.

Where should you look?

Termites follow moisture and soil contact, so head for those spots first:

• The foundation and perimeter. Walk the whole way around the outside, low down, looking for mud tubes where the wall meets the ground, on the porch columns and along the boundary drain.
• Skirting, door and window frames. Especially at ground level and in rooms against an external wall. Tap as you go.
• Wet areas. Under the kitchen sink, around bathroom door frames, the base of walls near plumbing — damp timber is a magnet.
• The roof void and ceiling. If you can get a look, check for tubes on the timber and any sagging or staining in the ceiling below.
• The garden. Old tree stumps, a timber fence touching the house, firewood or offcuts stacked against a wall — these are colonies-in-waiting right next to the structure.

If any of that turns something up, our guides on what mud tubes on a wall mean and where termites hide will help you read what you’re looking at.

What needs a professional eye?

Your walk-through catches the obvious. What it can’t do is see inside a wall. A technician looks where you can’t — inside wall voids and the subfloor, up close in the roof space, behind built-in cabinetry — and reads the difference between a live colony and an old, treated one. The extent and the species matter too: a job that’s reached the structural timber is a very different quote from a couple of tubes on a garden wall, and the treatment for Coptotermes curvignathus, the aggressive one, needs to be planned properly.

This is where a pre-purchase inspection earns its keep — it turns “the skirting sounded a bit odd” into a clear answer you can act on before you sign. It’s cheap next to discovering a structural colony after completion, when the cost is entirely yours.

“Its good to hear after all their inspection around the house and outside that they found my house to be at the top for being clean and hygienic.”

— Chef Wan, celebrity chef. A proper inspection covers the whole house inside and out — which is exactly the reassurance you want in writing before you commit to buying one.