Is restumping worth doing before you sell? Mostly no, and here is what to do instead.
A $12,000 to $22,000 full restump does not put $12,000 to $22,000 on a Shepparton sale price. A level floor is what buyers assume they are already getting, so restumping protects the price rather than lifting it. What it does remove is the line in a building report that says further structural investigation is recommended, and that line costs far more than the repair, because a buyer prices the unknown, not the quote. The money-makers before a campaign are the small jobs: $650 to $2,400 on ventilation and downpipes, $1,800 to $5,000 on a rotted wet-area floor, and $700 to $1,150 on your own building and pest report.
What each job costs, what it protects, and whether to bother.
Twelve jobs a Shepparton seller gets offered before a campaign, with a plain verdict on each. Costs are realistic 2026 Goulburn Valley figures. The verdict assumes a standard three-bedroom weatherboard on stumps, which is most of what sells here under a certain age.
| The job | What it costs | What it realistically adds or protects | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full restump, 40 to 70 stumps | $12,000 - $22,000 | Removes a structural note from the report and any finance risk. Protects the price, does not lift it | Only if the floor is unsafe, a report already exists, or the buyer pool needs finance |
| Partial restump of the failed rows | $4,500 - $9,000 | Fixes the bouncy corner the inspector will stand on and the gap at the skirting a buyer will see | Do it usually the best value structural job before a sale |
| House levelling only, stumps still sound | $3,500 - $8,000 | Doors and windows close properly and the floor stops reading as tired at an open for inspection | Only if the fall is visible across a room or doors are jamming |
| Underpinning a settled brick wall | $9,000 - $25,000 | Stops active movement and gives you an engineer’s sign-off to hand a buyer | Only if an engineer confirms the movement is active. Otherwise disclose |
| Replace rotted bearers or joists under a wet area | $1,800 - $5,000 | Kills the springy bathroom floor and the musty smell, both of which every inspector records | Do it |
| Clear and add subfloor vents | $250 - $900 | Removes the damp smell that makes a buyer assume the worst about everything they cannot see | Do it cheapest perception fix on the list |
| Redirect downpipes and move stormwater away from the footings | $400 - $1,500 | Dries the subfloor an inspector photographs, and stops the problem getting worse before settlement | Do it |
| Your own building and timber pest report before listing | $700 - $1,150 | You find out what the buyer’s inspector will find, and you price it instead of being ambushed by it | Do it |
| Consulting engineer’s report where there is visible cracking | $700 - $1,800 | Turns an unbounded structural fear into a written, bounded, priced item | Do it if brickwork is cracked |
| Full re-plaster and cornice make-good after levelling | $1,200 - $4,000 | Only matters where the cracking is at eye level in the main living areas | Only if the damage is in the rooms buyers stand in |
| Filling and painting cracks with no structural fix | $1,200 - $4,000 | Nothing. Fresh filler over an old crack reads as concealment and makes an inspector look harder | Skip it |
| Replacing sound hardwood stumps because they are timber | $12,000 - $22,000 | Nothing at all. Stumps with ten good years left are not a defect and no buyer pays extra for them | Skip it |
Ranges are indicative for Shepparton and the Goulburn Valley in 2026. The full rate card is on the pricing page and the detailed cost breakdown is in the restumping cost guide.
Pre-sale subfloor cost estimator.
Move the slider to the number of stumps you expect to replace and tick what else the house needs. It is a guide built from Goulburn Valley jobs, not a quote: the stump count, the soil class and the access on your house set the real figure.
What the estimate assumes
- Includes the building permit and the engineer’s AS 2870 footing computations, which are legally required for restumping in Victoria.
- Includes re-levelling the floor as the stumps go in, and packing off to the finished level.
- Assumes a suspended timber floor on a reasonably dry site with a workable crawl space.
- Excludes underpinning of brick footings, which is priced per pier, and excludes painting.
- Excludes removing established paving or concrete to reach a stump line.
Buyers, agents and inspectors: three different sets of eyes.
Buyers notice with their feet. They walk into the middle of a room and shift their weight, and a floor that gives under them registers before they can say why. They notice a door that has been planed at an angle, a gap between the skirting and the floorboards, and a kitchen cupboard that has pulled off the wall. They also notice smell, and a damp subfloor smells. Almost none of that is priced accurately in their heads. It just makes them feel that the house has been let go, and that feeling comes off the offer.
Agents notice what is going to cause them a problem at contract stage. A good agent in this district will tell you plainly if they think a floor is going to trigger a building clause, and it is worth asking them straight before you spend anything.
Building inspectors notice everything, and they write it down. A pre-purchase inspection carried out to AS 4349.1 covers the subfloor wherever it is safely accessible. The inspector goes under with a torch, probes stumps for rot at ground line, looks for the bricks and timber packers people stack under sagging bearers, checks bearers and joists for borer and sag, measures the ground clearance, notes blocked or paved-over vents and damp soil, and photographs all of it. A timber pest inspection to AS 4349.3 usually runs at the same time. Two phrases in that report change a negotiation: structural damage and further inspection by a structural engineer is recommended. The second one is the expensive one, because it hands the buyer an open-ended risk and nobody buys an open-ended risk at full price.
Selling and want to know what an inspector will find?
We will go under the house before you list, read the floor levels, and tell you honestly which of the twelve jobs above your house actually needs.
The decision, and the Victorian paperwork behind it.
In Victoria the vendor statement you give a buyer before contract, prepared under the Sale of Land Act 1962, has to include particulars of any building permit issued for the property in the preceding seven years, along with any notices or orders affecting it. So a restump does not disappear from the record: it becomes a disclosed, permitted, inspected improvement with a certificate of final inspection attached, which is genuinely reassuring to a buyer. What you must not do is conceal known defects or make statements that mislead. Filling a crack that you know is structural, painting over it and saying nothing sits on the wrong side of that line.
There is a separate rule if you did the work yourself as an owner-builder. Selling within six and a half years of completing owner-builder work generally requires a defects report from a prescribed building practitioner and, where the value of the work is above the Victorian threshold, domestic building insurance. That catches people who quietly replaced a few stumps themselves and then listed the house.
Disclose when
- The floor is safe to walk on and the movement looks old and stable, which you can demonstrate with dated photographs and pencil marks on the cracks.
- You can hand a buyer two written quotes, so the number is bounded and the fear is not.
- The buyer pool is renovators or investors who are pulling the kitchen out anyway.
- The property is being sold on land value, which around Shepparton applies to a lot of older houses on generous blocks.
Fix when
- The floor is unsafe, or a bearer or wet-area floor is actively failing. That is not a negotiating position, it is a repair.
- You are selling to owner-occupiers who need finance, because a valuer’s structural note can slow or shrink a loan approval.
- The problem is cheap relative to the fear it creates. Ventilation, downpipes and a springy bathroom floor cost hundreds to low thousands and remove pages of report commentary.
- There is already a building report in circulation with a structural note on it. Once that document exists, disclosure has been made for you, and the only remaining question is who pays.
Timing, which people always get wrong
Allow six to eight weeks before the campaign. The building permit and the engineer’s footing design take a week or two. The restump itself is one to two weeks on site. Then plaster needs two to four weeks to settle before it is patched and painted, because a house that has just been jacked back to level keeps moving slightly as it finds its position. Painting over fresh cracks in week one gets you fresh cracks in week four, in front of buyers. The best window in this district is late summer through autumn, when the Goulburn Valley clay is dry, the subfloor is workable, and the house is sitting at its lowest point of the year, which is covered in more detail in our guide to the best time of year to restump.
The jobs we will talk you out of.
Cosmetic crack repair with no structural fix. Sellers are offered this constantly, and it costs $1,200 to $4,000 to fill, sand and paint a house full of cornice and wall cracks. If the cause has not been fixed the cracks return, often within one season on reactive clay, and worse, an experienced inspector reads fresh filler over an old crack as a reason to look much harder at everything else. If the movement is finished and stable, patch it as part of a normal repaint and say so. If it is not finished, patching is money spent on making the house look like it is hiding something.
Replacing sound timber stumps. We are asked to do this several times a year by sellers who have read that concrete is better. It is, on a new job. But hardwood stumps that are solid at ground line, with an ant cap in place and dry ground around them, may have a decade or more left. Spending $12,000 to $22,000 to replace them buys you nothing at sale, because no building report says "timber stumps, therefore defect", it says "stumps sound" or "stumps deteriorated". We would rather quote you $650 to $2,400 on ventilation and drainage and send you to market with a dry subfloor. How long each material really lasts is set out in our guide to how long concrete stumps last.
If the house is tenanted while it is on the market, there are notice and access rules that change the timeline as well, and those are on our landlord and property manager page. If something has failed suddenly while you are preparing to list, start with the first-hour steps instead of this page.
Questions sellers ask
Does restumping add value when you sell in Shepparton?
What do building inspectors actually check under the house?
How long before the campaign do I need to start?
Should I fix it or just disclose it?
What pre-sale subfloor work is a waste of money?
Is it worth getting my own building inspection before listing?
Find out what your subfloor will cost before you list
Send the address and your campaign date. We inspect free, tell you what an inspector will find, and send a fixed-price itemised quote within a few days.
Already have a building report with a structural note on it?
Send it through with your enquiry. We will tell you what it actually means, what it costs to answer, and whether it is worth answering before settlement.