Is antenna work worth doing before you sell in Bunbury?
A working antenna adds nothing to your price, because buyers assume it works. A corroded or leaning one costs you real money, because it lands in the building inspection report and buyers discount a roof defect by several times what the fix costs. The honest rule for 2026: spend $130 to $580 making the television side correct, safe and invisible, skip the $450 to $1,200 home theatre nobody is buying, and have it finished 2 to 3 weeks before the photographer arrives.
Pre-sale return table: what each job costs and what it actually protects
Costs are realistic fitted 2026 prices for the Bunbury area. The value column is what the work protects at the negotiation table, not a promise of a higher price, because nobody can promise that honestly.
| The job | What it costs | What it adds or protects | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retune every TV and prove each wall point carries signal | $130 to $180 | Kills the no-signal moment at a home open. Costs less than an hour of an agent’s time. | DO IT |
| Replace a corroded or leaning antenna and mast | $340 to $580 | Removes a photographed defect from the building report. Protects a $1,500 to $3,000 allowance request. | DO IT |
| Reseal the roof penetration and check the flashing | $130 to $280 | Stops the ceiling stain and the moisture reading that triggers a further investigation line. | DO IT |
| Remove a redundant old antenna, dead mast or unused dish | $150 to $280 | Cleans the roofline in the drone shot and removes a rust source above your gutters. | DO IT |
| Tidy visible coax, cap dead outlets, replace cracked wall plates | $120 to $240 | Pure presentation, but the cheapest presentation money you will spend. | DO IT |
| Wall-mount the lounge TV for the campaign | $200 to $480 | Photographs beautifully, but you take the TV and leave a bracket and holes. | ONLY IF you leave the bracket and the wall is patched |
| Fix genuinely failing reception on a fringe or treed block | $450 to $750 | Prevents a live it-does-not-work-here moment in front of buyers at the home open. | ONLY IF reception actually fails, not just to upgrade |
| Mains-powered smoke alarms and two RCDs | $200 to $600, licensed electrician | Required in WA before a property is sold or rented. Not optional, and not our trade. | DO IT |
| Add TV points to the bedrooms | $120 to $240 per point | Nothing. Buyers stream on their own devices and never mention outlets. | SKIP IT |
| Install a surround-sound home theatre before listing | $450 to $1,200 | You will not recover it. It is taste-specific and it dates the room. | SKIP IT |
| Upgrade an antenna that already works to a bigger one | $450 to $750 | No report entry, no visible difference, no buyer notices. | SKIP IT |
| Fit a satellite dish where the local terrestrial signal is fine | $400 and up | Adds an ongoing service cost and another thing to corrode on a coastal roof. | SKIP IT |
Indicative fitted prices for Bunbury in 2026. Full list on the pricing page. The electrical items are quoted by a licensed electrician, not by us.
What buyers and building inspectors actually notice
Nobody buys a house because of the antenna. Plenty of buyers knock $2,000 off an offer because of what the antenna implied about the roof.
Start with the marketing photographs. Almost every Bunbury campaign now includes a drone shot, and a drone shot puts your roofline at the centre of the frame. A rust-streaked mast, a leaning antenna, an abandoned analogue-era aerial next to the current one, or a coax cable stapled across the fascia are all clearly visible at that angle. They read as deferred maintenance, and deferred maintenance is the single most expensive impression a seller can create, because the buyer applies it to everything they cannot see.
Then the home open. An agent switching a TV on to a black screen in front of three buyers is worth avoiding for $130. So is a wall plate hanging out of the plasterboard behind where the entertainment unit used to be, and a lounge wall with four unpatched bracket holes at head height.
Then the building inspection. In Western Australia there is no mandatory vendor disclosure statement, so the buyer’s own inspection carries all the weight, usually as a condition annexed to the offer and acceptance contract. A pre-purchase inspection follows the Australian Standard for residential property inspections and covers the roof exterior where the inspector can get safe access. What gets written up around an antenna is predictable: corroded mast and fixings, bracket movement at the batten, cracked or slipped tiles beneath the mount, an unsealed or poorly flashed cable penetration, and moisture readings on the ceiling below it.
The line that costs the money
It is rarely the antenna itself. It is the phrase further investigation by a suitably qualified trade recommended. That sentence lets a buyer request an allowance based on their imagination, and buyers imagine expensively. A $450 antenna and mast replacement, done before the inspector arrives, is one of the cheapest ways to keep that sentence out of the report. Our standards and compliance page explains what a properly mounted and earthed install looks like, which is what an inspector is comparing yours against.
Fix it, or disclose it?
The rule we give sellers in the South West is simple. Fix anything under about $600 that a buyer can see or an inspector will write up. Disclose anything structural, anything that needs another trade, and anything you cannot verify.
- Fix: a dead or intermittent antenna, a corroded mast, an unsealed penetration, cracked wall plates, dangling cable, a redundant second aerial. All of it lands between $130 and $580 and all of it is visible.
- Disclose: known roof leaks, structural movement, an antenna mounted to something that should not be carrying it, or previous storm damage that was patched rather than repaired. Sellers in WA must not mislead a buyer, and a patched-over problem discovered after settlement is a far worse outcome than a discount before it.
- Neither: reception that is merely average on a fringe block. That is a characteristic of the location, not a defect of the house, and a buyer inspecting a treed Gelorup or hillside block should expect it. Say so plainly if you are asked.
A note on cost recovery. Sellers regularly ask whether they can add the $450 to the asking price. You cannot, and any agent who says otherwise is being kind rather than accurate. What you are buying is the absence of a negotiation lever, and in a market where a buyer is looking for any reason to shave a number, that is worth several times the invoice.
Timing: how long before the campaign starts
- Four weeks out: book the inspection and quote. This is when a technician can tell you whether the mast is sound, whether the head has a year left, and whether anything on the roof needs a roof plumber rather than us.
- Three weeks out: do the work. Antenna replacement, resealing, removing the redundant aerial, tidying cable, retuning every set. Most of it is a single visit of two to four hours.
- Two weeks out: allow for the second trade. Roof work uncovers cracked tiles and tired flashings often enough that you should budget the time even if you do not need it. A tile repair is a few hundred dollars and a week of somebody else’s calendar.
- One week out: photography and the drone shot, with a clean roofline and a working television.
- Do not: leave it to settlement week. That is where the $60 to $90 priority fee lives, and where a simple job becomes a scramble because the buyer’s inspector already wrote it up.
If the antenna is old but still working and you are not sure whether to touch it at all, the best time to replace an antenna guide walks through the age and condition triggers. If you are selling a rental rather than your own home, the tax treatment of the work differs and the landlord page covers the repair versus capital line.
Two jobs we would honestly tell you not to bother with
1. Extra TV points in the bedrooms
At $120 to $240 per point this looks like cheap value adding, and it is not. In fifteen years of house buying behaviour the antenna outlet has gone from a selling feature to something nobody checks, because the second and third screens in a house are now a laptop and a tablet. No buyer has ever paid more for a bedroom aerial socket, and no inspector reports its absence. If you want the points for your own use in your next house, spend the money there instead. The detail is on the extra TV points page if you want the numbers.
2. A surround-sound home theatre installed for the campaign
A full receiver, speakers and concealed cabling is $450 to $1,200 and it will not come back to you. Worse, it makes a room read as one specific use, which narrows the buyers who can picture themselves in it. If you already have a media room, present it clean and simple rather than adding to it. If you are moving the gear anyway, take it with you and patch the wall, which is the option almost every seller regrets not taking.
And a third, while we are being honest
Do not replace an antenna that is doing its job. If the head is under about eight years old, the fixings are clean, the picture is stable on every channel and there is no rust running down the tiles, a $130 retune and a signal check is the whole job. We will tell you that at the quote stage, and we would rather say it then than have you find out from a neighbour afterwards. The maintenance schedule shows how to tell the difference, and antenna installation covers what a full replacement includes when it is genuinely due. For newly built homes going straight to market, new home antenna installation is the relevant page.
Frequently asked questions
Does a new TV antenna add value when selling in Bunbury?
Do building inspectors look at the TV antenna?
Should I fix it or just disclose it?
How long before the campaign should the work be done?
What antenna work should a seller skip?
Is there anything I am legally required to fix before selling in WA?
Get the pre-sale antenna list priced before the photographer books
Tell us your listing timeline and we will come back within one business day with a fixed price and a straight opinion on what to skip.
Listing in the South West this season?
One visit, one fixed price: antenna sorted, roofline clean, every TV point proven before the photos.