Should I have one done on a 20 year old property I may be buying?

As always, thank you so much. 🙂

Do you know anything about houses, construction, subsidence, electricals ?

No?

Then yes.
😉

I’ve just bought a house, and would advise always always get a survey*. Unless you can afford to buy another house if that one falls down, in which case you’re probably not too worried about £1,000 on a survey.

* – I am not a surveyor, so no personal interest

Yes, it’s probably a condition of a mortgage offer anyway

Yes, it’s probably a condition of a mortgage offer anyway

I am not sure it is – it has to be valued but not surveyed.

The last house I sold was not surveyed by the buyer (this was in 2002 though so things may have changed).

Yes – any surveyor worth their weight in salt will find things wrong with the house, which you can haggle off the sale price.

We sent one in, and knocked off £5k from the previous price. For various reasons, some of which discovered by the surveyor, we didn’t buy it. Would have been an expensive mistake otherwise.

Thanks for replies. 🙂

So … there are several different types and looks as though a home buyer’s report is what I need.

Recommendation seems to be that if the property is more than 50 years old then a full structural survey would be advisable.

Things may have changed, but I thought only the cheapest and the most expensive types are any good. Valuation survey if you have to have one, Full Structural if you want someone to sue if it actually falls down later.

I thought the Homebuyers report didn’t offer comeback if it turned out to be wrong, but gave loads of waffle on top of the valuation. All will be so laced with “You should have this checked by a roofer/asbestos guy/sparky/Corgi/feng shui/engineer” as to be near useless to read as documents these days anyway.

Well, a building survey is more involved than a home buyer’s survey and twice the price.

midlifecrashes – yes, you took the words out of my mouth! Am I wasting my money if there’s no comeback?

Look it as piece of mind – someone who *knows* what their looking for will give you the thumbs up/down.

I’d say go for either the very basic valuation survey (or whatever it’s called) and get a builder to walk round the place with you, or go for a full structural survey. Full structural will give you come back on the surveyor if something comes up and it’s missed, then costs you lots of money later.

If the house is only 20 years old I’m not sure I’d bother with a full structural unless there were obvious issues (walls falling down, large cracks, etc). Any decent builder will point out what you need for the price of a few beers. If he points out bigger issues get a quote to have the issues fixed and talk to the vendor.

Also, if you get a basic valuation survey done I’m not sure you even get to see it. You just pay for it and it goes straight to your mortgage lender.

m I wasting my money if there’s no comeback?

Well no – they could spot something that you don’t which could give you leverage to reduce the asking price.

For example, would you be able to spot if a chimney is leaking or the property has rising damp? They would spot those sort of things in seconds but could mean you could negotiate thousands off the asking price.

Just in the process of closing on the purchase of a 25 year old house. I had a full survey. discovered only one material problem (minor damp, which could become major).

Person buying my house – 100+ year old Victorian – only had a valuation done. Brave move.

Person buying my house – 100+ year old Victorian – only had a valuation done. Brave move.

As above – the person who bought my 100yr old terrace in 2002 had NO survey done AND paid full asking price. I knew it had a major damp problem and was fully prepared to drop £5k on the asking price because of it.

I’ve bought 6 houses and never had a survey voluntarily. I guess I look out for stuff, and faults often make the house more attractive (because cheaper). I suspect that if you need to ask, then you probably need the survey as well.

My business moved me once, and insisted on paying many hundreds of pounds for a surveyor to tell me the bleeding obvious.

That particular report was worthless IMO, but satisfied the system, so everyone was happy.

If you have a builder friend or someone who has worked on houses a lot, you’d cover 99% of all issues, depending on how observant they were.

You will have to have at least the basic survey done for the mortgage co. In fairness you could probably do a better job yourself than from what I have seen some surveyors do.

The mid priced one is a waste of money.

The expensive ones gives you vast amounts of useful information such as the house doesnt have energy efficient light bulbs.

Alot of it depends on how risk averse you are.

The reports can be used as a bargaining tool when buying but to be honest you can see most of the things that are wrong with a house anyhow.

The survey required by a mortgage lender should be carried out by a Chartered Surveyor or Valuer and is basically for the lender’s benefit to confirm equity in the property.

The Homebuyers Report is carried out by someone who’s been on a course to provide information that politicians deem necessary.

A Full Survey is something the prospective buyer would contract a Chartered Surveyor to do. The Chartered Surveyor will be insured but will start his report with a disclaimer. If he is worth his charter you will get a full and complete survey which, despite the disclaimer, can be challenged if negligent.

So why didn’t my buyer get a report done then? I assume he must have been a cash buyer – I know his dad was helping him so I guess he must have helped him lots.

Just had a quick look – I don’t think you do need to have a survey done…

If you are buying a home, it’s generally a good idea to commission a homebuyer survey to find out what sort of condition your new property is in before you buy it.

You’ll want to know what repairs and improvements will be required
It is, however, more for the benefit of the buyer and not the mortgage lender, so it’s unlikely that you will be obliged to have one of these done before the lender will agree to your mortgage application.

I’d take it as a stitch in time idea. Better to find out now than later on. Yes it may cost you a £1000 but when buying house that isn’t a great deal in the long run.

Don’t get a basic survey get the one above maybe not a full structural one but the surveyor will tell you if things look a miss on that front. Consult the RICS

http://www.rics.org/public

If you do get one done I’d recommend speaking directly to the surveyor. Ideally arrange to meet up at the property on the day they do their survey.

As midlifecrashes says…

All will be so laced with “You should have this checked by a roofer/asbestos guy/sparky/Corgi/feng shui/engineer” as to be near useless to read as documents these days anyway.

… always best to talk to the surveyor and ask if there is anything you should be really worried about.

So why didn’t my buyer get a report done then? I assume he must have been a cash buyer – I know his dad was helping him so I guess he must have helped him lots.

In some streets, in a rising market, there will be equity in a place almost regardless of condition. Imagine a wreck of a place overlooking the Stray in Harrogate and you get the extreme example.

And don’t forget that the immediate benefit of a survey is to use it as a negotiation aid. Helps give quantifiable reasons to reduce the agreed price of the property.

5yrs ago I bought this house. – My offer of £180k was accepted. I then paid for a full survey (cost me about £800. and with the information it contained, I negotiated the price down to £165 on the basis that various things were required to be rectified.

The seller realises that with the surveyors report, there is no point pulling out of the sale for a better offer, as the next buyer is likely to find the same issues… so they cut their losses and agree to sell at a suitable price that reflects the need for work to be done to the house.

That sounds like my old place midlife – except it was a 5 minute walk to the Stray 🙂

We just sold a house and we had a few surveys and house reports done it by various interested buyers. Now, we’d been there for 8 years and done a massive amount of work on it, all legit and certified, signed off etc. One of the buyers reported back that it was about to fall down, which was interesting. We managed to get a copy of the report (for interests sake) and by jesus it was interesting. It had such gems as “The roof may need to be replace” – no reason why, or timeframe or anything really. Interesting seeing as it has a 4yr old colorsteel roof guaranteed for 15 years. “The wiring may need to be certified” – obviously they missed the wiring certification and signoff by the council then ? Bizarre, my builder complained officially about it because, as he said, you could write a template and just print it out without even looking at the house. None of the other reports came back with anything other than superficial minor issues. Was very interesting process.
When we bought our new place we knew who built it, looked thorugh the plans, wife is a structural engineer anyway and our builder went thorugh it with a fine tooth comb. That was enough assurance for us.

Thanks again for replies. 🙂

You might be missing the point. A survey gives you an insurance policy as well as advising of any problems. If the surveyor missess anything vital then you can challenge him and get compensation.

You’ll find that the stated caveats largely make that an irrelevance. There was a thread on here last week about it.

IME, surveys are pretty useless unless you know for sure that the person doing it is good – we’ve had them (had to for the mortgage) miss really obvious stuff. Got much more information and problems spotted from getting a builder round on the basis that what he spotted would probably go to him to do the work…

You might be missing the point. A survey gives you an insurance policy as well as advising of any problems. If the surveyor missess anything vital then you can challenge him and get compensation.

don’t back on that thought. the surveys are caveated to high heaven to exonerate them from any responsibility should you discover, like in my situation, that the chimney breast is unsupported and will take 2k to make safe and repair.

They don’t do destructive testing, hell, they dont even lift the carpets up unless you ask.

besides all that, why have you resurrected an 8 month old thread?

Basic survey – drive past the house at 30mph, “yes there’s a building there”

Full survey – wander round the house, don’t go in the cupboards, don’t go in the loft, don’t lift the carpets, the write a report caveating it all to hell and back.

If you’ve got some common sense, are vaguely DIY handy and aren’t blind as a bat, you’ll probably discover more by having a damn good poke round over the course of a couple of hours yourself.

Ooooh an old thread of mine … did a spammer hijack it or something?

Just for completeness, I did get a survey done for peace of mind. However it was only once I moved in that I discovered what didn’t work inside the house!

So far have needed to call out a locksmith cos the front door, amongst others, didn’t lock properly, garage didn’t have a key, a plumber cos the loo didn’t flush properly and shower wasn’t useable due to broken bathscreen and also got TRVs fitted. Oh and an electrician cos the shower room light kept switching off when I was using it and some rubbishy lights had to be replaced cos they didn’t throw out any light. Etc etc etc.

Even I’ve had to wield my drill … and haven’t finished yet. 🙄

Aaaaaaa, stop it!

Might be getting a 300 year old house, don’t want to hear about anymore hassle!
Full structural survey booked…

We’ve had two done – one ‘full survey’ on a 1920s/30s house, which suggested that we’d need to get a chimney sweep in to check the chimney coming to the ‘open fire’ when the house didn’t have any open fireplaces, and one valuation survey on our current house, which suggested that when the ‘loft extension’ was built, someone had failed to get building regs sorted out, and that needed fixing, including fitting multiple fire doors etc. the house in question being a 3 storey 1790s workers house, and what he thought was the ‘loft extension’ being the original third story.

We did have a look round the current house with a relative who is a surveyor who actually does a good job, because he surveys houses to buy and renovate for sale, but as far as I can tell, when a surveyor is just surveying a house for someone else, they’ll pretty much just peek through the door and then write down a load of standard rubbish.

We have just bought a house and had a Homebuyers report done. There was so many caveats in it that it was basically useless, had to get a builder mate around to look at the “issues” the surveyor had found.

Recommendation seems to be that if the property is more than 50 years old then a full structural survey would be advisable.

Considering just how shoddy modern builders can be, I’d say a full structural survey on anything less then 20 years old is essential. 🙁

in hindsight, we wouldn’t have bothered with the Building survey and just got other specific surveys done such as Timber and damp, electrical and drainage survey. Although these people only work to line their own pockets, they can highlight things that are dangerous etc and you can choose what to get done and the money saved in not commissioning a surveyor will pay for some of these.

for instance the Timber and damp survey we had done was £50 which is refunded against the cost of any work carried out (which for us was nearly £3000 for a list of damp and wood treatments that we’ve decided to do ourselves).

The surveyor will only refer you to do these surveys anyway so save the money and just get them done instead!

Considering just how shoddy modern builders can be, I’d say a full structural survey on anything less then 20 years old is essential.

Amen to that. Victorian houses will still be standing while the dot n dabbed new builds will have long disapeared into a pile of rubble!*

* may not actually be true. But i can’t stand new builds. They feel like you’re in a flimsy cardboard box.