Just had an offer accepted on a new house which was built circa 1970. From the viewing, it looks like it’s been looked after and has been in the same family since the early 80’s and this could be earlier. It’s a very similar house to the one I grew up in so I am aware that they were well built properties.

Question is, what type of survey, if any would you go for? Any pointers greatly accepted as money is tight with this transaction.

Cheers.

Go with the best you can afford. Use a local surveyor, as they will often be a bit more flexible about what they are looking at. We just bought a converted bungalow, paid a local surveyor for the homebuyers check. Before he went he agreed that if he saw anything that looked off, he would call us and upgrade to full survey if he felt it necessary.

It was built 40 odd years ago … if it was going to fall down it would have done so by now.

They’re all a load of shite anyway.

After spending the last 6 weeks and any spare money I had dealing with homebuyers surveyors and structural surveyors, I can pretty much survey your house from my kitchen.

No big cracks.
Boiler needs checking.
Electricity needs checking.
Roof looks reasonable as far as we can see from the road.
There is a scratch on one of the kitchen work tops.
Windows could do with a clean.
We hereby absolve ourselves of any responsibility of any problem whatsoever in relation to the condition of your property before, during or after your purchase.

That will be £525 for me and anywhere between £500 and £1300 for my structural surveyor friend dependant on how many visits he can get away with recommending to his homebuyer surveyor friend (who of course he doesn’t have any connection with but both will have email addresses @thesameaddress).

Bluearsedfly – you haven’t used the word ‘appears’ enough. As in

It appear not to have any damp.
It appears not to have any structural cracks.
It appears to have working central heating.

Seen so many get out clauses in surveys it does make me wonder if they are worth the money getting the ‘better’ ones.

Don’t blame the surveyors – blame the insurance industry!

Get a trusted builder or surveyor to go round and check everything and do your own custom survey, or don’t bother with anything and wing it.

As others have said the surveys you pay for as a service aren’t worth the paper they are written on as they spend more time covering their arse than helping you.

If you don’t properly check, you should assume you will need to do remedial work once you’re in, but then you know it’s done right.

If there are things like slow leaks that have rotted joists they won’t be found, as friends of mine found. They had to pay for a survey which looked like the house might fall down, but might not, either way you can’t sue who did the survey. Then found issues and had to pay for that to go with the useless piece of paper.

breatheeasy – Member
Bluearsedfly – you haven’t used the word ‘appears’ enough. As in
It appear not to have any damp.
It appears not to have any structural cracks.
It appears to have working central heating.

I knew I had missed something.

Do I appear slightly bitter about the whole process? 😀

Interesting and useful thoughts people, thanks.

I underwrite insurance for surveyors so understand them reasonably well and would summarise the three main types of survey as follows:

Survey purely for lending purposes= looks be be worth £x but please note I may not have even been in the property but merely looked at some comparable houses on rightmove’.

Homebuyers survey=’I did actually go in the house this time and looked in a couple of rooms and couldn’t see anything wrong. Caveat there may be loads wrong I just didn’t see it.’

Full structural=’I had a poke around and examined the whole *visible* structure. However I didn’t go looking around lift spaces, lifting any floorboards etc but in pretty sure the house is /isn’t (delete as applicable) ok’.

Personally I would not but a house without getting a full structural performed by a local surveyor. Love any profession theres good and bad. Unfortunately the bad have cost indemnity insurers millions of pounds hence the insurance issues that are prevalent at the moment. Comments like ‘it hasn’t taken down yet…’ don’t allow for say the early signs of dry rot, subsidence etc.

Ymmv

I’d get the cheapest survey your mortgage provider will accept, and then employ a local builder / surveyor / handy person to have a thourough poke about for a few hours – ideally with you present as well.

This will allow you to see everything first hand, instead of having to interpret a report which might not make much sense to you.

We had middle option last time – cost about £1k – but it was hopeless. I’d have learned more by poking about the place with a torch for an hour or two.