Subsidence - Help!

may l add a comment to the good advice you have already been given... my friend has had builders in for 3 months nearly.... she definately had subsidence there were all the tell tale signs,windows coming away fom the frames, diagonal craks across the brickwork, she could not get a pictue frame to hang straight in some rooms and a crack literally big enough to put a large fist through running from the top to the bottom of the three storey house.first thing the insurers blamed it on a tree in next doors garden. but nothing came of that. alll the builders have done is fill up all the cracks with metal mesh and plastered over and put new wallpaper all over the house covering up where the wallpaper was distorting in the corners .....it will be just a matter of timebefore all the faults appear againthere was no remedial work done just a cosmetic cover up .what l amm trying to say is was it really a tree? YOU DO REALLY NEED SOME EXPERT ADVICE GOOD LUCK

charley1965 wrote: »

Thanks for all your replies, very helpful.

I will get quotes from major providors to test the water, my solicitor is enquiring regarding the existing policy, so when I have those details to hand I'll check the terms & conditions.

We wouldn't buy the house without a structural engineers report, and as mentioned I know they are pricey. Our problem is that as the claim was not disclosed by the vendor initially (only found out 8 weeks into purchase) we only opted for a Homebuyers Survey at a cost of £700. If we'd have known about the claim we would have had a full survey at £1,500. We are now not prepared to fork out even more money on something which may not go ahead anyway. We've conveyed this to the vendor and awaiting a response.

So I guess my next question is, how much impact does this have on the market value of the house? I don't see how it can be worth full market value, am I wrong?

As pamplemousse stated you will have extreme difficulty in transferring the policy without a massive increase in premium, you may find someone who is not concerned with this but it is unlikely, white elephants can be bought much cheaper at your local fete. If you must throw your money away I can send you a pm with my address and you can donate some to me, because sure as hell this property is not worth market value as it simply will not sell on without the current insurance policy, which I might add is only there because the insurers MUST insure it until the policy is voluntary moved to another company, after which they are relieved of that obligation, this is a deciding factor on why other insurers are reluctant to take on the risk.

We had our house monitored by the NHBC for a couple of years. It was less than 10 years old at the time. The house and garden wall across the road had developed cracks. The house needed underpinning and the wall was knocked down then rebuilt. We got a letter (so did a few neighbours) asking if they could dig holes in the garden, stick pins in the walls and come back every so often. All this was after the dry summer of 2003. Anyway we did not need anything done but they told us to keep the bushes and trees cut back really hard.

We did ask if we had to declare this if we sold and were told no because no structural work was necessary and that we were part of a survey for the immediate area of a known problem not a remedy for a problem to our house.

We're in a similar situation. We are first time buyers and we were very close to completing on a house, when we tried to get insurance and no-one would touch it. Our solicitor didn't point the previous subsidence claim out to us, which I think is pretty rubbish. The vendor's solicitor didn't disclose it until very late on, and then it was in quite a sneaky way (a letter from a structural engineer hidden amongst a load of other documents).

We've decided that we are just going to have to walk away. The house seemed perfect - location, space etc. Very frustrating!!