Homebuyers survey?

Ditto

When getting a homebuyers survey what does it cover, roughly how many pages would it come to and lastly what is the difference in cost between a it and a valuation survey?

Thanks

devon007

A valuation is precisely that - a simple valuation of the property for the purposes of your Lender (a) to make sure the property exists (b) to make sure it is suitable for lending (i.e. standard construction and reasonable condition) (c) to make sure it is adequate for the monies to be secured against it (i.e. if you want £75k loan, is the lender likely to be able to get that back should it have to repossess). Dependent on the percentage you wish to borrow against the value of the property, some valuations are simple "drive bys". If you want to borrow more than 40/50% of value, then the valuer is likely to want to go inside - but he is NOT doing any sort of survey. You should NOT rely on any valuation done for a Lender.

A Home Buyers Report is a halfway stop between a valuation and a full structural survey - and runs to quite a few pages. It should tell you about the basic construction and condition of the property and draw your attention to any major defects and faults, but it will not be an indepth investigation, for instance in a full structural survey the surveyor will drop dye down the toilet and lift the outside manhole cover to see how quickly the dye appears and how the flow of water is, he'll turn on taps and all sorts of extra things that a HBR does not cover. A valuation can take anything from 5 - 30 minutes. An HBR will take up to a couple of hours. A full structural survey can take half a day or more! You get what you pay for!

If memory serves me right a HBR runs to between 18-20 pages and there are set areas that the inspection covers - talk to the surveyor and he will tell you what it does and does not cover. However, I can tell you it will not cover an inspection of the servics to the property. I cannot quite remember if it covers timber inspection but it will cover damp. I would also suggest clients always have a separate timber and damp inspection - they only cost about £40 and if treatment is required the fee will be refunded if you instruct that company. You should also have your own gas and electrics inspections carried out unless there is paperwork to show these were recently inspected or maintained.

If the house is under 2 years old, full NHBC cover will exist and unless you see something untoward (cracks in walls etc) you should still be covered by the Certificate. From 2-10 years the cover reduces, and after 10 years fails to exist. Therefore I always suggest an HBR even if a client is buying a new house which is more than 2 years old.

David_Aldred

Hi
Nice post by Devon giving good general info though there are a couple of points you might also want to be aware of:

Whilst a valuation survey is indeed for the lender as described above there is also a duty of care owed to the purchaser since it is reasonable that they will have sight of the valuation report, that they will rely heavily upon that report, that there is a special relationship between the purchaser and the valuer and the vast majority of surveys undertaken are of a valuation type.

The classic case that defined this was Yianni v Edwin Evans where the purchaser was granted a mortgage on the back of a negligent valuation survey that missed detailing ongoing structural settlement that made the house in effect worthless. The purchaser was successful in their claim against the surveyor even though the valuation survey was not actually intended for them.

This is an important point because whilst a surveyor may be tempted to do a "drive by" for a valuation survey they can easily end up on the end of a negligence claim by the purchaser as a result. It makes no difference whether a surveyor can waltz in and out of a property or they end up being there for a good few hours the duty of care owed is the same and the responsibility throughout is to act with reasonable care and skill for a person in their profession no matter what the fee.

Whilst the costs go up dramatically from valuation survey, to Homebuyers, to Full Structural what you actually get for your buck by way of what you really want to know often fails to go up at the same rate. Typically with a Homebuyer or indeed Full Structural survey the description of what the house looks like and background information goes up in stages with the fee but these are people in suits who give general comments without specialist knowledge such that there will always be greater reliance upon their requests made by that surveyor for surveys by others with that specialist knowledge to cover the liability of the original surveyor, such as obtaining a structural engineer's report, an electrical, plumbing, drain reports and damp / timber / wall tie surveys etc.

A primary concern will be whether the property has ongoing structural movement or not and if the general building surveyor sees cause for concern they will request a structural survey. However unless recently re-decorated areas have cracked open or other similar signs such as cracked areas where previously re-pointed it may be difficult to determine if that movement is ongoing without pinning either side of cracks and monitoring for many months any changes in the distance between those pins.

The second greatest concern will be matters of dampness / timber decay / wood boring insect attack and cavity wall ties since this group of issues concern the property as a whole and can be so serious as to make the property worthless in chronic cases given the costs to address such issues can be so considerable.

By far the most competant and in depth survey for dampness / timber / wall tie problems will be from a specialist independent surveyor who will not do this for free and neither will they do it for £40 as suggested above since their survey fee is their only source of income in order to be truly unbiased and independent.

The "free" or £40 types of surveys are done by contractors seeking work for their own gain usually paid upon a commision basis doing 3-6 surveys a day including standard paragraphs banging quickie reports out one after the other to meet targets and are in the majority are undertaken by people who are unqualified and uninsured to give you that advise or write reports resulting in them being wide open to a claim of negligence. This is why despite some good contractors being out there, the industry has chronic levels of misdiagnosis and work being undertaken that is unfortunately both a waste of time and money in all too many cases.

Rising dampness cannot be proven by electrical damp meters and is vastly overstated by the industry selling replacement damp proof courses in order to sustain that industry. Woodworm is all too often misdiagnosed as being active when it is inactive resulting in long lasting chemicals being introduced into properties without justification.

Truly independent surveys from qualified specialist surveyors who have professional indemnity insurance can be found upon the Property Care Association (PCA) website under the heading of find a member and then selecting Freelance or Consultant (the rest are contractors looking for work) and then selecting one or two nearest to you to have a chat with.

Please see my other posts on here which may be of some help regarding dampness, basements, cavity wall ties, cavity wall insulation, woodworm and dry rot.

Kindest regards, David Aldred Independent dampness and timber surveyor

Ditto

Thanks for the replies, any idea of the costs for the different surveys?

David_Aldred

Hi again,
If you wanted my honest opinion I will have to say that all too often I see people agreeing a purchase price before they have had any surveys as described above undertaken which may have a dramatic affect upon what the client actually wants to pay if indeed they want to proceed at all. Agreeing the actual purchase price should be the last thing to be done and not the first. If you are looking at the property in the first place it should be within your budget, now let's see which approach you would want to take:

Typically as I say people will agree a price, then pay to have a Chartered Surveyor inspect, then pay to have the reports done by the people the Chartered Surveyor wants to cover their back from a liability point of view. By the time this stage is reached the client has spent a fortune and may find the house has more problems than they want to take on and so they do exactly the same thing with the next house they look at. This may repeat such that before they find a house they actually want to proceed with it can have cost them dearly for every house they have had an interest in.

Personally before making any offers or having any Chartered Surveyor inspect I would have the damp / timber / cavity wall tie survey done by the true independent surveyor who specialises in these subjects and I do not say that simply because that is my profession, I say that from a point of view of what you actually get for your money that will give you the biggest idea about what is going on with that property as a whole in the detail you want to know. In short it is by far the biggest hitter pound for pound and the reason I say this is as follows:

You will get detailed sub floor inspections where access is available with photographs throughout of things of concern, there will be drawings and discussion of dampness and any decay / wood boring insect attack found throughout. There will be a fully detailed list of internal and external defects throughout having an impact upon these issues. There will be discussion of insulation and roofs. Inspection inside the cavities of the walls will be made to look for debris and condition of wall ties, comments on structural cracks will be made with recommendations for a structural engineer if found to be cause for concern and if you ask comments regarding services will be made to flag any additional inspections by electrician and plumber etc. There will be provisional budget costs for your purchase negotiations and detailed specifications for addressing the situation and the cherry on the cake is you will usually get all of this for probably half the cost of what you would pay for a middle of the road Homebuyers Report. From this type of specialist independent survey you can see that pound for pound it is giving you the best idea for if you want to proceed or not. If upon having this report the picture is looking favourable and you want to proceed have the other reports done and give a copy to the Chartered Surveyor for their referance choosing whatever standard of survey you wish to have done and that way you are not wasting money.

Survey fees from Chartered Surveyors vary on where you live and type / size of property but typically in the area I live a valuation survey on a mid terrace 3 bed town house can be in the range of £100-300 (also depending upon the mortgage deal as sometiems this cost is lost within the sign up arrangements), a Homebuyers £450-650 and a full structural survey anything above this figure to thousands of pounds. The name Full Structural Survey by the Chartered Surveyor is rather wooly really because it is not a structural engineers report at all (as that is a different profession by a civil engineer) and as indicated above a Full Structural Survey may describe the property very well indeed but there will still be a heavy reliance upon the surveys and reports that surveyor requests from others.

Hope this helps, kindest regards, David Aldred Independent damp and timber surveyor

morg_monster

very rough idea of costs - valuation only £200, HBR £600, Full structural £1100.

This is roughly what ours was (we just went with the surveyor our mortgage company, Lloyds, used).

if we had gone to another company to do the HBR we would have had to have still paid the £200 for valuation survey to lloyds and then about £600 or whatever on top to another company for the HBR. so we tried to save a bit, not sure it was worth it though with the crap surveyor we got.

pelethecat

I think cost depends on whether you do it through your lender or organise it yourselves. I had a free valuation with my mortgage offer, so then arranged an HBR separately myself - it was £345, and there was very little variation on this from the other quotes I got.

I think if you have to pay for your mortgage valuation, then it is usually cheaper to 'top it up' to an HBR or buildings survey, which will then be about £5-600 for the two. You might want to seriously consider paying separately for your own though, because then you can choose who does the survey for you - and you can get someone you trust, who will return the report to you quickly and is happy to talk things through on the phone with you afterwards - if you're anything like me there will be lots of technical stuff in the report you might need clarifying.

It's also worth thinking about what you want the survey for - are you going to use it to renegotiate the offered price? The HBR runs to a standard format regulated by RICS and is required to bring to your attention anything that could affect the value of the property, and therefore allow you to renegotiate. The buildings survey will give you much more detail, and I understand is recommended if there have been alterations or you plan to make significant alterations yourself.

digruntled

Does anyone know if a duty of care exists between the Surveyor,lender and purchaser on a buy to let purchase . I want to pursue a claim against my Surveyor I have commisioned 2 retrospective valuations and the findings are a variance bracket of 30% and 20%. I have had conflicting and unsubstantiated advice I was under the impression the purchase of my flat was a residential purchase and a duty of care can be identified however the conflicting advice is a buy to let is deemed to be a commercial purchase and thefore no duty of care exists.

kmmr

Personally I wouldn't bother with a HB Survey again. All mine said was that the kitchen was a bit old, and that there was damp. Followed by a long list of things that could be wrong, but that he couldn't or didn't check.

Things like
- you should get the plumbing looked at just in case, sometimes there are problems.
- There are some cases in the past where houses like this have had asbestos. No idea if yours does, but it might.
- You should look at the guttering. Sometimes there are problems with guttering, but I didn't look at yours

And more items like that. To be honest it just makes you nervous about potential problems, but doesn't tell you if they really impact you!

It's pricey, but if you are serious about the house, then I think a full structural is the way to go.