Very worried about flat I'm buying.... please advise

melonpan

Hi

My solicitor has just written to me with the results of the environmental searches done on the flat we're buying. It says that the property is within 500m of a landfill site, and that this might affect future value of properties. They have suggested contacting a surveyor about this.

The solicitor also said that the property is located within 250m of a flood plain.

After hearing about this, I'm not sure about buying this flat now.

What do you guys think???

mrsS_2

i would get advise from an insurance company to see whether being that close to a floodplain will affect you being able to get cover

any previous flooding would ( i think) have had to be disclosed.

landfill-lots of houses seem to be built ON TOP OF landfill these days-may have to get planning permission if want to dig into garden below a certain depth though-- ask planning department of council before proceeding further....

melonpan

Excuse my ignorance, but is a landfill site something that is covered? And you can't throw anything else in it anymore?

Mrs_pbradley936

Is there anything in your price range that is more desirable? If you have a choice of a few properties this one would not be at the top of my list. As well as asking if you can afford it you also ought to consider any future resale value.

Doozergirl

Look at your search results carefully. Anything of note is marked on each map. Go and look at that point in real life, see what's there. Most of the time the answer is not very much.

My old house was within 500m of landfill and 250m of a watercourse. The watercourse was a brook at the bottom of hill and the landfill was something to do with an old 19th century brickworks which would have probably only supplied bricks for when they were building parts of the village.

mrsS is absolutely right too. My mother in laws house is built directly on landfill! It doesn't smell or anything :rotfl: It shows up on the searches for our latest development, but it doesn't affect her house, let alone mine!

Don't be so quick to write it off. By the way, your solicitor isn't qualified to interpret the search results, so they have to inform you that you would need a professional to do so, otherwise they wouldn't be doing their job properly.

Doozergirl

melonpan wrote:

Excuse my ignorance, but is a landfill site something that is covered? And you can't throw anything else in it anymore?

It's just a term for what it is. It could be used now, it might not. Search results go back quite a way and they can't continuously throw rubbish in the same hole, otherwise it becomes a mountain.

silvercar

thirty years ago there were stories of landfill sites sinking. They finished throwing the rubbish away and almost immediately built on them. In years to come the land would settle, gases escape and the houses crack.#

These days I'm sure they are more careful.

Doozergirl

They build the houses on huge concrete pillars based on solid ground and use some kind of cantilever, I believe.

I don't think landfill always means household waste either

melonpan

Thanks for the replies. I think I shall do some more investigating on the internet tomorrow and see if I can find more about this landfill site. Also going to go and take look at it.

The solicitor also said that other things had cropped up in the searches (didn't mention what exactly though) and said that they have contacted the vendors solicitors for clarification.

TJ27

Might be worth getting hold of the old County Series Ordnance Survey maps of the area. There are usually four of these and they go back to around 1880. They'll tell you what was in the area previously. If you superimpose one on top of the other they often give a lot of information.

For example, there was an old clay pit behind my garden many years ago. It was filled in with stone/soil (landfill) and is now allotments. Not a problem for most. However, a bank at the end of my road was built, half on solid ground and half on the made ground. So the rear of it has subsided and it has huge cracks. The bank has been there for about fifty years but the cracks only appeared a few years ago. The position of the pit is very clearly shown on the old maps.

You can usually get hold of these maps in your main library or possibly in the county archives. Some places let you copy them, other don't. They are sometimes a bit fragile you see. Library is better. If you think about it, libraries like to provide information, archives like to preserve it.

It usually costs nothing to do this but it might give you a lot more information than any survey will!

mrsc_4

We are within 500m of a flood plain but have never had any flooding the river is in fact only a trickle getting insurance for this hasn't been a problem. We are also very close to a pylon but have never had any problems with that either. And finally we are close to sewage works, sometimes we get a waft of a smell but not very often.