I Am Feeling Really Sick At The Moment.

Milliewilly

loveandlight wrote: »

Thanks for your offer of support Milliewilly. Yes it does seem like I am going through what you went through. I just don't see how the surveyor could have missed these problems. I am having a taste now of what it must have been like for you. It has really affected me a lot and I just feel so isolated. I will send you a pm in the next day or two once I feel a bit better in myself. I really appreciate all the other replies as well. Thank you.

Key thing here is did you pay for the survey (regardless of type) - i.e it wasn't 'free' as part of your mortgage deal. If you did then there is a direct contract with the Surveyor between you both and they are liable. Has been proved in law EVEN on a valuation survey.

You don't have to worry about the time scale it was 18 months before I started legal proceedings as I was gathering my evidence. The surveyor will try to wriggle out of it so you really need to appoint a solicitor.

Insurance Co will not want to know as they will class it as pre-inception damage i.e the fault existed before you bought. Surveyor will say it happened since they surveyed and thus you will be piggy in the middle.

If its the same as mine it wouldn't be covered anyway as it was neither subsidence, landslip or heave it was just a structural failure which you are not covered for on buildings insurance.

You will need an expert structural surveyor for an opinion on how old the damage is and also a valuation survey to quantify your loss and a survey from an expert witness as to whether the faults should have reasonably been noticed on (any) survey.

I had legal expenses cover with Alliance & Leicester but they had a clause saying you couldn't use it to sue them and as the negligent surveyor was Alliance & Leicester I ended up footing the bill myself (although I did get 75% back when I won).

It will be expensive.

Don't let them get away with it - you have paid for a service and been badly let down.

silvercar

Do you have building insurance and does it include legal cover? If so then the legal cover should sort out claiming the costs from the surveyor and the building insurance should deal with putting it right. The building part of your insurance then uses the legal cover to claim the costs back from the surveyor who in turn claims off their PI insurance.

So a lot of people get paid to pass the buck around and some insurance company somewhere pays the bill.

Nenen

Has your house been buffeted by any gales? I ask because we owned a house in 1987 and when we had that awful gale the gable end of the house (from in-line with the bedroom ceiling to the apex of the roof) shifted in causing a bulge. Our house insurance paid out for the wall to be stripped back to ceiling height and rebuilt.

When they did this (and several other nearby houses too) they found the houses had been built with the bricks upside down (i.e. the hollow 'frog' underneath) which apparently makes it quicker to build walls and uses less mortar as the hollow is not completely filled in. Obviously it also makes the wall weaker too but no surveyor could see it as they do not get to remove bricks. I wonder if that is what has happened to all the houses around you, what with them having to be demolished etc. Might be worth investigating.

iolanthe07

Milliewilly wrote: »

TOTALLY wrong.

This mirrors my case almost exactly - I had only had a valuation survey. Serious structural faults should be picked up. I took my Surveyor to court and won. OP Message me for advice. I speak from experience.

Sometimes it is nice to be wrong. Good luck, OP.

loveandlight

posted by Milliewilly
Key thing here is did you pay for the survey (regardless of type) - i.e it wasn't 'free' as part of your mortgage deal. If you did then there is a direct contract with the Surveyor between you both and they are liable. Has been proved in law EVEN on a valuation survey.

Yes I did pay for it. It was a valuation survey and it said that there was no structural movement at all and the surveyor declared that he understood that a copy of the valuation would be disclosed to the borrower. He also valued the house at full market value which was the price I paid for it. Sixteen months later, it is now unmortgageable with serious structural problems and significant bulging. Oh dear.

posted by Milliewilly
Insurance Co will not want to know as they will class it as pre-inception damage i.e the fault existed before you bought. Surveyor will say it happened since they surveyed and thus you will be piggy in the middle.

Yes this is what I fear.

I do have building insurance cover but I don't seem to have legal cover. Only to defend any claims against me.

posted by Milliewilly
If its the same as mine it wouldn't be covered anyway as it was neither subsidence, landslip or heave it was just a structural failure which you are not covered for on buildings insurance.

You will need an expert structural surveyor for an opinion on how old the damage is and also a valuation survey to quantify your loss and a survey from an expert witness as to whether the faults should have reasonably been noticed on (any) survey.

That is very helpful and I am very clear now on what I need to do. I'm dreading telling the insurance company as I anticipate (and I know I shouldn't) that they will reject my claim. That in itself will make me feel physically sick but I know I have to be strong and I have to pay the first £1000.00 excess anyway. I've got no idea yet how I am going to even afford that.

It is interesting what you discovered about the bricks being turned upside down Nenen.

Thanks once again to everyone for your advices.

dopester

I was going to ask this the other day, but thought maybe you'd get "heated" about my asking and decided against asking....

Now I'll ask. What was all this about back in July? I know from other posts you rent the property out. I trust it wasn't something which led to the problems you are now experiencing? Or was it an attempted repair?

I need a wall demolishing

loveandlight wrote: »

I need a brick wall demolishing as soon as possible. Can anyone recommend where I can look on the internet for someone to do a good job and at a good price? The house is in Chester.

Thanks.

loveandlight wrote: »

We live too far away from the house to do it ourselves although we did look into it. By the time we paid for a hire car and staying two nights in a hotel and cost of petrol and hiring a skip etc it works out cheaper for us to pay someone else to do it.

loveandlight

posted by dopester
I was going to ask this the other day, but thought maybe you'd get "heated" about my asking and decided against asking....

Now I'll ask. What was all this about back in July? I know from other posts you rent the property out. I trust it wasn't something which led to the problems you are now experiencing? Or was it an attempted repair?

You are making massive assumptions here dopester. The old post of mine that you have brought up again relates to a completely different property in a completely different area. It was actually a GARDEN WALL I was referring to in the old post which had been vandalised by a bunch of yobs. The neighbours saw the yobs vandalising the GARDEN WALL and reported it to the police. The police said there was nothing they could do about it as the yobs had denied doing it even though the neighbour saw them doing it!!

Milliewilly

loveandlight wrote: »

Yes I did pay for it. It was a valuation survey and it said that there was no structural movement at all and the surveyor declared that he understood that a copy of the valuation would be disclosed to the borrower. He also valued the house at full market value which was the price I paid for it. Sixteen months later, it is now unmortgageable with serious structural problems and significant bulging. Oh dear.



Yes this is what I fear.

I do have building insurance cover but I don't seem to have legal cover. Only to defend any claims against me.



That is very helpful and I am very clear now on what I need to do. I'm dreading telling the insurance company as I anticipate (and I know I shouldn't) that they will reject my claim. That in itself will make me feel physically sick but I know I have to be strong and I have to pay the first £1000.00 excess anyway. I've got no idea yet how I am going to even afford that.

It is interesting what you discovered about the bricks being turned upside down Nenen.

Thanks once again to everyone for your advices.

All is not lost. I paid full market value for mine in 2003 then sold in 2007 at the peak for less than I paid in 2003 as it was a cash purchase only as unmortgageable. A builder bought it to do the work.

There was no lack of interest as the house was very realistically priced and I got the Estate Agent to put in the press and on the brochures that there was significant structural repairs to be done and the property was not suitable for mortgage to weed out timewasters and people thinking they could bag a house at £100K less than market value without reason.

The Alliance and Leicester had to make up the difference which in my case was £110K with costs (£13K but you only get 75% back for litigation) so I was happy with the outcome.

My structural engineer said the house could collapse at any time so really I shouldn't have been living there but I was paying the mortgage plus £500 a month to the solicitor in legal fees so couldn't afford to move into rented. I had the basement acro-propped as a precaution but it probably wouldn't have done much