The house we like to buy has been underpinned need some urgent advice please!

tooldle

Hi Zooloo, To answer your earlier question, we had no trouble at all reselling the property. We achieved the full asking prices. Some 7 years after, that sale is still the highest value sale in the street. That said, we retained all documents from our purchase, which were passed onto our purchaser.
My point about changing insurance companies is that most will look to see if there has been a recent claim before considering you as a customer. As time goes by, your options increase as more companies will consider you, assuming that you won't be making large claims in the coming years.
You do need to know more about the underpinning. As others have said a full structural survey would be sensible, as the underpinning took place some years ago. Are you sure that the solicitor who handled the vendors purchase is not holding all the docs you need?

joshiesaunt

we unfortunately bought our first house which had subsidence (although we didn't know it!). We paid for a full structural survey (they missed the 'tell-tale' ruler tucked away in an outside wall and the stud pins for measuring). absolute nightmare selling and basically got nowhere with sueing surveyors as it is 'caveat emptor' - buyer beware. I loved that house so much but it became a hated millstone. Please do not let your heart rule your head - you dont sound like an experienced house buyer - walk away and find a less risky prospect - it will always be a worry in the back of your mind otherwise.

tulipz

Zooloo,
We found a property (that we absolutely loved) last month. We were told in the last minute that it was underpinned. For a few weeks, we were thinking exactly like you. The owner paid for the structural survey and everything was ok. After doing a lot of research on the web, reading 1000s of forum posts everywhere, we decided to walk away. We were so disappointed for a few days. But looking back, we feel we've made the right decision.

We arent going to touch ANYTHING that will have probs selling in future. Economy = uncertian. Interest rates =Uncertain. Jobs= uncertain. It'll be very foolish of me to buy a property that is CERTAIN to have problems when I want to sell.

Looks like you are here to find re-assurance for a decision you already made. BUT for a minute, forget how much you liked that property. Remove all images of that house from your mind and then THINK. Put all the facts on a paper and see if it makes any financial sense putting £300k in todays market and economic situation on a property that was underpinned, no paperwork and a railway track at the back of the garden?????

Sorry to say, its not right.

tulipz

joshiesaunt wrote: »

Please do not let your heart rule your head - you dont sound like an experienced house buyer - walk away and find a less risky prospect - it will always be a worry in the back of your mind otherwise.

Spot on. Think with your mind - not with your heart !

Sambucus_Nigra

zooloo wrote: »

Thanks for all your advice. I agree I need to try harder to reduce the price. I don't think they will do the survey. So it just leaves me two options. Either to do the survey myself but before I do I want to say to them before I even think about it they have to reduce the price. As rightly said it is a buyers Market at the moment!

Anyone has anymore advice or experiences please continue to advise! Will keep you up dated!

You don't even love this house. Just walk away.

I went to pick a fridge up once from a pre-freecycle swap thingy; and the reason that they were getting rid of everything was because they were moving out. They were moving out because the house they bought and were supposed to be paying a mortgage on was worthless. Why you may ask? Well, because they had a tiny teeny minute little spring under the middle, which was not picked up by the surveyor; and this washed away the soil under the foundations and broke the back of the house. *It WAS known at the time it turns out but the surveyor didn't think it relevant enough to put it on the survey

It's hard enough when you don't think there is a problem, but when you KNOW there is a problem and still proceed; more fool you.

They had stopped paying the mortgage 2 years previously, and were in a fight with the bank [as it was their surveyor that hadn't picked this up] to even get the money back that they had paid into the mortgage. The land was worth about £2k and they had paid £150k at the time into their mortgage. They lost it all and were on their way to a caravan. And as this was about 15 years ago, you an imagine what a nice house it had been for that money.

The whole point of having a survey and finding out the history of properties is to enable you to make a decision. If you choose to ignore it then what's the point?

zagfles

Sambucus_Nigra wrote: »

The whole point of having a survey and finding out the history of properties is to enable you to make a decision. If you choose to ignore it then what's the point?

The OP hasn't had the survey yet I thought? The house has been underpinned, the point of underpinning is to the fix the subsidence problem, the question is has it worked. That's what the structural survey should tell.

Where I live virtually every house has been affected by subsidence/settlement, mostly minor and long standing, due to mining activity decades ago. If people refused to buy houses just because there's been a history of subsidence then it'd be very lonely around here. But fortunately people tend to get a structural survey which usually tells them the subsidence is long standing and there is no current problem. And the prices they sell for are ridiculous - so they're not selling them cheap!

There are specific problems with the mere mention of the word "underpinning", to do with insurance, and possibly mortgages, as I mentioned earlier, but if the OP can live with that, and a structural survey gives it the OK, then I'd do as the OP and negotiate a discount, if they really want the house.

sarahl1_2

Hi, we're in a similar situation. I'm not sure I have anymore useful advice than the other posters, but thought you might like to hear our experience (so far at least!).
We're relocating from London to Cambridgeshire. Found the house. It's a beautiful house, fell in love with it totally, beyond lovely - let me be clear, I LOVE this place.
In the course of asking questions before offering we were told it had been underpinned 20 years previously (not by the current owners). We did a little research and decided that we would go ahead and risk the money for the (full structural) survey to understand if there was any recent movement (on the basis that if it hadn't moved and everything was in order we could go ahead).
Got a great surveyor, huge and comprehensive survey. He suspected there might have been some recent (ish) movement and suggested a structural engineers report. Went ahead and got it (was only £250 so again, we figured, if we're going to spend the money on the house we need to go in with our eyes open etc.).
Got this report and the structural engineer was able to advise that there hadn't been any recent movement and that everything was absolutely tickety boo. We also got an inspection done on the drains to be absolutely sure everything was ok.
Ok, so we went ahead (we negotiated the price down because of some other work that needed doing). We've spent several weeks going back and forth on things like price, fixtures and fittings etc. to the point where we finally agreed we were proceeding with the sale.
So we then started looking at insurance quotes, which is where it all started going a bit wrong....
I have really struggled to get quotes, even from specialists. I've managed to get one and it's expensive to say the least. Bear in mind we have a full structural survey and a specialist structural engineer's report to back us up!
We are trying to resign ourselves to the reality that we have to pull out, purely from a resale perspective: our logic is that, if we've found it this hard, so will our buyer in the future.
We are having one last gasp (a friend in the insurance industry has said that the lack of willing parties is a result of the economic climate-everyone is totally risk averse and will give 'any' excuse to avoid anything outside the norm), however, we are having to be realistic about this.
It goes without saying I'm gutted. We started looking for a house in January, it took us seven months to find one we like. Any minute now we're about to be homeless as our sale is still proceeding (excellent - what am I going to do with the toddler!!). I desperately don't want to rent but there's no other option really.
I totally agree, underpinned properties don't have to be the end of the world, but there is still a huge stigma attached. The great irony is that this house really didn't need to be underpinned in the first place! Grrr!
In the end you have to make the decision yourself, but I do strongly recommend that, however you go about getting it, get the inspections and reports done (I have to say, I think it's best to do it yourself - if you're relying on a report commissioned by someone else I'm not sure you'll have much recourse if things go wrong).
And if anyone has a story like this with a happy ending, or happens to know a good insurance broker that will quote me so I can still have my dream house I'd love to hear from you! Alternatively if you have a period property, minimum three beds and a study 20/30 mins from Huntingdon/St Neots train that you're looking to sell (quickly!) get in touch!!!

shar46y

sarahl1 wrote: »

And if anyone has a story like this with a happy ending, or happens to know a good insurance broker that will quote me so I can still have my dream house I'd love to hear from you!

Sorry to hear of your troubles. Who insures the house now? I am pretty sure they have to agree to continue insuring the property if it is sold, so ask the vendor who their insurer is and to confirm whether they would continue covering the property. I'm also kind of surprised that you can't get insurance if the movement is 20 years old and you have the structural engineer's report showing that all is well.

We had no trouble getting ours insured - I have no doubt the premiums are more than for a non-underpinned house, but ironically because we've moved out of London and to a nice suburb, overall it is still cheaper than for our previous place (2-bed flat)! We are insured with Halifax.

Of course, if you decide to walk away that is also completely understandable.

Good luck either way!

zooloo

Ok an update to everyone.

We threatened to walk away etc and the vendors said they cannot afford to decrease the price so will put it back on the market however if we want to get back to them then we can.

So my husband and I are still thinking....we haven't had a strucutral engineering survey done yet. This we will definately do though, looks like we would have to pay for it though if we do decide to go ahead with the house. I don't think the house has any further issues as the original underpinning was done in 1997.

We asked the vendor to provide us with paperwork and they have receipts to show that the work was done and guarantee that the work should last till 2017, the original underpinning was done in 1997. However after searching the company who did the underpinning (and who gives the guarentee) they have gone bust or dissolved.

So my question to anyone who has bought an underpinned property or who owns one, what paperwork should be attained before we go for an underpinned property? And after guarentee runs out what does one do then?

Also is obtaining a certificate structural adequecy necessary? I know the vendor do not have this and I rang the council and they said even though the work was periodically checked by them it was never officially signed off (he also went to say that some people don't wait for it to be signed off). If one is necessary then can it be obtained from the current insurers or when we get a strucutral survey engineering report?

Sorry guys for all the questions. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

zooloo

Just want to add that I am not worried that the house has any more issues (of course I will double check before I go ahead with an structural engineering survey report) but I am more worried about selling the house in the future and what paperwork people expect to obtain from the vendors. thanks