New Property Problems - Advice Appreciated

jedawi

Hi,

firstly what a great site this is have saved myself a small fortune so many thanks for all the good advice contained within this forum.

We have just purchased and moved into a house about 2 weeks ago. The house was built in the mid 1970s.
Prior to purchase we had the RICS Homebuyer Survey and Valuation carried out with no major flaws highlighted in the report.

Now within the first few days we have noticed that both the detatched garage and brick shed have serious leaks.

The vendors did not mention the fact that both garage and shed have leaks and the surveyor did not pick this up on the survey.

Where do we stand in this situation? Do we fix the leaks and foot the bill, should this have been picked up in the survey or should the vendors have highlighted this prior to sale ( I am assuming the garage and shed have shown signs of leaks well before we have moved in and vendors were aware or this is one hell of a coincidence ).


Any advice on this matter would be much appreciated.

Many Thanks

cattie

I'm not sure about the detatched garage, but a shed would not be normally included in a survey unless you specifically ask for the surveyor to give an opinion on it.

The vendor's don't have to voluntarily disclose any defects to you, but if you ask a particular question regarding the condition of the property, ie have you had any trouble with the roof leaking, then they must give you an honest answer.

A lot properties have defects of one kind or other & there are a heck of a lot of vendor's hoping that prospective buyers won't pick up on them & want to adjust their offer down accordingly. It's ony human .

It is perfectly feasible however that the roof of the garage & shed have deteriorated rapidly due to the heavy rains we've experienced over the past couple of months. A felted roof especially can show no signs of leaking untill the timbers are damaged by the water seeping through, which then results in water getting into the interior of the building when it rains.

A homebuyer's survey is not thorough & is generally full of generalisations re getting specialist reports on such things as roof & timbers, electrics etc.

I think here you're just going to have to resign yourself to paying out for repairs yourself.