Buying house, need survey?

snid

I would go for a full survey, definitely.

paulsad

I had a structural survey on my present house and to be honest it was quite offputting - surveyors have to cover their backs in every eventuality so be prepared for some depressing reading! I was worried about a chimney stack in particular and asked for attention to this on the survey, the written advice was "to keep an eye on it over the next few years."(!!?) On lesser important issues ie state of heating system etc the word of the seller is often taken and in our case we ended up with no heating so had to replace the lot.
I am lucky now in that I have a mate who is a bloody good builder having done complete new builds as well as refurbishing old properties - so his help and advice I always can rely on. So on our next home I won't be bothering just use my contacts and maybe be a bit more attentive when I view.

advice_please_2

What's a good budget for full survey and what should it include?

CarefulBill

advice_please wrote: »

What's a good budget for full survey and what should it include?

Seems to go with the house value, other than a couple of ridiculously expensive quotes it seems £300 for a £120k property gets you a full survey including valuation and quotes for any works necessary.

Vendor not budging re: regularisation. Seems he's saving all his money to do up his new house, seemingly he doesn't get that he won't be able to buy his new house if we pull out?

kingstreet

A surveyor is not a specialist, he's a GP.

If a surveyor finds something he feels requires further investigation, he'll recommend the appropriate specialist be brought in. That applies whether you're having a basic mortgage report and valuation, a homebuyer's report or a chartered building survey.

So, regardless of how much money you spend, you can still be asked to get timber & damp reports, roofing report, electrical inspection, gas appliance and boiler check, wall-ties tested and so on...

In the case of the chimney breast in question, an inspection by a structural engineer may well end up cheaper than a surveyor who could, after all, still recommend a structural engineer's report on top anyway.

http://www.findanengineer.com/

And can we please stop using the word survey in connection with a mortgage valuation. :eek:

CarefulBill

We had a full survey done as the mortgage valuation report was less than thorough, and this picked up problems elsewhere in addition to the chimney stack, so
"an inspection by a structural engineer may well end up cheaper than a surveyor who could, after all, still recommend a structural engineer's report on top anyway"
has come to pass, but we only have to pay one structural engineer, one builder and one building control fee rather than several, plus the peace of mind of knowing these things were caught in good time.

Thanks for all the advice everybody, buying a house for the first time is daunting and this thread made it less so.