Want to look in the attic - Are we strange for wanting to do this...??

Wobblydeb

nightsky224 wrote: »

I wanted to know
a) if you are buying a hopuse/have bought do you look in the attic
b) If you are selling the house would you be happy for potential buyers to look in the roof?

a) No, I've never looked in the attic, although only bought one house that had one. I might do now though, because I'm considering something that needs extension.
b) People would have had to bring their own appropriate ladder to my old house. My ladder didn't fit through because it had splayed feet and the hatch space was teeny tiny!

cattie

I've personally never thought of looking in the attic myself. As far as I'm concerned, any loft I've owned has always been for storage purposes only.
Besides, not everybody has a loft ladder for access & I'd be far too wary of attempting to climb anything other than a nice sturdy loft ladder for a peek.

When I sold my last house however, I did encourage viewers to have a look in the loft as it was really quite large & fully boarded out & also had electricity. I thought it good for viewers to see the potential for future extension purposes. Plus it had a nice sturdy ladder!

vuvuzela

It doesn't seem strange at all to me and agents citing insurance / H&S are just pathetic. Take a torch though

Ulfar

Always look in the loft.

It is amazing how many times you will spot something that will put you off buying.

Itsmine

When selling I asked my viewers if they wanted to look in the loft as it was a huge space that I had already cleared of junk and a good prospect for loft conversion

phoebe1989seb

We have bought five and sold four houses - the only one we ever looked in the attic of was the one we bought last year......which is a 300+ year old house with original attic bedrooms, so we had to go up there. We even bought a house without entering the whole of the downstairs first once, lol, so the attic was the least of our worries!

No-one buying any house we've sold has ever asked to go into the attic.....

In fact even the surveys carried out by our buyers have rarely resulted in the surveyor doing more than a cursory inspection......when we sold a house in 1997 (4 bed detached Victorian with large fully boarded attic space) and the buyer had a full building survey, the surveyor only stuck his head up through the hatch

More recently when we sold last year, the surveyor (an e-surv guy ) didn't even bother to go up at all (for a homebuyer's report) yet said there was a woodworm infestation in the attic.....based upon looking in a couple of old eaves cupboards There wasn't actually any woodworm at all........although we did have bats.....which he failed to discover :eek:

puddy

out of interest, if buyers are only expected to do a head and shoulders inspection for reasons of potential damage, then what is expected for the surveyor. i would expect a surveyer to have a good look round the loft properly to check for woodworm or damp etc

phoebe1989seb

puddy wrote: »

out of interest, if buyers are only expected to do a head and shoulders inspection for reasons of potential damage, then what is expected for the surveyor. i would expect a surveyer to have a good look round the loft properly to check for woodworm or damp etc

You'd certainly like to think so, wouldn't you....but in my experience (as above post), they don't always :eek:

clw1

When we bought our house I didn't go in the loft but hubby shoved his head in. We obv aren't surveyors but he was looking for neat work and to see what sort of storage space there was.

Personally I wouldn't be offended if on a first viewing the estate agent said no but I would expect him to check with the owners and let me see in the loft on a second viewing.

nightsky224

Thanks for all your thoughts everyone. It's really interesting that some people hadn't even considered it yet others would insist. I think that we will stick to our guns and as a bare minimum do a head and shoulders inspection.
We have pulled out on a property when the surveyor found costly issues, I want to do all I can to make sure that that doesn't happen again. Would be annoyed to pay hundreds for a surveyor to say there is major damp in the attic/bats/ hole in the roof when we could of gone up there and found out for nothing!