Found ideal property but stinks of damp What to do??

Paphos_Gooner

FTB's found a nice 2 bed 1st floor maisonette with fairly large rooms, certainly much bigger than the equivalent properties in our price range (180).

The place has been sitting empty for a month and is in a fairly bad cosmetic state - nasty carpet, horrible kitchen/ bathroom, dated wallpaper etc.

This doesn't bother us.

But on opening the door and going up the steps a STRONG smell of muskiness goes straight up our nostrils. There's no *obvious* signs of damp, apart from that smell of course, aside from some black mould on PVC window frames.

Now the place, at least walking up to the landing really does reek.

Do we walk away or is it worth getting one of those damp specialists in to see what's what?

It looks like previous owners didn't really care much for it - there's still rice on the cooker! And the electrical faceplates look positively ancient.

According to one of those house price check searches the property was sold for 132,000 less than a year ago, they've done nothing to it and are asking for 179,950. A possiblity that the current owner's found something seriously wrong? I don't know

lynzpower

Id ge a damp specialist to take a look. is it an ex-local authority maisionette? To my mind, in general these are cracking buys with immense amount of space. If you like the place and theres a TRUE damp issue, then get someone to report on it.

Certainly, you can go to your buyer and show them what you have found price wise and if the damp report comes back with X work, you can negotiate from there.

It may be that the place is just empty and stinks. Most vacants have that musty smell usually as people havent been there and airing it, and dont forget theres moisture in the air and if the carpets are old then...

the house I live in ( rented) at the mo has massive condensation issues, and lots of black mould. I think here IS signs of damp, as the window frames are a bit warped and sometimes feel wet to the touch when its not been raining. Try this ( although wont work on UPVC windows ) although in saying that we certainly dont have our windows open as much as we should.

jaype

I would be very careful with this - our rented property is also very prone to condensation damp. I can get over 3 litres of water out of the iar daily in winter with the dehumidifier (eek!). Landlord put in double glazing but it made it worse (even though it has air vents). He also paid out £7000 to get the outside re-rendered but it did nothing. Had a surveyor in the other day and he told us the walls were just damp inside. Didn't elaborate why. Next thing we know, yesterday landlord said the place is soon going on the market (had been planning to re-rent it before hand). Damp properties are expensive to heat (or dry out using said dehumidifier). Personally, I now have a nose that is super-trained for damp and would run a mile. However, you may be more brave...

Doozergirl

You say 1st floor, is it top floor too? If it is, then I'd get a roofer in to look at the roof. For obvious reasons it's less likely that a mid-floored property would suffer from damp so I don't know whether a damp specialist would be appropriate?

Like Lynzpower says, vacant properties often do have a damp smell and if there's a lot of old stuff then it does have it's own special smell. Every time I've come across a property that really, properly honked there was evidence of the damp too.

Shame you can't package up the smell for us! (or maybe not!)