Who decided NOT to get a survey on a purchase?

Fire_Fox

ijrwe wrote: »

I need to weigh it up more carefully than that, by this stage. Any surveyors' website repeats that claim but it's not meaningful in itself. It's like saying that for a couple of hundred quid for a chest x-ray you might end up saving your life. But most people don't need a chest x-ray, most of the time, and it's a superfluous cost and trouble for no benefit. No doubt if there was a private chest x-ray industry they'd be going on about how dangerous lung cancer is and how everyone should get one done every few months just to be on the safe side.

Poor analogy because the level of survey you choose should be targeted to the type of property, what they look for is quite wide reaching but they also consider the type of property and characteristics of the area. Surveyors don't look for one 'disease' but in any old 'patient'.

Choosing the right survey is equivalent to a consultant testing for all cancers, pulmonary and cardiovascular conditions in those known to be at risk - smokers, the obese, senior and sedentary etc. With a period property something almost always comes up that means you can renegotiate the price and the survey pays for itself. With a new build with an NHBC guarantee (for all its faults) you'd invariably be wiser spending your money on a professional snagger.

It's not either/ or with builders and surveyors, nothing stopping you have more than one trusted professional look over your prospective purchase.

Thrugelmir

ijrwe wrote: »

Right now I don't have the feeling that a surveyor would do a better job than me and a builder with a pocket full of 20's. Has anyone gone down that route? Or even just inspected it themselves, with limited experience?

Appearances can be deceptive to the eye. That's my experience. So a full survey saved us a fortune. Recovered cost of survey as well. Due to fact property was misrepresented and wholly inaccurately valued.

BASFORDLAD

I bought a house in Mansfield in 2000 for 24k and didnt bother with a survey, cash purchase outright!

Sold it 3 years later for 77k , spent 6k doing it up!

jayship

A family member is in the process of buying a house and just had a building survey done for £450 plus vat in London. Based on the report we managed to re-negotiate the price down by 2K as it needed some roof and damp issues sorted which will probably cost a similar amount.

phoebe1989seb

We haven't always bothered to have a survey done and didn't on our current property - a 200+ year old non-listed house bought last year for cash. We do have experience of several in-depth restoration projects on period properties and took another experienced (builder) friend to have a look, although we intended to do majority of the work ourselves as usual

The vendor of our current house had replaced many of the supporting timbers (he was a joiner by trade) and had a new thatch and oil central heating installed just prior to selling, although otherwise the house was in a bit of a state - very sketchy electrics, walls stripped back to bare stone throughout, bare concrete floors - as well as needing new kitchen and bathrooms. It also had an extremely dilapidated (close to collapse) extension that we wished to replace. I should also add that it had been empty for some months.

Because the house was pretty much stripped back to its bones, any pitfalls were quite apparent and we felt confident that as alot of the structural stuff had been done, there was unlikely to be any hidden *nasties* to be discovered at a later date......nonetheless we negotiated the price down based upon visible damp issues amongst other things.

No doubt had we had a survey we may have been able to get it for a bit less, but like I say in its then state there was very little that wasn't visible so I doubt any surveyor would found anything we weren't already aware of......

ijrwe

Seems like a gamble, forwarding some cash in the "hope" that you'll earn grounds to pay the vendor less. I'll have to think carefully about it - I'm really unmoved by the usual vague pro-survey. Certainly a home-buyer's report is out of the question, I've read some and they contain nothing that a sensible lay person couldn't see for themselves and are completely non-committal about any problems.

I haven't read any Building Surveys and I imagine their format is more free and particular to each surveyor, right? So quite hard to judge who will give me a good report or not.

Basically, if I get a survey I'm not not going to be at all reassured that the house is OK. I won't feel any more (or less) confident in its integrity and value. I doubt that feeling will change considering the weight of criticisms against typical surveys that I encounter.

Fire_Fox

ijrwe wrote: »

Seems like a gamble, forwarding some cash in the "hope" that you'll earn grounds to pay the vendor less. I'll have to think carefully about it - I'm really unmoved by the usual vague pro-survey. Certainly a home-buyer's report is out of the question, I've read some and they contain nothing that a sensible lay person couldn't see for themselves and are completely non-committal about any problems.

I haven't read any Building Surveys and I imagine their format is more free and particular to each surveyor, right? So quite hard to judge who will give me a good report or not.

Basically, if I get a survey I'm not not going to be at all reassured that the house is OK. I won't feel any more (or less) confident in its integrity and value. I doubt that feeling will change considering the weight of criticisms against typical surveys that I encounter.

You are missing the point. The survey paying for itself is a bonus, the point is to avoid losing thousands or tens of thousands on a complete turkey. Reassurance is irrelevant, the house will be sound or a moneypit regardless of how you feel. :rotfl:

Check RICS for information about the different levels of survey. Consider a personal recommendation if you appoint a surveyor - neighbour, colleague, friend, relative. You might also ask to see a sample of their work.

Yorkie1

ijrwe wrote: »

I'll be paying £235 for my lender to conduct a valuation, either way. For £415 total they would do a HB survey as well but I thought I'd rather get them separately if I was going to, to keep the results away from the lender. You can get independent HB or Building surveys for about £250 anyway.

The lender will not see a copy of the more detailed report done for you.

Anything significant will be passed on to your lender under the valuation 'survey' so you're not going to keep the major stuff from them in any event.

From all of your posts on this thread, you clearly don't want to get yourself a survey anyway.

ijrwe

Fire_Fox wrote: »

You are missing the point. The survey paying for itself is a bonus, the point is to avoid losing thousands or tens of thousands on a complete turkey.

In which case the survey would be paying for itself, right? It's still a gamble - for a fixed outlay there's a certain chance that there'll be a certain extent of problems, knowing about which will save you a certain amount of money. And it's of course not at all a sure-thing that the survey will pick up on much, from what I've read - so factor than in as well. No doubt there have been cases where a buyer's interpretation of the surveyor's platitudes gave them the confidence to negotiate a lower price, or to walk away from the sale. What the average "expected value" of a survey is, it's impossible to quantify, but I expect it's negative. As in, if you bought lots of houses and got no surveys you'd save more money than if you always got surveys.

Reassurance is irrelevant, the house will be sound or a moneypit regardless of how you feel. :rotfl:

And regardless of whether I get a survey or not, yes?

Check RICS for information about the different levels of survey. Consider a personal recommendation if you appoint a surveyor - neighbour, colleague, friend, relative. You might also ask to see a sample of their work.

I have no friends (surprised?) and family haven't bought a property for decades. I could ask for some samples, though, good idea.

Bluemeanie_2

I didn't have a full survey, only the most basic one to get the mortgage. My reasons were I live on a row of four town houses, second one in. Ex council house the other 3 are still owned by the council. I though if there something wrong it may have shown and they are relatively new. 1979 built. No extension or structural work or evidence of. Grew up local and went to school with several kids from the estate. Never saw any work being done/issues.