Some mining advice?

Fay

Hi everyone, I am new to this forum but have been reading quite a few of the threads and I was hoping I might be able to get some advice.

To try and cut a long story short we think there could be a mine at the property we are purchasing. We haven't yet seen the report as the solicitor is being rather clingy with it...saying they need to check something with the lender first, which was my first clue that something was wrong.

But now, our friend has been working with the guy who lives opposite our new house and yesterday the guy said to him 'oh do your friends know about the mine then?' Luke said no, and the guy said that about 20 years ago the road at the end of our drive collapsed...pretty badly apparently. He said that it was a very large disused mine!

Now a couple of things spring to mind really...1) if its at the end of the drive & hopefully on the public highway, would if affect our mortgage? We are with Natwest and I know they are very very strict on mines 2) Would it be worth considering still buying it if the mortgage company said ok...i.e. how hard do you think it would be to sell on at a later date 3) What would happen if we went ahead and purchased it and the mine 'went' again, would we be liable? I'm not even sure if you could get insurance on it and 4) If there is a mine at the end of the drive but the mortgage people say ok and we think its cool, would it be worth trying to get the price down on the house or not?

Feeling pretty weird about all this at the moment as I have had a bad feeling something would go wrong since we put the offer in! Also if there is a mine there, perhaps thats what the solicitor wanted to check with the lender? Who knows.

Any advice would be appreciated!

trafalgar_2

You'd be surprised how many buildings have mine workings under them,I would worry that there has already been a collapse and maybe that is what they are waiting on ..........a report to see what remedies were put in place after the last problem......has it been filled in for instance.

I think all you can do is wait for the report back from your solicitor,it's hard to make other decisions untill you know the extent of the problem.

Spendless

Hi

I live in an ex-mining town.

Today as i drove through one of the old mining villages I noticed that there is a new housing estate built on what was formerly the mine.
These people must have got mortgages ok.

I'd guess the query is to do with the road once collapsing and making sure it's not likely to happen again.

Fay

Thanks for the advice...the report arrived this morning. Whilst it says we are within a zone of influence for surface mining, no actual mines are shown on the map at all. Which leads me to believe that a) there are none or b) there is a mistake on the map, as there isn't even a key for what a mine would be represented as. However, the written part of the report makes no mention of mines either so I suspect that a is correct.

Again, there is nothing mentioned about the road, so we can only assume that everything is fine

rchddap1

Before buying the house I would research insurance and make sure that cover would be available if your house suffered problems due to the nearby mine. Afterall, its far better to be safe than sorry.

Fay

I can't see insurance being a problem, we have it on this house and there are 2 mines nearby. With the new one, we know we are in a mining zone, but the town where we live (Willenhall, Walsall) is an old mining town so I guess that everyone would be within a zone. As there are no identified mines then I can't see insurance being a problem.

Just got to hope everything else goes ok now...our mortgage people are really dragging their feet despite us putting a pretty large deposit down (well large to us!)

bylromarha

Our house is on top of an old mine. the solicitor made sure that the mine was fully supported, with evidence of proof of the work,before signing off the documentation to let us buy the house.

If the repair work has been suitably done, your solicitor shouldn't have a problem getting hold of this information...from the council I guess?

BTW, house prices on our estate have risen over and about the average for the town, so a mine underneath the property doesn't affect resale values.

Thorpeedo

Our mining survey, came back with 2 mines ...ne across and up the road in the garden. and another under the next nut one pair of semi's to ours. the coal board provided details of the materials used to cap for the one in the garden, but for the one under the house they just had reassurance that it was ok as they couldn't find the details of what was used. Heavy rains make me nervous, though this is more the dread of coming home to a big hole, i'm ok once i'm actually in the house.


I'd have run a mile personally, and if the mine near you has collapsed previously I'd get a great big bargepole.

wisewoman

hi Fay
My hubby(geology background) suggests approaching your nearest university with Earthsciences/geography/geology to ask if they'll do a geophysics ground survey for you...like the "zimmer" frame Tony Robinson uses on Time Team, Channel4. Maybe £200. Money well spent on scientific data. Good luck.

Fay

Hi guys
Sorry I haven't posted for a while! I have spoken to the solicitor about this and she says that there are definitely no mines in the area-they would have been on the map. We now suspect that the road 'collapsing' was probably an exageration and could not have been a mine because it would have been on the map and so would the information regarding the treatment of it at the time.

wisewoman-thats actually quite a good idea if people need to do it-I'm actually a PhD student at a uni too. However, it did say in our survey that if we needed a something report for mines (not the normal mining report) they can be arranged for £55, but there are no mines so we didn't need it.

Our sale/purchase are going very slowly due to using Natwest for our mortgage again...but I certainly won't use them next time. They have been absolutely useless and only after calling them today have I found out they still haven't sent my mortgage offer out...this is only about 8 weeks in now!