Building Survey or Only inspections

Mangesh_2

Hi there,
I am looking for an bit of advice.

I have got the Valuation survey done by the lender @ 400 GBP.
I thought that would be sufficient to gauge the condition of the house until i read some of the eye opening posts in this forum for the last 4-5 hours literally.....

The house looks good and well maintained but is built around 1930s. Given that i have already paid for the valuation, should i arrange to carry out separate building survey or arrange for strings of inspections such as Electrics, Gas, Plumbing, Roofer+Builder which i gather would be recommended in the BS report.
Any idea whether the lender will charge me a full BS charge or only the difference between VS and BS.?

Any advice/thought will be appreciated.

Regards
Mangesh

ono_no_komachi

Sorry Mangesh, it's not good news. Our building surveyor was going to charge us £995 + VAT till we explained we had already paid the valuation fee to the lender, so we agreed that we would give him a cheque for the difference only, as the valuation would be part of the survey.

I think this means that if you now contract someone to do a full building survey, they will charge you the full amount. However, this does not stop you shopping around local chartered surveyors and seeing what services they will provide for what charge.

The difference between having a surveyor do the job for you and getting the tradespeople in, is that unless you have local contacts with reliable tradespeople, you could risk some of them having a vested interest in 'finding' problems, i.e. they will anticipate you being their customer after you buy the house (though I suppose this also means they won't want to make things sound too bad in case you don't buy the house and therefore don't employ them!)

Do you have any friends who are knowledgeable about property and might be able to have a look at the house and pinpoint any areas where specific inspections would be beneficial? Common ones recommended by surveys, are, I think (forgive me, this is just off the top of my head):

Electrical
Timber & damp
Structural engineer (particularly if cracks in render, etc.)
Drainage

Of course these are all very specific, where a surveyor will be much more comprehensive, checking things like: are the bathroom & kitchen ventilated properly, do all doors & windows open and close fully, are there any plants to the exterior of the property that could affect the fabric of the building, etc etc etc.

I am quite a fan of the full building survey, but I appreciate it would be an expensive option for you now. If it were me I would phone around a few surveyors and compare charges.

Sorry, this probably does not help you much!