Survey unnecessary? Whats its purpose?

Jaycee_Dove

We paid £450 for a homebuyers and it was very well worth the money.


For a start it valued the house and explained why in detail. This was less than the price the vendor wanted.


Secondly, it advised all sorts of things we might want to look into in more detail or ask our solicitor to check. This brought up a couple of issues that we had to get resolved but would not have known about otherwise.


Thirdly, the surveyor was very willing to let us chat over his findings in more detail which proved very helpful when the vendors denied knocking down an internal wall that he could explain why this had occurred.


We sent a copy of the survey to the vendors at their request. All issues resolved and a price reduction closer to the valuation the surveyor had recommended.


So it was well worth £450 IMO.

Ivana_Tinkle

Depends on how knowledgable you are and your financial situation. If you're pretty confident you know what you're doing, and you have enough savings that, if you did miss something major, it wouldn't ruin you, skipping the survey might be a gamble worth taking. It's scary when you hear of FTBs just having the basic valuation because money is tight. IMO if you can't afford a survey then you certainly couldn't afford to put right anything you miss.

Elsewhere

The only time we've bothered with a professional survey was when we bought a house far from our home turf in an area where there had been a lot of coal mining, right up until fairly recently.

There were two issues - possible subsidence obviously, but also we discovered many of the houses built about 50 years ago had foundations composed of a substance which seemed fine - and still is, if it doesn't get damp. If it does it swells, heaves the floors up and pushes the walls out sideways!

So I'd say don't bother with a survey if you know the area and issues that affect local houses, otherwise be a lot more cautious and take advantage of expert knowledge.