Subsidence - Help!

hollydays

We were looking at buying a house,then we heard on the grapevine one prospective buyer had found subsidence in a survey. That explained a number of things,why they had put no investment into the house in about 20 years,why it had been on the market for so long,and they kept changing estate agents.Last thing we heard the new estate agent had put the price up by £50,000 and it was showing sold again,I am guessing they hoped by the time the latest buyer found the subsidence,appearing to drastically reduce the price would seal the sale.

charley1965

It is very frustrating, but I think by walking away from this we did the best thing (and you too). The house we were buying is now SSTC, so will be interesting to see if it completes this time. We've found somewhere else now which I actually prefer and my buyer is happy to wait for us, so relief all round.

bashful

We bought our bungalow in November 2005. It had a subsidence claim which only came out in the searches. Our solicitor was very good and arranged with the surveyors that their Certificate of Structural Adequacy be transferred into our names and he also made sure that their insurance company, AXA, would allow us to continue the policy under the same terms as the previous owners.

The story was that an underground drainage pipe had been damaged when a porch had been built and had caused the new porch to crack away from the main structure. A nice new porch was built and the pipe re-routed. By a strange coincidence, I spoke to the builder of the porch who told me that he was asked to do the porch on the cheap and the foundations were probably not adequate in the first place. He wasn’t at all convinced about the leaky pipe.

We are not looking to sell but I hadn’t though to ask if we would be able to transfer the CSA and policy to a new buyer.

The reason I am looking at this thread is because my AXA policy is up for renewal and I wondered if there was any other companies that would take on a building that had been subject to a subsidence claim. However, I think I will pay the £118 renewal premium without question after reading this thread – and think myself lucky!

For information, the subsidence excess is £500.

Jonbvn

I hope you can find the answer in these links.....

http://www.subsidencebureau.com/
http://www.subsidencebureau.com/previous_subsidence.htm

homeb

slightly different problem, but can anyone advise. Bought house a year ago and got structural survey done, report went well and showed house had subsidence years ago and got underpinned, no foreseable problems expected and nothing should go wrong. We just carried our insurance from old house and not too sure if they were aware of previous prob but now that i am trying to get or change insurance im having real probs even thought i forwarded the report to a broker. Live in a old mining village so cant be that big an issue surely! Anyone advise me please.