To Survey or not to survey??????

Bart1

Ok I'm gonna go against the flow here. I'm buying soon (cash) and doubt if I will have any sort of survey done aside from getting my BIL to check it out for me. He knows enough that he will be able to confirm that the place is not about to fall down.

Paying someone a monkey for 20 mins work just ain't going to happen.

Will prob do my own conveyancing too

goodwithsaving

A couple of months ago, I'd have agreed with you. Buying is expensive and it's good to save money BUT despite being confident in the house, we got a survey done. Nothing even came up on the survey (all '1s') but I'm still glad to have had it looked at properly.
For the reassurance, it's money well spent. By all means cut corners, but please do not do it on the survey!

Hoploz

Personally I wouldn't bother.

I have bought various properties over the years. The two occasions I've had surveys done they have told me nothing I couldn't see for myself and didn't know alreaady, and all the !!!-covering language they use just scares the uninitiated into thinking there's loads of scary stuff that COULD happen - but probably won't.

tillycat123

Having just bought a 6 -7 year old house, like you I was unsure as it looked like a lick of paint was all it needed.

He actually threw up a list of things I had not noticed but did also miss stuff I too had not noticed, like the bathroom sink cracked and the bathroom taps badly super glued into place, they had leaked in the past and some bright spark has covered the base with superglue. Grrr.

However, I shared the list with the vendor of stuff needing doing his report threw up as it looked quite scary and bingo, renegotiated £10k less than I was originally paying.

So I would say have it done.

fishpond

Have a survey done!

pinkshoes

I bought a 28 year old house and did NOT have survey done.

Why? Because having seen the person who came round to do the survey on our house for our buyer, and the T&Cs, I decided it was a waste of money. They don't move furniture, lift carpets etc... so they had so many "get out" clauses in their T&Cs, I couldn't work out what I was actually paying for.

Instead we downloaded a free survey check list online, and checked exactly what the surveyor would have checked, and took someone with a bit of knowledge.

So far no surprises...

Bill23h

Has any major structural work ever been done to the house? Extensions, conservatory, garage conversion, changing layout internally? If so, definitely get a proper survey. Otherwise, I'd probably trust a homebuyers survey if its only 20 years old.

Hoploz

To follow up after my original post ... Pink shoes has just reminded me of the Homebuyers survey my buyer had done on my house last year. He was there for 15 minutes at most (quite a big 4 bed detached house, built in 1958) didn't go in the loft, just told me what a nice place it was and what good clean condition. He did photograph the boiler but that's about as technical as he got. Not sure how much a Homebuyers survey is but I think probably high hundreds ... No wonder they pad it all out with butt covering cut-and-paste sentences!

Vok_2

Thank you all for your comments, some of them made me laugh (pink shoes), lol.

The property hasnt had any work done (no extention, loft converstion, etc). The man has lived in the house for 17years.

I got a quote of £425 for a homebuyers survey. But like I said earlier am not worried about spending the money to do it as I have already budgeted for it.

Buying your first home is by far one of the most stressful time of ones life.

Thanks all.

laura_louise

I am buying a 15 year old house and had a homebuyers report done. I feel like it was a lot of money for what you get, but i don't regret doing it, i have peace of mind as well as having a checklist of (minor) issues for me to work through when i move in. In my case, the only things flagged up were loft insulation being too thin, a loose tile on the roof, a misted pane of double glazing, and inadequate roof ventilation (add air brick to fix). Being a FTB this really helped as i'm not clued up on these things! But definitely very pricey... i wonder how much they earn in a year?! Seems like a nice job!