What's the norm? - mortgages and Japanese Knotweed

DaftyDuck

One quick sweep with a brushcutter or lawnmower, and most JK would "vanish" just before the surveyor arrived. As Dave says, how long could they spend looking for it?

So, for six months of the year, it'd be naturally undetectable, and the rest of the time it'd be possible to hide it with a quick tidy-up.

Drive-by surveys are great for valuation from a mortgage lender, but anyone using their own cash would do better to study the property themselves, get in a surveyor for themselves as well, and look at the surrounding houses. I know.... most don't!

Surveys are already priced according to the purchase price, so a small house in an acre, a larger one in a small plot, the surveyor will be able to balance the time accordingly.

JK is not the problem many make out. It is treatable, controllable. That's not to say it isn't a problem, but there are many such pitfalls, and JK is just one highlighted by the Daily Maul, and one that seems to have seized this forum somewhat.

moneyistooshorttomention

Looking at the surrounding houses is a very valid point.

I was astonished recently to find that a house next to a JK offender had been sold - and even more astonished when I saw the shocked look on the face of the new home-owner when I asked them if they knew their next door neighbour had JK. They could have easily seen it for themselves if they had checked out the neighbour.

Another way that new owner could have checked was to check the sale history of the house they had just bought and they would have seen that it had gone up for sale for probably round about what would be expected for its condition to start with, then lost a sale (obviously someone had a decent surveyor) and then got re-marketed for a LOT less. That should have told them that the house was on for a suspiciously low price - courtesy of the JK offender next door.

In those parts of Britain where it is a problem it's easy to get to know where it might be lurking. Out of the 2 villages near me that I know have a bad problem with it - one has had a house go up for sale recently that is in move-into condition (which is quite rare hereabouts of itself) at a suspiciously low price. I don't even have to view the house to know JK will be there in its garden and/or the neighbours garden - because I've been "watching it" (as I still "watch" all the houses for sale round here) and its been up for sale for a suspiciously long time at a suspiciously low price AND it's got loads of JK just down the riverbank from it. Put like that = why would anyone even waste their time viewing it?

moneyistooshorttomention

Here y'are Dafty - just to prove a wide range of newspapers have articles about it.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/sep/08/japanese-knotweed-house-sale

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/japanese-knotweed-government-to-issue-asbos-to-those-who-fail-to-deal-with-invasive-plant-species-9870356.html

Rambosmum

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

That puzzled me - ie as to why anyone would buy a house with JK in the garden.

Daylight dawned when I realised that this must be the house you bought when you were unaware how to identify JK and your surveyor somehow didn't seem to spot it when he did his survey.

As I've got two friends who moved to my current area at about the same time as myself and both have subsequently found JK in their gardens that their vendor carefully hadn't mentioned then there is an obvious "training need" for some surveyors to learn how to identify JK.

I would say that this could be dealt with by the mortgage companies having a list of approved surveyors and refusing to accept surveys from ones not on their list. It would be easy for a surveyor to get on that list - ie by just producing evidence they had been on a JK awareness course. Cue for no more surveyors apparently being unable to identify it - as, obviously, mortgage companies could "build into" the procedure the ability to have some sort of comeback against surveyors who hadn't done that course well enough and were still, apparently, unable to identify JK.

I see a business opportunity for JK eradication firms to run one-day JK awareness courses and charge, say, £200 for it. I'm surprised they aren't already doing it...

Indeed it was that house. It was the fact that our own surveyor AND the bank surveyor both missed it. Even though it had been cut down it was clearly visible, if you know what you are looking at.

We did not know what we were looking at.

Now I know how easy it to remove (specialist company and £400) I wouldn't let it put me off buying a house I really liked in the future. The way people talk about it it's like it's never going to go away. We have a 10year guarantee from the company following the last spray, so if comes back in the next 7 years we are covered for free.

moneyistooshorttomention

One of the things that puzzles me about JK is how anyone can grow food organically in a garden after it has been treated with the chemicals used to deal with JK - ie never possible to just grow food in the normal fashion of putting seeds/plants direct into the soil.

I suspect there isn't an answer to that one - other than the very expensive and distinct hassle method of covering the treated soil up completely and putting huge raised beds onto it and paying to fill them with compost and then replacing that compost at intervals?

Waywardmike

JK is not the problem many make out. It is treatable, controllable. That's not to say it isn't a problem, but there are many such pitfalls, and JK is just one highlighted by the Daily Maul, and one that seems to have seized this forum somewhat.

This... exactly this...

We bought our house nearly two years ago in the autumn, and to be honest I'd never heard of Japanese Knotweed before moving here... All goes well, we move in and start enjoying our new house (1950's so not new new) and gigantic garden when my father in law points out a fairly attractive shrub in the garden and tells me that it's JK and we need to get it sorted as it can be damaging (DM reader). It's was a fairly large shrub so not easily missed by the surveyer, but it was.

Have a quick browse on the internet and my heart sinks... that's it, the house is going to fall down around our ears... thankfully I came across some sites that spoke sense, killed it with herbicide, left it for 3 months dug out everything I could, and burnt it. Last year we had a couple of tiny new shoots so injected them with herbicide and repeated the process. this year there has been no sign of it at all, but I'll keep checking... It's just a case of keeping on top of it, just like the non doomsaying sites claimed would be the case.

Anyway, we have a fairly large development going on behind us (63 houses) on our boundary, and after they'd cleared the old buildings last summer I took a walk around and not surprisingly there was masses of the stuff, some of it 8 foot high. I'm probably an expert in spotting it now. they killed it, cleared it and now less than a year later there are new houses built there with occupiers in enjoying their new homes..

Don't believe everything you read, it's not the end of the world, and it is manageable. I read some where that Buddleia is just as bad, but everyone seems to be in a rush to plant that in their gardens...

Rambosmum

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

One of the things that puzzles me about JK is how anyone can grow food organically in a garden after it has been treated with the chemicals used to deal with JK - ie never possible to just grow food in the normal fashion of putting seeds/plants direct into the soil.

I suspect there isn't an answer to that one - other than the very expensive and distinct hassle method of covering the treated soil up completely and putting huge raised beds onto it and paying to fill them with compost and then replacing that compost at intervals?

I don't know about organic but I managed to get some (not all) of the daffodils and tulips I planted this year to grow, and next doors grass grew back about 6 months after they sprayed. Some of the flowers came out all deformed looking, which shows there is still pesticide in the soil. I probably wouldn't eat veg in there. But I do in the small back garden which wasn't sprayed.

Davesnave

Waywardmike wrote: »

Don't believe everything you read, it's not the end of the world, and it is manageable. I read some where that Buddleia is just as bad, but everyone seems to be in a rush to plant that in their gardens...

Buddleia isn't in the same league for persistence, but it does soon colonise waste areas and old buildings that aren't maintained, so it's a convenient scapegoat.


Insects love it, and some people even realise there's more than one kind.


Be careful you don't de-bunk one myth, only to replace it with another!

Kat88

I agree with those above about it not being the end of the world and if you know what you're doing it can be treated given time. I think the issue though is that when purchasing a property some lenders can still be funny about it...I went to the old site to be nosey and sure enough it was wedged between the fence and the garage of another property, not easy to spot and so I do wonder how the valuation surveyor picked it up...

moneyistooshorttomention

Kat88 wrote: »

I agree with those above about it not being the end of the world and if you know what you're doing it can be treated given time. I think the issue though is that when purchasing a property some lenders can still be funny about it...I went to the old site to be nosey and sure enough it was wedged between the fence and the garage of another property, not easy to spot and so I do wonder how the valuation surveyor picked it up...

Maybe a passing "local" started chatting to him - to warn him that there used to be JK on that site (ie that he needed to check whether it had been dealt with properly). I will certainly tell anyone I spot viewing the sites I know about that they need to check it out carefully (I have a conscience to live with if I didn't....).

Where I've come from, I wouldn't even think to look in a garden of a house I was viewing for it - but, in this area I'm now in, I wouldn't dream of not checking/having my surveyor checking the ground (and neighbours ground) with a fine toothcomb. You soon learn of the need to check in some areas...