Help!...underpinned house advice

ManuelG

Lord_Baltimore wrote: »

That's the crucial point. Non-professionals will form their own view and this will impact on resale prospects. This may be an ill-informed view but imo it will have a dampening effect nonetheless.

Can only agree with this. I bought an underpinned house as it came down to a price I could afford, and I intend to stay. It made me pause though, made me ensure the surveyor checked it out properly... probably explains why the seller had it on market for a fair while.

Surveyor told me it was probably more solid than the houses opposite that hadn't been underpinned (it was preventative too) but that still isn't much help if people don't listen to his and others' advice whenever I do come to sell.

mrhappyman

Thanks for your replies everyone!

I think as the house as £425k is on the 'higher end' for our city, it's probably giving me more food for thought as I imagine the pool of buyers anyway is smaller in this area.

One of the posters made a good point about houses in the range £400-500k being in the tricky price bracket which I do understand

mrhappyman

So an update on the house...

The local council's building control department just emailed me today to advise that they do not have any record of any building regulation application for this house i.e. for the underpinnning work. As far as I am aware, even in 1985, it would have normally required building regulation consent as underpinning was a structural alteration?

I wonder if this changes anyone's opinions on here, and if they felt the paper trail was materially incomplete?

blackshirtuk

We bought a house in 2004 asking price £425k , agreed £410K solicitor found out that it had been underpinned due to drain subsidence 10 years prior.

After research at the time discovered insurance was limited to current insurer,(different now) so renegotiated down to £407K to account for possible inflated insurance. No further sign of any movement since and insurance has not increased drastically.

As others have said we took the view that there was a problem and now it is sorted, we could have bought another house and had the exact same thing happen.

It was our forever house and still is, i don't think we will be moving any time soon.

LateStarter

mrhappyman wrote: »

So an update on the house...

The local council's building control department just emailed me today to advise that they do not have any record of any building regulation application for this house i.e. for the underpinnning work. As far as I am aware, even in 1985, it would have normally required building regulation consent as underpinning was a structural alteration?

I wonder if this changes anyone's opinions on here, and if they felt the paper trail was materially incomplete?

30 years after and there's been no further movement? if the house was sound and insurable, lack of paperwork wouldn't bother me.

dacouch

Doozergirl wrote: »

This is 30 years ago.

What people fail to understand is that houses that have been underpinned are far less likely to ever move than a similar house that hasn't been underpinned.

Reworded and asked if you would prefer a house with foundations or without, what would you choose?

The insurers don't see this as a particular risk anymore, given that they are providing cover at an average sort of price.

It may be personal preference as to whether they buy, but people don't seem to understand how and why houses move.

As a professional in the industry, I wouldn't have a problem with 30 year old underpinning at all. We've underpinned houses and never had a problem selling either. All houses move, most old houses lack any decent foundation, all houses need maintenance.

House that are underpinned all around are relatively low risk, a property that's only partially underpinned has one part of the house stronger than the other. This can cause further subsidence.

It's not that bigger risk but I've seen plenty of cases of partially underpinned properties suffering further subsidence.

Bearing in mind the high premiums underpinned properties traditionally attract. If they were such a good risk Insurers would be falling over themselves to offer prices marginally lower than the market rate to grab the business.

I've seen main stream companies think they can make money on underpinned properties and enter the market. They've all quietly exited the market when they get their fingers burnt when the £50k+ claims start coming in.

Current market entrents (Last time I looked are L&G & Axa), past experience has taught me they won't be in this part of the market more than a few years

mrhappyman

Blackshirtuk, I'm glad to see your house has been problem free in all the time you've been there. Was all the paperwork in order when you bought, incl building regs sign off?

Latestarter, I think your position was very reasonable and probably supported by the technical reality. The problem is, it seems to be a very subjective thing and that lack of full paper trail would bother the majority of people, including amongst those, those who want to buy when I want to sell...

Dacouch you make some very interesting points. Re this house, it was likely the drainage to one side of the house that was leaking or possibly water table issues hence that side was underpinned. I'm guessing they wouldn't underpin the whole house as a result but that might be an issue of further problems you say? I have read that elsewhere also. And were there mainstream insurers prior to L & G and AXA before
Thanks for all your replies

ruggedtoast

Can we only have one thread for this?

mrhappyman

Ruggedtoast, my apologies. The original post didn't have any further replies so I posted a new thread but appreciate it's probably a bit annoying. Sorry.

blackshirtuk

All the paperwork was checked by the solicitor and he was happy not sure if buiding regs were involved but solicitor never raised it as an issue.

It was due to a collapsed clay drain leaking which was replaced with plastic so was fairly confident it wouldn't happen again anyway.