Negligent surveyor - please advise

Chanes

krestaoscar wrote: »

Update: This morning I got an email from the surveyors' regional director who has been asked to investigate the complaint. I've left a message and will ring again before close of business to arrange re-surveying of the garage. Depending on how that proceeds, I'll make inquiries for getting a structural survey done of our own.

Cheers
Oscar

Good luck!

vivatifosi

I have been down this road, so thought it would be helpful if I gave you the background to this.

We paid for a full structural survey, the surveyor said "are you sure you want one of those, you only need a homebuyers report for a newish house?" We said yes, we want a full SS. Instead they still did a homebuyers and charged us for a full SS. Anyhow, they did not pick up on a number of faults, which totalled a similar sum to the amount that you are out by. The surveyor initially refused to pay out and then offered only to reinburse the cost of the survey.

We spoke to Which? Legal who charge a minimal fee to provide legal advice and you write the letters and do the legal prep yourself using their advice. At the time, this cost £12 as an existing Which member (this was about 6 years ago now).

They advised us to get a second survey on the house. We did this and it did indeed identify the faults.

We were advised that - and this is the critical bit - you will not get reimbursed the full amount of putting the problem right, rather the difference in the price you paid for your house and the difference in its value had you been aware of the problem. In our case, this amounted to from memory about 45% of the cost of putting the problem right.

We were advised to, and did, threaten to use the small claims route as like you were under the threshhold for this. Before paying for this though we submitted a "Letter Before Action" outlining our case (which Which? had helped us draft by telling us what to do).

The surveying firm agreed to pay the 45%, plus the cost of the second survey. We did not need to go to the additional cost of the raising the small claims paperwork as it didn't get that far, we were advised that the "Letter Before Action" would work and it did. We also had to sign to agree not to sue again if a further problem came to light (another reason why it is so important to have a second survey to make doubly sure).

Hope this helps and good luck with your claim.

krestaoscar

Thanks, Vivatifosi, that's very helpful. I'm not a member of Which and probably wouldn't be eligible for their legal advice if I joined now but nevertheless it's a great starting point and I'll investigate that angle further.

Many thanks
Oscar

vivatifosi

Hi Oscar, I just had a look and Which Legal charge £88 per year, which may be a bit steep if you're not sure whether or not they'd be able to help. Here's a link in case you are interested:

http://legalservice.which.co.uk/

krestaoscar

Thanks, Vivatifosi, I've had a look and will sign up; assumed it would be like unions where you can't use their services for 90 days after joining but I don't see any such exclusions. In the general scheme of things (maybe going against the ethos of this site!) 88 quid a year is neither here nor there when the repairs would take the vast proportion of our conversion budget.

Thanks again
Oscar

teneighty

All you needed to do was follow the advice in the link posted by GM, none of this paying for legal advice etc.

All firms regulated by the RICS must have an official complaints handling procedure, it is very simple and free. All it requires is a degree of determination and some background information and costings to back up your claim. A lot of firms will make low initial offers to try and buy you off but stick with it and hold out for what you want.

If the final result of the complaint is not to your liking you can take it to the relevant ombudsman scheme, again, free. For this though you may need some expert advice so possibly a second survey would help but not essential. Obviously your costs can be added to the claim.

One other correction. The value of the claim is not just restricted to the loss of value of the house. It is restricted to whatever is the lower figure, the loss of value OR the cost of repair. I don't know the value of the property but from your description I would have thought you stand a good chance of getting close to the full cost of repairs as the defects effectively mean the garage is unusable and therefore the loss of value of the house would reflect the lack of a garage.

krestaoscar

Thanks, teneighty, that's very helpful. I will hold off doing anything else until the surveyors come back to me with a date for re-inspecting and moving things forward. What's worrying me is how long we might have to wait before we start the re-instatement, as it won't be long before the weather gets (ha!) bad and we get the full force of the North Sea gales here. Assuming that we do get our own structural survey, once we have the results of that in writing, would we then be OK to start work?

The house is an extended 3-bed 70's semi, we paid £155,000. The garage is nominally a single but is 6m x 4m. The double pitched span is from front to back, not left to right, which certainly doesn't help the inadequate roof construction.

It's obvious why the roof was changed from flat; it was 3/4 boarded out for storage and actually is the only storage area we have, as the main house roof is trussed, heavily insulated and not boarded so is effectively unusable.

The lack of usable storage in the garage - even for cardboard boxes, which I've read is all it would be rated for if the roof was trussed - is causing us a real problem as we're expecting a baby and the "nursery" is currently crammed full of all the stuff which would be in the garage. Not to mention that the stress is the last thing we need right now!

So yes, now that I think about it, the garage IS unusable. We moved from a large 3-bed terrace which - garage excluded - was actually larger than our current house. Without the garage/garage conversion, we're actually considerably worse off for space although our quality of life is improved greatly in many other ways.

Thanks for your help
Oscar

krestaoscar

Hello all, here's a quick update.

The surveyor sent their regional director out last Wednesday. I haven't seen the report but whilst surveying he agreed with everything that I said. I thought we'd actually get somewhere, however today I received a letter from them basically saying they can't be held liable for anything.

They glossed over the structural issues and said that they informed us the ridge line was uneven and the roof needed additional bracing. They also stated that they'd requested local authority consents be confirmed for the garage addition (it wasn't built with the house). That search was done and consent was given for the attached flat roof garage. As previously stated, the roof isn't flat, it's double pitched and has obviously been altered. The guy who came out last week confirmed this.

They then made the following statement, which is plain nonsense:

"If this had been confirmed before commitment to purchase it would have put you on notice that the alterations did not have regulation approval and this could then have been referred back to the surveyor to advise you further."

It's nonsense because the surveyor didn't list any alterations to the garage. There is a rear extension and internal alteration to the house, but the "Issues for your legal advisors" section of the report reads: "Confirm Local Authority consents obtained for rear single-storey addition [granted], garage addition [granted] also internal alterations [moving a doorway in a stud wall, I guess they just did it]"

They are implying in the letter that they told us in the survey about the garage roof being altered, when clearly they haven't.

They actually said the garage was an addition so check for consent and get some none-urgent remedial work done to strengthen the roof. They did not say "this garage had a flat roof, it's now got a really poorly constructed pitched roof and the walls are showing cracks which may be due to the load, so get a structural engineer out and find out whether they got consent to change the roof."

If they'd said that, we'd be living elsewhere.

I really don't know what to do now. I'm drafting an email basically refuting what they've said, as above, but I don't know whether I'm yet at the point of involving their official body?

I suppose it could be argued that our conveyancing solicitor should have noticed that the plans referred to a flat roof and it clearly isn't one, but as our main problem here is the financial black-hole we're now in due to the garage, I'm not in a position to start proceedings against the solicitor.

Please could someone advise?

Cheers
Oscar

mrginge

Have I got this right?

They informed you the roof needed remedial work
They asked you to check consent for the garage
You checked consent.
The consent was not for what was built / amended
You took it no further.

krestaoscar

Hi Mrginge

You're correct up to the point of "the consent was not for what was built" as our solicitor did not inform us that there was a discrepancy on the planning. Had we been informed, we'd have done something.

It's possible the solicitor !!!-u-me-d that the consent matched the building but didn't check, but the report didn't state the surveyor was concerned that the garage had been altered at some point, just that it had been built.

Cheers
Oscar