Full structural survey required for accurate valuation

keeer

Hi guys,

I'm a first time buyer, so excuse my naivety... Due to the age of the house I paid for a homebuyer report which came back without a value due to structural movement and rising damp.

What's the next steps? Do I need to pay for a structural report or negotiate with the vendor? Should I simply look for a new house? What happens with the mortgage? I assume the mortgage provider needs an accurate valuation before they lend anything, will simply getting a structural report provide this information?

Thanks

G_M

1) ask your lender what they need.

2) ask yourself what the property will cost you to put right, whether you can afford it, whether it's worth spending, how much you 'love' the house

alumende27

keeer wrote: »

Hi guys,

I'm a first time buyer, so excuse my naivety... Due to the age of the house I paid for a homebuyer report which came back without a value due to structural movement and rising damp.

What's the next steps? Do I need to pay for a structural report or negotiate with the vendor? Should I simply look for a new house? What happens with the mortgage? I assume the mortgage provider needs an accurate valuation before they lend anything, will simply getting a structural report provide this information?

As GM says, ask the lender what they require. When the property we're buying came back with 'structural' issues, they made it quite clear in the rejection letter what was required. We needed to get a structural engineers report from a chartered structural engineer. A building survey from a RICS member was not sufficient.

Be aware that depending on the issues this can get expensive, even before any remedial work is undertaken.

We ended up doing:

1) Valuation
2) Building survey
3) Structural engineers survey
4) Drains survey (inc. cctv footage)

and then had to pay the structural engineer to come up with a plan to fix the structural issues and do a number of site visits to verify the work undertaken to fix the structural issues was done in accordance with his plans, and all this before the lender would accept the property as suitable security.

Unless this is the house of your dreams, the best option may be to walk away and find something else.

cloo

'Structural movement' in itself isn't necessarily a disaster, many old buildings move a bit over time, but subsidence is much more of a worry if that's the cause. Rising damp, again, can be a false alarm - sometimes it turns out to be superficial and just caused by a leaky down pipe, and increasingly some professionals don't even believe rising damp exists ( see http://risingdampmyth.com/ ) I don't know where I stand on this, as it's not my field, but I know the belief is gaining in popularity.


A full structural survey may have been a better idea to clarify things, but I think would be expensive on top of a homebuyers. Maybe better value now to get a structural engineer and an independent damp surveyor (not a supplier of services, they will always claim you need a new damp course!) to assess the situation.