Concrete houses - good or bad?

Mortgage_Moog

It does say on the valuation that the property would not suffer significantly restricted demand in the market if it was to be resold and that other similar properties are actively selling so that gives me some comfort.

24 hours after finding out it was made of concrete I don't think it's as big a deal as I first thought. I'm off to see it again and get some quotes for surveys.

clairecymru

We bought our Wimpey No Fines house almost a year ago. Six months after we moved in we had a letter saying offering us £10,000 worth of external wall instillation, loft instillation, new guttering, downpipes and window sills for £800. It now looks like a new house from the outside.

It was a government grant to help cut down carbon emissions or something. Our house is now like a sauna. Never have to have the heating on.

Welshbigman

I spent a lot of time looking into buying a concrete house, although the one we looked at was a PRC (pre-cast re-inforced concrete). this was considerably cheaper than a traditional house, in fact the saving would have allowed me to put a brickwork skin around it, remove the internal walls etc and turn it into traditional build (yes I know there's a bit more to it than that). I was confident in the house (I am an engineer by trade and have worked in construction all my life including a lot of work on pre-fab houses).
There is a list of houses published by the BRE listing what they class as "defective" I don't think Wimpey No fines are on this list.

We managed to find a mortgage company that would lend, only to get a surveyor who put a Zero value £0 on the the property as "most mortgage companies won't lend on these" however ours would, but they would not change their mind once the surveyor put that down.

In summary, if your lender will lend I would say it is fairly safe

Mortgage_Moog

In the end I have decided not to go ahead with this purchase. i really appreciate everyones support on here but it's too much of a risk and after visiting the property again and discovering much more work needing doing than I previously thought, I think it's time to start looking again.