If a surveyor finds a fault do you have to tell all future buyers?

Davesnave

These theoreticals are all very well, but they may not reflect reality too closely.

When I sold my last house, I knew there was a problem with the outer skin foundation brickwork, hidden under render. A house a few doors down had this problem at a more advanced stage, which cost a substantial amount to fix.

Did I blurt out to my buyers that I knew this fault existed, or would I now, if the newer TA6 arrived for me to fill-in? There was no way a surveyor was going to pick up this invisible decay.

Well, what do you think?

Mortgage_Moog

G_M wrote: »

* many surveys include speculative or unconfirmed suspicions (damp that needs 'further investigation' etc) which cause FTBs in particular to panic and withdraw - even if the problem in reality does not exist

That's why I didn't have a survey done. I read the one for the house I'd lived in for 20 years and it sounded awful. According to them the whole place was going to fall down any minute and yet I lived there for 20 years without a single problem.

ReadingTim

I think the survey remains the property of the (potential) buyer, so technically, I don't think it's "yours" to disclose the findings of. Also, as mentioned above, you'd need to see the full complete document, rather than extracts of, or 2nd/3rd/4th hand comments etc via the EA. Only by seeing the full document can you determine whether the findings are actually a problem, are to be expected in a building of whatever age the house is, or are the usual sort of caveated, @rse-covering waffle that is passed off as a survey by some box-ticking checklist follower.

If after all that you think you have an issue (rather than cold feet from a flaky buyer), I'd either investigate the cost of putting it right, or drop the price to take into account the cost of rectification.

Mortgage_Moog

ReadingTim wrote: »

I think the survey remains the property of the (potential) buyer, so technically, I don't think it's "yours" to disclose the findings of. Also, as mentioned above, you'd need to see the full complete document, rather than extracts of, or 2nd/3rd/4th hand comments etc via the EA. Only by seeing the full document can you determine whether the findings are actually a problem, are to be expected in a building of whatever age the house is, or are the usual sort of caveated, @rse-covering waffle that is passed off as a survey by some box-ticking checklist follower.

If after all that you think you have an issue (rather than cold feet from a flaky buyer), I'd either investigate the cost of putting it right, or drop the price to take into account the cost of rectification.

I was thinking about the buyer getting cold feet. Someone might lie and say something bad came up in the survey (damp etc.) just as an excuse to pull out. You'd then be passing on that lie about the damp to all future buyers and putting people off for no reason.

cloo

I don't think there's a legal obligation, and I would qualify the moral obligation bit by the fact that sometimes inexperienced buyers do pull out for something that is not a deal breaker at all, and could either be tackled with negotiation, or is not really even a big enough to deal to negotiate about but they have unrealistic expectations of what a survey will find!