Would you buy a Laing Easiform property?

Harry_harrington

Hi all just hoping for some advice as me and my partner are going around in circles trying to make a decision on whether to go through with a purchase on what we have just found out is a laing easiform construction.

The house was built in approx. 1949. It's in Bristol which seems to have lots of these types. The home buyers survey has come back with no other major issues - no cracks in walls and a "very small area of damp next to the back door which may be caused by condensation".

We're waiting to hear back from the lender which may decide things for us anyway. We know this will impact on selling in the future and the survey has stated the offer we've made is at the top end of acceptable value. If we decided to go ahead I think we would renogotiate the price.

Having read as much as possible, we're still just as undecided. Be very grateful to hear others experiences of living in and selling on these homes.

Thanks in advance...

stator

I would buy a laing easiform property because I did. I've only had it a year but I don't have any regrets so far.

I would take a very close look at the outside, looking for cracks in the external render, especially around the windows. If cracks have been left then water can penetrate into the concrete and if any of the steel was exposed it would rust. But this is unlikely to happen as the steel is inside the concrete.
Carry out the usual checks, do all the windows open properly? Any unusual cracks?

If you are planning on renovations, like removing cupboards or walls or anything like that you'll want to get the areas in questioned surveyed for asbestos. Shed roofs will likely be of asbestos cement also. But this isn't anything to worry about, you just need to be aware of it when you replace them.

Harry_harrington

Thanks very much for that, good to hear your experience has been good.

One thing I do worry about is whether the mortgage lenders views of the homes could be fickle and change a few years down the line, leaving you with a nightmare to sell on.

Out of interest, how easy have you found it to work on the house? I've seen some comments from people struggling to hang a picture cos the concrete is too hard to drill.

GDB2222

You can drill concrete quite easily with an SDS drill. Costs £50 upwards, so not a problem in the context of buying a house.

Any house of this sort can be susceptible to concrete disease, where the steel rusting forces the concrete apart. I'd want a substantial discount compared to a brick house because of the risk you have identified of these houses becoming unmortgageable as the stock ages. Apart from that issue they are probably fine to live in, except the EPC rating may be rather poor so expensive to heat.

stator

I'm not worried about mortgageability. Every lender I asked accepts L/EF and also Wimpey no-fines which is similar. There are hundreds of thousands of these houses and they've lasted 60+ years. If there were any serious problems they would have been found out long ago.

There isn't THAT much steel in them anyway, just reinforcement above and below the windows. As long as the render/pebbledash or whatever is maintained there is no chance the steel could rust. (Unless the house is in Cornwall or somewhere else they have Mundic problems, but that's not a problem for most of the country).

I've found the walls are perfectly easy to drill into. They're built of 'no-fines' concrete so it's not as hard a normal concrete, I've found often the drill will reach the required depth without using the hammer setting. But sometimes you do have to turn on the hammer to get through a hard bit. The only annoying thing is that the drill can wander a bit when you first drill in, this is because the surface of the concrete underneath the plaster isn't smooth, it has little gaps and holes, but you can get around this by drilling a small pilot hole first and then increasing the size.

Insurance is a little more tricky as you have to check with each insurer rather than just pick the cheapest on a comparison site. But my home insurance was only £100 per year, so perfectly normal and there were plenty of insurers willing to accept it. The only ones that I asked and wouldn't are Direct Line.

My house has blown fibre cavity wall insulation and it's not that bad energy wise. It's definitely better than the victorian terrace I used to live in (which was single skin wall obviously). The only tricky bit to insulate is the triangular corner between the wall and the ceiling in the bedrooms. I'm going to have to put some internal insulation there as you can't access the area above it in the loft. Not sure if all L/EF houses have this triangular bit or not, but most of them do where I live.

BayTrees

Special hard wall picture hooks. Any DIY store, IKEA or possibly small local shop will sell them. White with 3 or 4 pins which you hammer into the wall. Can't answer on the houses, but that sorted the picture hanging problem for me.

jackomdj

Personally I wouldn't buy anything of non standard construction due to mortgeagability issues. Not now, but future changes in mortgage criteria may make it unmortgegable.

I bought a house which when I came to sell about 4 years later they had changed their criteria, all houses of a certain age in that area had mundic tests done and ours had grade C mundic (concrete cancer), which meant it wasn't mortgeable. When we bought it we were oblivious to the possible issues.

stator

jackomdj wrote: »

Personally I wouldn't buy anything of non standard construction due to mortgeagability issues. Not now, but future changes in mortgage criteria may make it unmortgegable.

I bought a house which when I came to sell about 4 years later they had changed their criteria, all houses of a certain age in that area had mundic tests done and ours had grade C mundic (concrete cancer), which meant it wasn't mortgeable. When we bought it we were oblivious to the possible issues.

That was quite a while ago though and the mundic problem is well documented. If you live in a mundic area you will have to get it tested, you wouldn't be able to buy one with a mortgage these days.
But it's not just 'poured concrete' houses that suffer from the mundic problem as it was also used in the creation of concrete blocks, which would make a house 'traditional construction'.

I think if there were any problems with a concrete house it would be visible after 60+ years.

jackomdj

stator wrote: »

That was quite a while ago though and the mundic problem is well documented. If you live in a mundic area you will have to get it tested, you wouldn't be able to buy one with a mortgage these days.
But it's not just 'poured concrete' houses that suffer from the mundic problem as it was also used in the creation of concrete blocks, which would make a house 'traditional construction'.

I think if there were any problems with a concrete house it would be visible after 60+ years.

Totally agree it was a while ago (back in 2000), I just used my story as an example on how they can change their criteria. So personally I would be very concerned about buying something that you already know is unusual and they could change their minds on.

And ours was a traditional construction property, however it turns out they used the sand from the beach to make the bricks and cement so it contained a lot of salt. Ours was built in the early 1900's so probably about 85 years when we sold it, the guy that bought it was a structural engineer so he knew exactly what he was taking on.

Harry_harrington

So, in the end we've decided to pull out of the purchase after lots of thought. In the end this came down to being quite risk averse about possible future problems with sell-on and mortgage lenders rather than being worried about the actual integrity of the house. As stator said I think problems would have been apparent by now as it's nearly 70 years old. I think the fact we're first time buyers has made us feel this isn't the right property for us at this time.

On a slightly different note, really annoyed with Connells Estate Agent who didn't tell us it was laing easiform even though they were aware and said it was obvious it was when I shared the survey with them. Maybe to them but not to someone who had never heard of it before! Frustrating we could of gotten to the same decision without spending £700 on a survey!

Harry_harrington

Thank you everyone for yr comments - really helped