FTB survey confusion

gezmond

So our situation is that we have had our mortgage offer agreed and we have instructed a conveyancer to act on our behalf for the legal side of things. Neither myself nor my wife have ever been through the buying process before so we're complete novices at this. We used L&C to apply for the mortgage through.

The house we are buying is a mid-terrace victorian property from around 1870. The current owners have lived in the property since 2012 and the boiler was replaced with a combi boiler in the last 5 years.

I guess the next step is to instruct a surveyor. My wife and I feel that due to the properties age we should get a full building survey done? Is that a good idea? The house looked to be in decent nick when we viewed it (twice).

We're also confused about how to go about this. Do we get the conveyancer to send someone on our behalf? Would L&C organise this or should we hunt around ourselves for somebody?

G_M

Your mortgage lender will instruct a surveyor to do a 'Valuation' of the property. Often you can ask the lender to get the surveyor to do a survey for you at the same time. This is sometimes cheaper (both done on the same visit).

Or it can be more expensive!

Also it means the lender sees your survey - if it shows up a problem (which their superficial Valuation would have missed) this might affect your mortgage.

Ring a few RICS surveyors for quotes.


More info here:
https://www.ricsfirms.com/residential/moving-home/surveys/

gezmond

The lender has already made their valuation prior to offering the mortgage.

So would it be wise to book the surveyor ourselves? and is a full building survey required or overkill?

GoingOn30

We bought a similar aged property, also mid-terrace and found a home-buyers report to be sufficiently detailed, I do think a full structural survey is overkill for a property that's not overtly in a state of disrepair, but it depends on your attitude to risk.
We have now owned our property for 13 months and no problems so far. We haven't even started to rectify some of the issues the homebuyers report labelled as "urgent" and the place is still standing tall!

DD265

If you go onto the RICS website as suggested by G_M, you'll be able to search for firms that cover the area and a lot of websites will give you an instant online quote.

I went through the first few pages on the RICS listings, ditched any websites I didn't like the look of, got some quotes, quickly got rid of the eye wateringly expensive ones and then checked reviews on the remaining few. Ultimately my decision was based on how the final two companies followed up on the quotes they'd sent, but if I was still undecided I was going to ring and see who I 'liked'. I am guilty of overthinking things like this.

When it came to deciding what level of survey to get, I compared costs (I'd quoted for home buyer as well as full structural) plus the breakdown of the 'extra' we'd get for our money. Ran it past a few experienced family members and decided based on that. We opted for home buyer and were pleased with the thoroughness, but the house is 12 years old.

I booked the survey, the surveyor arranged it with the vendor, then when they sent me the result I forwarded the document on to our conveyancer.

gezmond

Nice one for the advice!