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Landmark's subsidence risk rating a joke?
EntryLevel
Posts: 4 Newbie
Just had the searches back for buying a house. Risk rating regarding subsidence from Landmark Homecheck Mining and Subsidence Report is 'high'. Does anybody else agree that this risk rating system is severely unhelpful purely from the way it is calculated?
The risk is calculated based on number of houses in a postcode (I am told full postcodes are used e.g. CP3 0BB). I understand that UK postcodes have no more than about 100 houses in and that the average is something like 15 houses.
Landmark takes the percentage of houses with successful subsidence claims per postcode and lists the postcodes in descending order of that percentage. They apply a risk rating of 'very high' to the top 25%, 'high' to the next 25%, 'moderate to high' to the next, and 'moderate' to the lowest 25%. (Why is there no rating called 'low'?). If there have been no successful claims then the rating 'no claims' is given.
Let's assume (who knows?) 5% is the threshold for 'high'. It's about the level I would probably like to consider as getting a bit risky given a big enough sample number of houses. The big problem is that there is rarely a sufficiently large sample number of houses. Let's take a fairly typical postcode of 14 houses. It would be impossible for such a postcode to ever receive a rating of 'moderate' or 'moderate to high' because just 1 successful subsidence claim would be 7% of all the properties in that postcode, jumping the postcode from 'no claims' to 'high' risk. Imagine a postcode of just 5 houses out in the sticks. I expect the jump caused by just 1 successful claim (20%) would be from 'no claims' to 'very high' risk.
Have I understood this correctly and the system is a joke for postcodes with a low number of houses? Far more sensible would be to state the number of successful claims along with the number of houses in the postcode. Would this be so hard given that this data must have been used originally to create the ridiculous rating?
What have I missed?
The risk is calculated based on number of houses in a postcode (I am told full postcodes are used e.g. CP3 0BB). I understand that UK postcodes have no more than about 100 houses in and that the average is something like 15 houses.
Landmark takes the percentage of houses with successful subsidence claims per postcode and lists the postcodes in descending order of that percentage. They apply a risk rating of 'very high' to the top 25%, 'high' to the next 25%, 'moderate to high' to the next, and 'moderate' to the lowest 25%. (Why is there no rating called 'low'?). If there have been no successful claims then the rating 'no claims' is given.
Let's assume (who knows?) 5% is the threshold for 'high'. It's about the level I would probably like to consider as getting a bit risky given a big enough sample number of houses. The big problem is that there is rarely a sufficiently large sample number of houses. Let's take a fairly typical postcode of 14 houses. It would be impossible for such a postcode to ever receive a rating of 'moderate' or 'moderate to high' because just 1 successful subsidence claim would be 7% of all the properties in that postcode, jumping the postcode from 'no claims' to 'high' risk. Imagine a postcode of just 5 houses out in the sticks. I expect the jump caused by just 1 successful claim (20%) would be from 'no claims' to 'very high' risk.
Have I understood this correctly and the system is a joke for postcodes with a low number of houses? Far more sensible would be to state the number of successful claims along with the number of houses in the postcode. Would this be so hard given that this data must have been used originally to create the ridiculous rating?
What have I missed?
0
Comments
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Subsidence can be very localised, it can affect one house but not the next door neighbourIf you are querying your Council Tax band would you please state whether you are in England, Scotland or Wales0
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