Advice On Where To Go After Survey (Issues with roof, damp & valuation)

ciderboy2009

ChrisJK88 wrote: »

Spot on with BS5!

Ok - my neck of the woods & one of the parts of Bristol where house prices are still rising fairly quickly.

ChrisJK88 wrote: »

So with the damp proofing, the £2k is meant to cover a review and any measures they recommend - So a pretty vague summary without saying what the suspected issue actually is.

Personally I would ignore this - he's probably just come across a bit of blown plaster and noticed that there aren't any air bricks (if this is the case then the house has survived for over 100 years without air bricks so why is it so urgent to add them?).

ChrisJK88 wrote: »

His other concern was the general state of the housing market and any potential Brexit fall out, but didn't speak in detail about how he arrived at the valuation other than listing the negatives I've mentioned.

He clearly doesn't know much about the housing market in BS5 then - particularly for older houses!

I particularly hate the way surveyors keep using Brexit as an excuse - nobody knows what's going to happen to the market in the future regardless of Brexit. That has always been the case!

ChrisJK88 wrote: »

We're planning on staying in this property for at least 5 years, so all being well given the location I think we can reasonably expect the value to grow - I just don't want to start having over paid by £15k!

We bought our current house 15 years ago for £135k. In the first 5 years its value dropped to just over £100k. A similar one around the corner sold recently for £350k.

You've probably missed the biggest price rise in BS5 but it' still showing no sign of slowing down.

At the end of the day, buy it and enjoy it as a home rather than an investment.



The odds are that it'll make you more money than a savings account and you get the added benefit of not having to pay rent for the time you're living in it!

FreeBear

ciderboy2009 wrote: »

Bear in mind that older houses would never have been built with a damp proof course and injecting one isn't always the best option.

To be fair to the Victorians, they did use materials that would act as a DPC in later years. Typically slate or hard engineering bricks were used.

quantumlobster wrote: »

Apologies if I come off as slightly cynical about these grasping, chiselling charlatans, but the only way to properly diagnose damp (as opposed to a water leak) is to drill out a sample and check it in an instrument that actually detects moisture.

Invariably, these "experts" diagnose damp and then recommend expensive "cures" such as injecting chemicals and slapping on a waterproof plaster. In effect, covering up the problem without doing anything about the root cause. ten to fifteen years later, another owner gets a similar survey done, damp is found (no sh_t Sherlock), and another round of ineffective treatments is sold.

Diagnose the root cause, fix it, and then manage any remaining damp by using the appropriate materials.

Sapphire

FreeBear wrote: »

To be fair to the Victorians, they did use materials that would act as a DPC in later years. Typically slate or hard engineering bricks were used.

However, many Victorians, certainly in London, lived crammed into 'rotting' houses. That's well documented.

After recently having severe dry rot fungus problems in my place (probably due to a leak in a gutter before it was replaced a couple of years ago), and having studied history, it has dawned on me that in the past many people, including wealthy ones, did live in actually 'rotting' houses, in which the damp problems were not fixed by the owners of the properties.

Problems with dry rot could be particularly bad in timber-framed houses – and the fungus eventually attacks masonry as well. It can spread incredibly quickly once it takes hold – as I saw in my place.

Another thing I've read is that in both Georgian (especially) and Victorian times, many houses were actually quite badly built behind their often pretty facades. This was due to property developers wanting to make as much money as possible, very quickly, following the explosion in the population (does this sound like a familiar scenario? :think:).