Building Survey for a maisonette

pawkldn

Hi I wondered if anyone can offer some perspective on this? We are in the process of buying a ground floor maisonnette in a purpose build semi detached from 1930 (4 maisonettes in the building in total). As the house itself is nearly a 100 years old we decided to go for a full building survey to make sure that the house is structurally sound. The seller wasn't too thrilled and since then we have had 3 calls from the sales agent trying to convince us it's a waste of money and a homebuyer report would suffice and that in 15 years of work as an agent they never had a building survey done on a maisonette . (The intensity of the calls alone made me a bit suspicious). The solicitor is still reviewing the lease conditions so we are not sure who's responsible for repairs. I've been reading different articles about which survey is appropriate but is it really an overkill to do a full building survey?

watermelonspring

We had a full building survey for a 1st floor maisonette built in a similar period. It didn’t show up anything but we felt that we needed it. The EA didn’t advise us against it at all. It doesn’t take that long so I’m not sure why they’re so against it unless they have something to hide. 

So I don’t think it’s unreasonable. 

Tracet74

Dependent on location, a HomeBuyer Report would be more than sufficient for a 1930's maisonette.  It would pick up on both major and minor defects and there will be restrictions on access as the surveyor will only get internal access to the maisonette, not the entire block.

hazyjo

I'm surprised they're able to tbh as they'll have to inspect the whole building. Flats/maisonettes usually have homebuyers reports. Perhaps if there were 2 flats, but 4? Have you found a surveyor able to do a building survey on it?

pawkldn

hazyjo said:

I'm surprised they're able to tbh as they'll have to inspect the whole building. Flats/maisonettes usually have homebuyers reports. Perhaps if there were 2 flats, but 4? Have you found a surveyor able to do a building survey on it?

Actually yes I spoke to the surveyors and they said since the building is quite old it would be better to do a building survey

Tracet74

You have to consider properties have been built and still erect from the 1500's (happy to be corrected), a 1930's flat is not old.  

NameUnavailable

I think you're wasting money tbh as to do a building survey the surveyor really needs access to upstairs and the loft which I doubt they'll have (unless you have agreed for access from your future neighbours?). I'm sure the surveyor is happy to take your money, they'll just copy n paste some comments in the relevant sections to state that they couldn't comment on X due to lack of access.

The lease will state who is responsible for what in terms of maintenance.

eddddy

If you're going to be responsible for maintenance and repair costs for the roof, for example, I think it's reasonable to have it surveyed.

The surveyor will be able to report on some issues from an external inspection standing on the ground - such as 'roof spread', sagging, chimney pointing etc.

But it might be even better if you can ask the upstairs flat resident to allow the surveyor access to the roof via their maisonette. I've done that in the past. (You can offer to show the upstairs resident a copy of the final survey, as reward for allowing access.)



Having said that, with a lot of maisonette leases, the downstairs maisonette is responsible for the foundations, and the upstairs maisonette is responsible for the roof. In that case, you'd be less interested in the roof - but you'd be particularly interested in signs of movement, subsidence, heave etc.