Moving furniture / stuff for survey

Cactus_Flowers

I'm a FTB, getting ready to line up a surveyor on the house I'm (hopefully) buying. A couple of the areas I really need to know the condition of were inaccessible when I went to view though - can I ask the EA to ask the seller to move their belongings about before the survey?

To give more details - it's a terrace house that's about 100 years old, with the sellers still living there. I clocked some problems when I viewed which I already know I'll need to fix, but the two things I wanted to check but couldn't were:

- A small back room, in the extension, that the sellers have been using as a sort of junk room. It's possible to go in and see the windows and the dimensions of the room, but there's boxes and stuff piled along every wall so can't see if there are any problems there.

- The loft is inaccessible as there's a tall cupboard just below where the hatch is.

It didn't look like either of these were done to hide issues, it's just how the sellers have set up their house. But they are areas that I would want checked before completing, just in case there's a disaster in there (and even if there's nothing big enough to start negotiating about, just so I have all the information about the house before moving in). I know that if a surveyor can't access something they'll just note it as 'not possible to inspect', so is there anything I can do to mitigate that happening?

AdrianC

You can ask the vendors nicely... and that's about it.

Ultimately, if they don't give you the access you require to properly ascertain the condition of the property, your only sanction is to shrug and walk away.

AnotherJoe

Cactus_Flowers said:

I'm a FTB, getting ready to line up a surveyor on the house I'm (hopefully) buying. A couple of the areas I really need to know the condition of were inaccessible when I went to view though - can I ask the EA to ask the seller to move their belongings about before the survey?

To give more details - it's a terrace house that's about 100 years old, with the sellers still living there. I clocked some problems when I viewed which I already know I'll need to fix, but the two things I wanted to check but couldn't were:

- A small back room, in the extension, that the sellers have been using as a sort of junk room. It's possible to go in and see the windows and the dimensions of the room, but there's boxes and stuff piled along every wall so can't see if there are any problems there.

- The loft is inaccessible as there's a tall cupboard just below where the hatch is.

It didn't look like either of these were done to hide issues, it's just how the sellers have set up their house. But they are areas that I would want checked before completing, just in case there's a disaster in there (and even if there's nothing big enough to start negotiating about, just so I have all the information about the house before moving in). I know that if a surveyor can't access something they'll just note it as 'not possible to inspect', so is there anything I can do to mitigate that happening?

Yes, you make it a condition that before surveyor visits those items are moved so surveyor can access. They will need to move them when they move anyway. The loft especially Id make mandatory in an old house. 

Just ask nicely eg "I'm sure you'll understand" blah blah   I think you'd need have the surveyor call and check it's been done before the visit as well.  

eddddy

You can certainly tell the sellers (probably via the EA) that you want those things moved. And you can tell the surveyor specifically to check those areas.


But the seller can refuse to move them. In that case, you'd need to decide how you want to proceed - buy the house anyway, or walk away.

There are also other possibilities - like the seller says they will move them, but the surveyor arrives and finds they haven't been moved. Again, you'd need to decide how you want to proceed, if something like that happened.

As AnotherJoe suggests, maybe get the EA to phone the seller to check that the stuff has been moved a day or two before the survey. (But you might well lose your survey fee, if you cancelled that late anyway.)

unforeseen

You've seen the house, where would they move the stuff to that didn't cover some other area that the surveyor needs to access.

A junk room is as it's name says, a place where you either don't want or don't have space to put elsewhere.

If that cupboard is full then they are not going to empty it to move for your surveyor and then put all the stuff back in.

You stand a chance of being classed as a buyer who is going to be more trouble than they are worth. 

Octothorpe

unforeseen said:

You've seen the house, where would they move the stuff to that didn't cover some other area that the surveyor needs to access.

A junk room is as it's name says, a place where you either don't want or don't have space to put elsewhere.

If that cupboard is full then they are not going to empty it to move for your surveyor and then put all the stuff back in.

You stand a chance of being classed as a buyer who is going to be more trouble than they are worth. 

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to view the loft unencumbered. The box room surely they could just pile the stuff into the middle of the room??

If wanting to ease the buyers mind to ensure a smooth transaction is such an effort for them,  I'd be questioning that the vendors may be more trouble than the purchase is worth.

GDB2222

As a compromise, you could ask that just one area of the junk room is cleared. You want the surveyor to check for damp, mainly.

But access to the loft is absolutely essential. You would be taking quite a risk to buy an old house without the surveyor seeing the loft. 

Personally, I’d want to check the access before booking the surveyor. 

GDB2222

unforeseen said:

You've seen the house, where would they move the stuff to that didn't cover some other area that the surveyor needs to access.

A junk room is as it's name says, a place where you either don't want or don't have space to put elsewhere.

If that cupboard is full then they are not going to empty it to move for your surveyor and then put all the stuff back in.

You stand a chance of being classed as a buyer who is going to be more trouble than they are worth. 

Won’t most buyers of an old house want a surveyor to look at the roof space?