Faulty roof, damp walls - would you still buy?

Addison89

Hello, advice needed please. Our Home Buyer’s Survey just came back and it is bad. Surveyer suggests a new roof as the purlin is sagging, needs new lining. Walls have high level of damp, floor had wood-boring beetle (they are not active anymore). Basically damp everywhere and rotting timbers.

This is an old cottage so I expected some works to be needed but not to this level - I’ll admit I’m naive.

From what I gather, to fix everything in the house we would need approx £50-60k.

Has anyone purchased a property in such a state and how did your renovations go?

dharm999

Would depend on the price, if it reflects the work required then I’d have no problem

Addison89

dharm999 said:

Would depend on the price, if it reflects the work required then I’d have no problem

Right now it doesn’t and I highly doubt I could negotiate it by £50k.

Tucosalamanca

• New roof with structural repairs
• Walls have high level of damp
• Floor had wood-boring beetle (they are not active anymore). 
• Basically damp everywhere and rotting timbers

Will you need new floor coverings, skirting boards, will redecoration suffice or will entire rooms need re-plastering after damp treatment? Kitchen, bathroom, windows, state of electrics, levels of insulation?
How bad is it and what standard of finish do you want?
£50-60k isn't a huge refurbishment budget in 2024...

Addison89

Tucosalamanca said:

• New roof with structural repairs
• Walls have high level of damp
• Floor had wood-boring beetle (they are not active anymore). 
• Basically damp everywhere and rotting timbers

Will you need new floor coverings, skirting boards, will redecoration suffice or will entire rooms need re-plastering after damp treatment? Kitchen, bathroom, windows, state of electrics, levels of insulation?
How bad is it and what standard of finish do you want?
£50-60k isn't a huge refurbishment budget in 2024...

The problem is we haven’t budgeted for this. Kitchen bathroom needs changing- that was included in our plans. House will need flooring, replastering and damp treatment as high levels of damp was detected at multiple places. And the roof. Oh and two of the windows are single glazed. I guess that £50k was a low estimate 

Newbie_John

If the house is £300k, and it would take another £75k to fix it.. then how do you feel paying £375k for a house? How does it compare with other £375k houses that don't need any work? Any chance of negotiating on price - how low are the sellers willing to go?

I personally don't have time, so I wouldn't bother.

RAS

How much of your damp problem might be mitigated by clearing out uphill drainage  channels? 

FreeBear

Addison89 said:

Tucosalamanca said:

• New roof with structural repairs
• Walls have high level of damp
• Floor had wood-boring beetle (they are not active anymore). 
• Basically damp everywhere and rotting timbers

Will you need new floor coverings, skirting boards, will redecoration suffice or will entire rooms need re-plastering after damp treatment? Kitchen, bathroom, windows, state of electrics, levels of insulation?
How bad is it and what standard of finish do you want?
£50-60k isn't a huge refurbishment budget in 2024...

The problem is we haven’t budgeted for this. Kitchen bathroom needs changing- that was included in our plans. House will need flooring, replastering and damp treatment as high levels of damp was detected at multiple places. And the roof. Oh and two of the windows are single glazed. I guess that £50k was a low estimate 

An "old cottage" - Over 100 years old ?

Please, don't waste your time and money having injected DPC and tanking/waterproof render/plaster on the walls. Damp needs to be cured at source and the building allowed to dry out naturally. The older the property, the more sympathetic repairs need to be - Lime plaster and breathable paints are ideal. Cement and waterproof synthetic paints are bad. However, unless you are prepared to learn new skills, finding trades that work with traditional materials is difficult, and when you do find them, they charge a premium.

Oh, and if the walls are cob, then you definitely don't want cement anywhere near the building.

Bigphil1474

OP, the survey will be worse case scenario doom and gloom stuff, whereas the reality might be somewhat different. 

If the roof does need replacing, that won't be cheap but not necessarily the end of the world. The roof replacement alone might sort a lot of the damp issues.

When the report says there were wood-boring beetle, does it say what sort? There is a type of beetle that only lives in damp wood, but doesn't spread - just need to sort the damp out and they die off. There is the other type, the 'wood worm' that needs multiple chemical treatments and you'd need to know if it's spread (can't remember the latin names but a damp surveyor would do).

Does the survey actually say rotten timbers, or that there is a risk of rotten timbers - untreated damp can lead to rotten timbers and then they need replacing, but you can have damp timbers that just need the damp source sorting and then they'll be fine.

As above, the damp proof injecting cream into your walls malarkey is just an expensive waste of time IMO. It was suggested we have that done on our bay area and front wall. Second quote said it was completely unnecessary and just needed better insulation as it was condensation damp. 

The damp survey we had done was on the house we are selling - it read like it needed major works, but we spent in the region of £2.5k getting all the recommended works done ourselves. Mainly sorting some outside drains, air brick to cellar, replaced guttering, improved insulation and re-plastered in bay area.

Also, you need to bear in mind that the surveyor doing the home buyers survey isn't necessarily trained to detect damp. They usually go round sticking a damp meter into walls and seeing if it bleeps or recording the measurement. The damp meters are designed for wood, so aren't totally accurate for other surfaces but can be used for indicating potential damp issues in the right hands. You can't just stick it into a wall and say it's damp from one reading.

Comes down to price in the end. How does the survey valuation compare to what you are paying. If it's the same, then they are taking into account the cost of repairs. 

Personally, I would get a roofer to have a look, then maybe arrange a damp survey - we got one through the PCA https://www.property-care.org/home . They aren't expensive, think ours was about £225. The actual surveyor was great, told me loads of stuff as we went round. They were good because they put stuff in the report that they don't quote for so no incentive to make it up. They did put about the damp proof cream treatment in the report but the guy told us verbally it would be unnecessary.

stuart45

Have you any idea of the age of the cottage and type of wall construction? E.g. Solid brick, solid stone, cavity, timber? Is it detached?

AlexMac

Addison89 

Has anyone purchased a property in such a state and how did your renovations go?

Yes, almost as bad, and yes, they went amazingly well despite me being a very inexperienced developer

(I bought a Victorian house at auction, and I didn’t even bother with a survey as it was obvious that it needed a new roof, wiring, kitchen, bathroom, plumbing, boiler and central heating. I had just been made redundant, planned to do the relatively unskilled work of  decorating, carpentry etc myself to save dough, but surprisingly got another job. So I had to pay for the lot; on a scale similar to yours given inflation; this was almost 30 years ago)

But even without a survey the scale and cost of the work required was obvious, I had the cash to do it and as I was scrounging off a girlfriend (later wife - my scrounging didn’t put her off) I didn’t have to move in for the 3 months it took, nor did I have the expense of two houses nor need to live in a building site. 

Your challenge sounds, well, more challenging? I did really well when I sold on three years later, but it sounds as though you face a riskier proposition both in terms of hassle and likely value of the finished house? And house prices aren’t rising as fast now as they were in the late 1990’s ( not that you should regard a home as an investment; it’s somewhat to live!)

And while mine wasn’t “riddled with damp and rot” ( once we’d replaced the roof and gutters  the place dried out without major replastering or tanking as the damp was mostly penetrating, not rising) you say yours is? And finally, mine was priced attractively given the state it was in (it had been a long-term rental).  

I’d be tempted to walk?