First time buyers - house has historic subsidence/surface flood risk

Pingu2332

My fiancé and I are currently in the process of buying our first home in the East Midlands.

We viewed a lot of houses over the last year and finally found the house we feel we can call home. It was previously off the market (we actually viewed it at the start of the year, it went off the market, and came back on about a month ago due to the buyers’ house sale falling through). Negotiated on the asking price and had it accepted at 10k below asking price which we’re really happy with. The valuation has also come back the same as what our offer was accepted on.

When we viewed the house the estate agents warned us that there is historic subsidence in the garage but this was fixed and there’s a 10 year guarantee on it. There’s a brook at the back of the garden which homeowners are responsible for the maintenance of - at the moment the part of the brook the house is by is very overgrown with bushes, but the previous owner is an elderly lady who has lived there several decades. Additionally there was a big flood event in 2020 when the drains on the street overflowed. We’ve read an entire council report on this flood event and what work has been done to rectify the issues, though we’re bearing in mind that we can’t fully trust the council to maintain the drains lol. On all of the maps we can find, the postcode says it’s a “low risk area”.

We’ve had a few people say we shouldn’t buy the house due to the historic subsidence and flood risk from the drains. We’re aware house insurance is more expensive because the subsidence fix was an insurance claim in the past but we’ve shopped around for some quotes and are happy with what we’ve been quoted. The house itself has never flooded as it’s a few brick layers higher than the garage, the driveway does slope down towards the garage. We’d be prepared to have flood defences, sandbags etc in place for heavy rain.

We’ve booked a level 3 survey to get some peace of mind and feel this will be our decider on whether or not we go ahead with the house.

The house itself has absolutely everything we want from a property so I don’t feel I can back out of it without the report from the survey.

What I’d really like to know is what level of risk should we expect from a house with historic subsidence in the garage and is it a risk worth taking? Should we expect that the drains could flood so much one day that it will reach the house?

I feel like we’ve gone from never having heard of subsidence to reading absolutely everything we can find on it and still not being able to come to a final conclusion.

This is obviously the biggest purchase we’ve ever made and want to be able to live there for as long as possible.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated while we wait for the survey report! (Would also appreciate any advice on understanding a level 3 survey report)

Albermarle

One issue can be that when you look for insurance quotes, they will ask something like 'has any part of the property, including the garden, ever flooded' . Some insurance providers at least do not seem to discern between garden flooding and house flooding, regardless of if the house is at a higher level etc.
On the other hand it should help that the official flood risk rating appears to be low. 

Bigphil1474

We sold our house last year and we'd had subsidence on the actual house in 2010. It was all repaired through the insurance, and the cost was over £20k. No underpinning, and the cause of the movement was remedired. We had higher insurance premiums for about 10 years, then they fell back to normal level. If the garage is detached from the house, I wouldn't be too worried assuming the repair report and guarantee are all good. If you've knocked off £10k, then I reckon you've done okay out of the deal. See what the survey report brings back obviously.