Is a home buyers survey for a small 1 bed flat a waste of money?

somerandomusername

It's a top floor flat (2nd floor) and I went to view it last week. Checkout out the windows, had a visual inspection of the tops and bottoms of the walls / corners for damp / mould, had a look for any cracks or fractures along the interior walls etc. I'm not a professional but the flat seems perfectly fine.

It's a tiny little 1 bed flat I reckon the surveyor will be in and out of that place in about 5 minutes and it's going to cost me like £500.

And my thinking is if there is any structural issues then it's the freeholders responsibility to pay and fix it anyway, not mine. So I'm only really concerned with the inside of the flat, which appears totally fine.

If the £500 cost included inspection of plumbing and gas / boiler then I'd pay it, but it doesn't and all he's going to do is walk around looking at the walls / windows and come to the exact same conclusion I have?

RAS

somerandomusername said:

It's a top floor flat (2nd floor) and I went to view it last week. Checkout out the windows, had a visual inspection of the tops and bottoms of the walls / corners for damp / mould, had a look for any cracks or fractures along the interior walls etc. I'm not a professional but the flat seems perfectly fine.

It's a tiny little 1 bed flat I reckon the surveyor will be in and out of that place in about 5 minutes and it's going to cost me like £500.

And my thinking is if there is any structural issues then it's the freeholders responsibility to pay and fix it anyway, not mine. So I'm only really concerned with the inside of the flat, which appears totally fine.

If the £500 cost included inspection of plumbing and gas / boiler then I'd pay it, but it doesn't and all he's going to do is walk around looking at the walls / windows and come to the exact same conclusion I have?

It's the freeholder's responsibility to fix any structural issues and repairs of any shared "facilities".

You'll be paying for the maintenance and repairs when they send the bill for your portion of the cost. 

Have you taken advice on the likely costs? Is it proportional to the size of the flat, or does each flat pay equal amounts, or what? Will they need scaffold? When's the roof going to need replacing?

itsthelittlethings

Personally you can’t put a price on a surveyor. When I bought my flat all the report really said was “I can’t see the roof and there’s not much storage” but nothing major was flagged.

Basically, I don’t know.

somerandomusername

RAS said:

somerandomusername said:

It's a top floor flat (2nd floor) and I went to view it last week. Checkout out the windows, had a visual inspection of the tops and bottoms of the walls / corners for damp / mould, had a look for any cracks or fractures along the interior walls etc. I'm not a professional but the flat seems perfectly fine.

It's a tiny little 1 bed flat I reckon the surveyor will be in and out of that place in about 5 minutes and it's going to cost me like £500.

And my thinking is if there is any structural issues then it's the freeholders responsibility to pay and fix it anyway, not mine. So I'm only really concerned with the inside of the flat, which appears totally fine.

If the £500 cost included inspection of plumbing and gas / boiler then I'd pay it, but it doesn't and all he's going to do is walk around looking at the walls / windows and come to the exact same conclusion I have?

It's the freeholder's responsibility to fix any structural issues and repairs of any shared "facilities".

You'll be paying for the maintenance and repairs when they send the bill for your portion of the cost. 

Have you taken advice on the likely costs? Is it proportional to the size of the flat, or does each flat pay equal amounts, or what? Will they need scaffold? When's the roof going to need replacing?

Well isn't that what the annual service charge is meant to cover anyway? In case there is an issue that needs to be fixed they have the reserve fund to pay for it. My brothers flat for example they stripped off all the cladding and made it EWS1 safe or whatever it's called. He didn't have to pay a penny towards it as the management company had enough funds to cover the refit.

RedFraggle

Cladding refits have different rules.
Is there a sink fund? It's not a given. My friend bought a flat in a block with no sink fund at all. My building had about £130k of which £50k was just spent on roof work. Without a sink fund id have had to pay my share of that (about £1k).
I didn't have a survey but could see roof works were going to be needed. I'm also quite savvy having owned multiple houses. 
Service charges are intended to cover routine shared costs, that doesn't mean you won't get a section 20 notification of major works and have to chip in your share of the costs. 

Emmia

We've had to pay our share of works - this year it was about £8k for exterior repainting and other repairs, which included scaffolding.

We've also had to fork out £2k for a new fire door to comply with updated regulations, £10k to replace windows and a exterior door that was fundamentally rotten.

We've been here over a decade and in that time there's also been two lots of interior redecoration at ~£2k - £3k a go. Plus our share of plumbing and other small maintenance issues that have arisen.

There's no sinking fund, so the leaseholders pay when the works are scheduled/required.

WIAWSNB

somerandomusername said:

It's a top floor flat (2nd floor) and I went to view it last week. Checkout out the windows, had a visual inspection of the tops and bottoms of the walls / corners for damp / mould, had a look for any cracks or fractures along the interior walls etc. I'm not a professional but the flat seems perfectly fine.

It's a tiny little 1 bed flat I reckon the surveyor will be in and out of that place in about 5 minutes and it's going to cost me like £500.

And my thinking is if there is any structural issues then it's the freeholders responsibility to pay and fix it anyway, not mine. So I'm only really concerned with the inside of the flat, which appears totally fine.

If the £500 cost included inspection of plumbing and gas / boiler then I'd pay it, but it doesn't and all he's going to do is walk around looking at the walls / windows and come to the exact same conclusion I have?

Age of building? Purpose-built, or a conversion? Who owns the Freehold - a separate individual/company, or one of the flat owners, or has the block bought it, in which case you'll presumably be one of the directors?
All the stuff about maintenance charges should already be known by the EA, I think? And the amount in the sink fund should become clear pretty soon as part of the info pack, or your conveyancer's inquiry.
I agree - it would seem a waste of money, but I'd like to be certain of the other factors above first.
Nothing to stop you knocking on a neighbour's door, either - intro and Q's. See if a flat has been bought recently - they should have all this info.

silvercar

I asked the question a few years ago on here - how does a surveyor survey a purpose built flat. Obviously, they are only looking at the individual flat, not the whole block, so they aren’t going to comment on block issues or explore the whole block for costly issues like subsidence. So I’m not really sure if there is any value in anything but the cheapest valuation.

somerandomusername

Emmia said:

We've had to pay our share of works - this year it was about £8k for exterior repainting and other repairs, which included scaffolding.

We've also had to fork out £2k for a new fire door to comply with updated regulations, £10k to replace windows and a exterior door that was fundamentally rotten.

We've been here over a decade and in that time there's also been two lots of interior redecoration at ~£2k - £3k a go. Plus our share of plumbing and other small maintenance issues that have arisen.

There's no sinking fund, so the leaseholders pay when the works are scheduled/required.

Jesus, you may as well just be the freeholder... Sounds like you kinda got scammed buying that property. 

Emmia

somerandomusername said:

Emmia said:

We've had to pay our share of works - this year it was about £8k for exterior repainting and other repairs, which included scaffolding.

We've also had to fork out £2k for a new fire door to comply with updated regulations, £10k to replace windows and a exterior door that was fundamentally rotten.

We've been here over a decade and in that time there's also been two lots of interior redecoration at ~£2k - £3k a go. Plus our share of plumbing and other small maintenance issues that have arisen.

There's no sinking fund, so the leaseholders pay when the works are scheduled/required.

Jesus, you may as well just be the freeholder... Sounds like you kinda got scammed buying that property. 

It's a 100year old building (no cladding issues) with costs split 12 ways.  The £8k represents a 10 year gap in redecoration and proper exterior maintenance... It really needed doing.

On the other prices... On one level we chose to replace the patio door, rather than bodging it with filler. It's expensive as it had to be wood, and the windows are also wooden sashes. But the room is no longer draughty and we can open the windows.

I don't think we were scammed. We got a good deal when we bought it as the seller wanted a quick sale and we were FTB with no chain - I think we paid something in the order of £80-£100k less than it could have gone for, a price that nearby flats of a similar size fetched then.

Btw freeholders don't really pay, their costs are passed onto leaseholders via management charges etc.

user1977

silvercar said:

Obviously, they are only looking at the individual flat, not the whole block, so they aren’t going to comment on block issues or explore the whole block for costly issues like subsidence.

Where did you get that idea? They'll be looking at and commenting on the common parts of the building too (to the extent they're able to see them). They're not just going to say the inside of the flat is fine and ignore the massive holes in the roof.