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.