Survey booked.

Cufcmono23

Hi all. Not sure I'm posting this in the right place but finally in a position where me and my partner are looking to move into our dream home. Sold our house and sale agreed another. Our buyers have booked a survey for 2 weeks from now and I've never been as nervous in my life. We've been on the property for over 20 years and it's an old house with plenty of cracks around the garden paths as well as the outside drain. I don't think these have gotten any worse but I've somehow convinced myself it could be subsidence. Is it possible to have subsidence without any cracks to walls etc?

mebu60

If the cracks not worsened over 20 years it's unlikely to be subsidence. An old house will inevitably show its age in one way or another. The surveyor will come and do his/her job, the prospective buyer/s will receive the report. They may try to use something in there to get a reduction in price. If they are FTBs they may take fright at all the caveats and CYA word salads used by the surveyor. But most likely they (and their mortgage provider if applicable) will be quite happy.

Try to think of other more positive things in the interim like your plans for the new place. Deal with the outcome of the surveyor's report when it happens. In all probability it will be a non-issue. Your buyers know it's an older property, it's not like they haven't seen it (I assume!).

Cufcmono23

Thankyou for the reply. They are FTB's and when doing the viewing they did point out some of the cracks and did seem to appreciate that it's an older house so would have some imperfections. I'm probably worried for nothing. It's less than 2 weeks until the survey so hopefully it all goes smooth and I can finally relax.

Bigphil1474

Be prepared to work with the buyer to a degree. We sold our house twice. First buyer pulled out after the survey. We eventually got a copy of the survey and the only thing of real note was some damp in the cellar, and a bit of mould in the bay window to the front. We paid about £1,500 to get some works done, and when the second buyer got their survey report, they were happy with it. If the first buyer had spoken to us about the issues we would have got the works done anyway, or knocked something off the price. Second buyers were a lot more sensible. Hope yours are too.

Guna

As a buyer, a survey report can be quite a scary thing. "Word salad" sounds about right. It's unlikely that the house has any serious issues if cracks didn't change in the last 20 years but it all depends on how sensible the buyer is.

There were couple of scary-sounding things in my report but it was all largely hypothetical - there "may be" asbestos tiles on the roof!!! There "may be" damp accumulating under the floor boards due to air brick being a bit lower than the standard, tiny extension flat roof "may need" replacing at some point… I looked at it and thought, ok, most of the things are a weekend job for a strapping lad with a shovel (clear gutters, replace drain pipe, lift some paving slabs to lower ground level under the air brick and relay the slabs). It's fine and not something to bother worrying about.

Hopefully your buyer would take a similar approach. Most things on the survey are just normal house maintenance.

stuart45

It's quite common for a concrete path to have cracks. It doesn't mean that the house has subsidence. The old saying in the trade is that ' There's two types of concrete. Cracked concrete and concrete that's about to crack.

Albermarle

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81921284#Comment_81921284

We have regular threads on here where people are panicking about survey results. Usually FTB's but not always.

Sometimes of course there is a potentially serious issue, but normally not. A common worry seems to be how old the boiler is/has it been serviced/got a gas safety certificate. OK nobody wants to move in and be faced with a £3K bill to replace the boiler, but compared to some problems a house can have it is not a major issue, certainly not any kind of deal breaker that some people seem to think it might be.