Run away? Victorian terrace survey help

Bearwithme84

Hello friendly folks! Clueless FTB here, so thanks in advance for your patience and insight. Any thoughts are very welcome and so appreciated.

In the process of purchasing a late Victorian end terrace in the North of England. Trying to be very sensible about survey, but it's so tricky when you don't have any context or experience!

I'm not worried about the gas, electrics bits (I think that's right, but maybe not?!) - we have seen the boiler service paperwork for instance

. Main areas giving me pause are the cellar, removed chimney breasts, external render / the considerations around damp.

I don't think there's anything here that makes me want to run for the hills, but I do wonder what more experienced eyes might think the next steps are? Pay a builder to come have a look and provide some estimates and look at some renegotiating? Or are there no grounds for that?

Why don't they cover this in school!!

user1977

Nothing looks a dealbreaker (assuming it wasn't priced as being in perfect condition). Handy list of maintenance jobs to get your teeth into after you move in.

silverwhistle

I'd add that a lot of that seemed to be !!!!!!-covering by the surveyor, although I'd also add my expertise is probably similar to yours!

michael1234

"The wiring is undertaken in pvc cables". You don't say….

Not advising it, nobody will agree with me, but I don't rate surveys at all. If buying with a mortgage you need one but otherwise why do I need to know how many light switches there are…

FreeBear

Signs of previous damp treatments including injected DPC - These "cures" do nothing to fix the root cause of any damp and end up doing considerable damage to the building. The surveyor "recommends" getting a damp proofing contractor in to take a look. Poor advice, as this contractor will try to sell you another round of what ever treatments are in vogue. As evidenced by previous work, these treatment do not work in the long term. Only mask the problem for a few years.

External cement render on a solid brick wall would trap moisture and exacerbate any existing damp issues. Personally, I'd walk away from this one and find another property that hasn't been ruined.

RelievedSheff

Absolutely nothing there that is a surprise for a property of that age.

Don't forget that it is the surveyors job to find faults, that is what they are being paid to do.

The damp will be the biggest task to sort out. Sorting out the ventilation will go a long way to helping, old buildings need to breathe and modern building materials just don't allow for that. It isn't an unsolvable problem though it will just take some time.

Running a dehumidifier in the short term in the affected rooms will help dry things out until the water ingress is fully addressed.

Bigphil1474

Our old house had a cellar that was damp. Didn't affect the house too much. After the first buyer pulled out due to damp issues in their survey, we installed some mechanical ventilation, and also fitted a French drain on the outside of the back wall. Did a bit of repointing as well. Think we spent about £2.5k in total. That did the job. Damp is a tricky one as you need to sort the cause out, not hide it with chemical injections into the wall.

lfc321

Nothing that looks too scary to me. I've lived happily in several victorian terraced properties and all of them had pretty much all of these issues. It is very rare to find one with zero damp. Cellars in particular are always damp whatever you do. Dehumidifiers, if necessary, are fairly cheap to buy and run. Whether that's necessary will depend on what you plan to use the cellar for.

Personally, I would want to either see a certficate or get someone to look at the removal of the chimney breast, to make sure whatever remains is properly supported (or has been fully removed).

It's true that the roof will need re-doing at some point, but it doesn't sound like that's urgent and it may well outlast your ownership of the property.

Can't see any pictures of the render that is causing concern, so it's hard to comment on that. But at some point I would probably consider removing that - as Freebear says, render tends to create more damp problems that it solves. Properly pointed brickwork shouldn't need rendering.