Surveyors Liabilities

zolablue25

Hi
Apologies if this has already been covered but a cursory glance through recent postings didn't show anything up.

We bought a house in 2000 that was built in 1929. We took out the middle type survey (notthe mortgage companies valuation survey but the next one up) and the surveyor stated that there was no evidence of subsidence. We have recently had soem work repaired under our insurance for movement cracks that have been put down to faulty drains. We have spoken to our neighbours about subsidence and they said that all of the houses around ours are suffering from subsidence and that the people that sold us our house carried out cosmetic repairs to superficially cover uo damage. On top of this I have been around with a spirit level and found doors and floors to be significantly out of true (doorframes over 1cm lower one side than the other).

My question is... If we have to have the house underpinned can we claim anything against the surveyors for the inevitable loss of property value?

Thanks in advance for any help here.

Doozergirl

Does your house have subsidence or is it just showing signs of settlement? Most houses that age will show signs of settlement. I think wonky door frames are part and parcel of that.

I have no experience in a professional capacity but I do own an old and wonky house! You are looking for some pretty good cracks, inside and out, getting significantly worse over a period of time. Is there anything else? My feeling is that the previous owners had been successful in covering signs of 'subsidence', they could only be very temporary and you will have seen quite dramatic changes since you have been there for five years.

The only way to know for sure would be to engage the services of a structural engineer. They would also be able to tell you whether you had some kind of claim against the surveyor, but I would bet anything that your surveyor has written some kind of disclaimer into his report to cover his back.

zolablue25

We've definitely had some hefty cracks which have just been repaired as part of the ongoing insurance claim. Our neighbours have been in their house for fifty years and they have twice patched up their house and the main crack totals (over the two repairs) approx 5cm. Like I say we have had movement but the insurance company reckons its due to a long standing drainage problem.
You're probably right about the disclaimer though. Kind of makes you wonder what the point is of asking so-called experts.

Doozergirl

Crikey, have you had the structural engineer round then? It's worth checking to see if you have the original report still. See what it says and talk to your solicitor?

Too late for you, but we've learnt to get the pro's in rather than have a survey done now. They always say to get professional reports done like damp & timber, structural etc, so what's the point in a survey? We call in the builder and the structural engineer. Between the two of them, we get a good idea of what's wrong with a house.

bankersmug

I have had a not dissimliar experience. I bought my house in 2001,and had a full structural survey carried out. The survey was largely favourable and did not identify any problems.
Then,after I'd spent a fortune on fees,late on in the proceedings,I was informed by the owners direct and via solicitors that 3 years previously that it had been underpinned.
I chose to purchase anyway since when I made the bid of £72500 months previously,house prices had sky-rocketed and I would not have been able to afford a property,full stop.
In itself the underpinning was not a problem as this(I was informed by builders/architects in the know) made it more solid,not less. However,it does mean that I can only be insured with the existing insurer and that means paying about £680 per annum (although this includes contents).

If I have one niggling wish it's that I should've contacted the surveyor to demand an explanation but in my naievity I thought that since I'd chosen to buy I wouldn't have got any satisfactory explanation or recourse.

If anyone could suggest to me if there's still a course of action to take 4 years on I'd be grateful to know.

Debt_Free_Chick

Sometimes people refer to the problems that result from damaged drains as "subsidence" when they're not. What I mean is ... subsidence is usually a term that refers to land slippage due to another reason e.g. old mining works. Where "subsidence" is due to damaged drains, it's usually easy to remedy AND covered by insurance (to be fair, subsidence is usually covered too, but with a higher excess). Fix the drains and the "subsidence" is usually halted too, although underpinning may be required. Subsidence due to other causes, especially old mining works, cannot be so easily halted.

So ... what exactly do the neighbours mean by "all of the houses around ours are suffering from subsidence and that the people that sold us our house carried out cosmetic repairs to superficially cover uo damage"? Do they mean that all the houses have had the drains problem? Not unusual with a house of that age as old clay pipes do deteriorate over time - they crack, which leads to water/waste seeping out into the surrounding ground, usually running under the house and causing the "subsidence".

As already suggested, door frames being out of true is probably just normal settlement. If you measured the walls, or try to hang patterned wallpaper into the corners, you'll find they're not true either!

The only way to get complete peace of mind on this is to get a survey from a structural engineer. But I guess you had that as part of the insurance work ... .didn't you?

zolablue25

Well there's another story! We first put in a claim for damaged drains back in April 2003 and in October someone came around to fix them. I contacted the insurance company to ask whether there would be some structural damage as we had a number of cracks and they immediately appointed a loss adjuster. Their structural engineer came around and said that all the cracks were due to other reasons as were the fact that the doors didn't close and he would send me a copy of his report explaining everything. No report ever turned up. As luck would have it about 12 months later we were re-contacted by the loss adjusters saying that the previous guy had left and the person taking over his file had found our £50 excess cheque. Could we please send him another. I phoned the new guy and said that actually we weren't happy and could they check the place again. A new guy came and straight away said that the damage was subsidence (albeit due to the drainage problem). So in reality we have had 3 different structural engineers round and 2 of them failed to spot the damage.

The whole area is built on rather sandy ground with underground streams etc running through it and a number of houses have been underpinned or rebuilt. One of them down the road was rebuilt on a concrete 'float'. So I guess you can see why I'm worried.

As for the door frames, normal settlement coud account for it but I don't know how much movement there is in 'normal settlement'. Is more than a cm across one door frame excessive or normal?

Anyway thanks for all your interest and comments.