Cancel independent home buyers survey?

We went for independent survey this time despite it costing more.

Last time around, we had full structural surveys on two different properties by two different surveyors - both appointed by the bank. One was great (Countrywide) and one was rubbish (Wisemove). I had literally no negotiating power with the rubbish one as he had already been paid via the bank :mad: The best I could do was ask for additional comments and copy in the bank's customer services. He was not very happy at being pulled up on the standard of the survey or forthcoming in his response.

This time around I picked someone local with a (good) reputation to protect and who I paid directly.

JoJo1978 wrote: »

I'm playing devils advocate here: say the bank values the property at less than £750k. You then need to make a decision on how to proceed - walk away, find another lender, drop your offer etc.

Would you feel comfortable doing that on the basis of a survey report that the current lender commissioned? Or a survey that you had paid for?

The lender doesn't commission it, though. They commission a valuation, and they give you the opportunity to commission a survey at the same time. Furthermore, your interests are well aligned. This isn't like using the estate agent's recommendation, where their interests are vastly different to yours - the bank want to be certain that the house is good, and you want to be certain that the house is good. The only divergence is that the bank will often be more risk averse - but the surveyor will highlight anything they'll care about whether you pay for an extra report or not.

JoJo1978 wrote: »

An extra £450 for an asset potentially worth £0.75m is a drop in the ocean imo.

I'm sorry, but this frustrates me. I see this so often on this forum - comparing the price of some good or service to the price of the house, and highlighting that the former is a tiny fraction of the latter, in order to (presumably) make a point that it's not worth worrying about, or that it's justified because it could save so much more than it costs.

Sometimes, that's true. If there's some question over the title, for example, and someone's considering skimping on the legal work to investigate it, it's well worth highlighting that it's a false saving because they're putting hundreds of thousands at risk to save hundreds. Or if someone really needs to exchange quickly, but their buyer is insisting they get some thirty quid indemnity policy that's really completely pointless, it's worth highlighting that the peace of mind is probably well worth the thirty quid no matter how worthless the policy is.

Often, though, the argument is simply "X is a fraction of Y, so don't worry about X", whatever X actually is. Yes, this is a drop in the ocean compared to the house price. But (a) there are LOADS of these "drops", and between them all they really add up. And (b) a waste of money is a waste of money, no matter how little money. (And £450 is a lot of money, regardless of how it compares to an asset that you'll be paying off for half your adulthood!) This site is about money saving, and if you look at the site's articles etc, it's all very "take care of the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves". The same is true of most of the other subforums. It's only when you come into House Buying that you see people going "who cares about hundreds when you're spending thousands!".