Home surveyor recommendations

[Simon Pieman]

Had an offer accepted on a house last week and want to get a level 3 survey done. Any recommendations for good ones or who to avoid?

[4D]

Don't your lenders usually stipulate which surveyors to use?
Unless of course you are a cash buyer? 

[horlock07]

Is it really going to tell you anything you don't know or suspect already. From experience they tend to be caveated to death with 'x looks Ok, but we recommend that you take advice from a suitably qualified professional' etc.

[Bob's Orange]

Is it really going to tell you anything you don't know or suspect already. From experience they tend to be caveated to death with 'x looks Ok, but we recommend that you take advice from a suitably qualified professional' etc.

From experience that's right. We bought an old cottage and so went for a level 3 survey. As Horlock said, basically everything that was reported was said pretty much word for word. I guess for us, as the property was older we wanted to ensure the roof wasn't totally fucked, or there wasn't some hidden nasties for us to endure. The only 'nasty' was that we had to pay some odd Chancel insurance because there was an old church in the vicinity.

FWIW we just went with the surveyor that was recommended by our solicitor.

[JBZ]

Notwithstanding the caveats, liability can still be established if certain defects are not reported on or are not adequately dealt with.

[Samdy Gray]

Yeah, as JBZ said, it's the protection for stuff that they miss that can be valuable too.

I've had prior experience with Allied Surveyors who were good.

On our recent move we had a Homebuyers report which was basically just a cut and paste checklist of stuff, but still somewhat worthwhile. The mortgage company appointed Butfield surveyors based on Corsham. I found them ok to deal with, if a little slow, but the market was crunched at that time due to the stamp duty holiday.

[Honkytonk]

We just had a survey for a house we're buying done by Camsure, super quick, good to deal with, lots of detail, and very affordable. Would recommend.

[Legends-Lounge]

A salutary lesson; When we sold our last house nearly 22 years ago it had a sturdy wooden framed porch attached to the front elevation with an apex tiled roof. After about six months the fucking thing fell off and luckily for our purchasers didn’t damage their car which was parked a mere six feet or so from the front door in one of the two allocated spaces. Our old neighbour said they were furious with us but in all honesty we had no idea it was on its way out, or in this case down. Caveat Emptor.

[JBZ]

Caveat emptor - save that, as a seller, if you make untrue statements in certain conveyancing documents, you might get sued for misrep.

[Legends-Lounge]

Caveat emptor - save that, as a seller, if you make untrue statements in certain conveyancing documents, you might get sued for misrep.

Indeed. This was 22 years ago, they only got a ‘home buyer’ valuation. We still had no idea the porch roof was soon to uncouple from the house.

[Simon Pieman]

Thanks all. I had a homebuyer survey done on a failed purchase last year, but as the house was 7 years old the report was a tick box exercise.

However this house pre-dates 1900 I definitely want it checked over.

[Briggany]

We had a lot of hassle buying our 1830's built cottage out in the sticks. First mortgage was turned down because the survey done by Virgin Money was fairly decent and found the 1980'2/90'2 extensions were not up to regulation. Annoyingly despite costing us £750 Virgin Money would not give us the survey results or any other reason as to why it failed just that "it was not up to current regulation"... the house/extensions was built way before the regulations they reference were even in place.

We then got a Homebuyers survey afterwards so we could see what the problems were and found there were damp issues, the entire extension was single skin wall bar on downstairs wall, some of the wood was rotten under the florboards and there were issues with the chimney.

We pulled out of the deal and gave the estate agent the survey to show why the house was valued at £0. Worked out in our favour as they then presented this to the previous owner who realised he couldn't sell it for the £195k he wanted. So he sold it on the cheap to a builder who corrected all the issues, sorted the damp and applied a second skin to the downstairs part of the extension, put a new heating system (we are now fully electric rather than a back boiler in the fireplace). The estate agent told the builder we were still interested if the issues were corrected and agreed to sell it to us for the original asking price.

It took 9 months to get a mortgage due to a load of other ball ache with my partner getting a new job and having a second home she wanted to rent out, the builder owning the house for less than six months, how old the cottage was, covenants and indemnity insurances. But eventually it went through after the 5th attempt at a mortgage application and we got in exactly a month before Lockdown.

As my first home I am really happy with it and touch wood so far the corrected issues haven't come back. We had to get some general maintenance work done to a few things last year.

Despite how stressful it was for 9 months of my life I can honestly say the survey we paid for saved us a lot of hassle and was a great decision. Plus living out in the middle of nowhere meant Lockdown wasn't really felt and gave us time at home get it to how we wanted it.