Have you tried moving all the contents of a house, even a small one? It is incredibly hard work and difficult to pack to ensure no damage. You might also find your insurance will not cover any damage in transit or loss. I would recommend getting a number of quotes, some you will find are double others.
House surveys can be described as follows.
Valuation - agent drives by the house
Homebuyers - agent gets out of car and walks around inside and outside house
Full - agent check property thoroughly to see if correctly build and obvious faults, but will not check, electrics, plumbing, heating, appliances, etc.
My advice would be to go and look closely at the house. Take your time and make notes. Do not worry about offending the vendor, he may be trying to cover something up that you will only discover once you move in. Check for cracks in walls (inside and out), see if floors are level (a bottle is useful), do all the lights and sockets work, do all the windows and doors fit well, are there any damp patches on the walls or ceilings (especially under a bathroom), check all taps and flush any toilets, have any of the rooms been decorated recently - if so ask why, are kitchen cupboards fitted securely, check the loft, etc., etc. All of these checks are what a full survey will cover. You might find it useful to take a pair of binoculars to check the roof.
If you do not feel you have sufficient knowledge to do these checks then take someone you know and trust with you, but do not get distracted from the job in hand. As the house is only 5 years old you should have few problems, but a chat with a few of the neighbours might prove useful to see if the house has had any problems.
Alternatively you can pay a surveyor.
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Roger
A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
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If you use common sense you can spot any major problems yourself, especially in a property of that age. If your're not comfortable with that either take a knowlegeable friend or give a decent builder a few drinks to do a viewing with you.
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If the house is 5 years old my first question is what was on the land 10 years ago. Homebuyers can be excellent or pretty poor, as ever it depends on the surveyor. A local surveyor may have knowledge about the area or the development you may be unaware of. My sister bought a new house and wasn't going to have a survey. I advised her to and a number of problems were found. Look at is as insurance, a Homebuyers should cost you no more than a few hundred pounds probably less than your car insurance, but it could find something which may cost thousands to fix. If you don't have the survey it's your problem, if you do then at least you can blame someone else.
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>>If you don't have the survey it's your problem, if you do then at least you can blame someone else
You jest, of course. Surveys are full of 'it appears that', 'we are led to understand that', 'may', 'possibly' etc etc followed by advice to get in an 'expert'.
If you look at what surveyors actually say you'll find their backsides are covered by all manner of get-out clauses and waffle phrases.
>>My sister bought a new house and wasn't going to have a survey. I advised her to and a number of problems were found.
Do you mean brand new? If so, these sound like the sort of 'snags' which are pretty common and the builder will fix. If it's an old house, how much would the faults have cost to fix against the cost of a survey? Were they so bad that an aware person couldn't spot them? If your sister doesn't know a soffit from a lintel then yes, she needs some guidance, but that could be provided in better ways than a survey.
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"Do you mean brand new? If so, these sound like the sort of 'snags' which are pretty common and the builder will fix. "
Yes brand new. Snags are minor errors made during construction. Failures such as roof edgings being placed the wrong way so drip tips don't do their job causing water to cascade down the walls causing damp, air bricks below soil level (my sister didn't even know they were there) etc aren't snags, they are major problems with potentially expensive repairs. My sister would never have noticed these. I did and so did her surveyor so they were put right before she completed.
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A previous boss had no survey done on a 7 year old house "because it is covered by some wonderful guarantee"
After dry rot was sorted, gas main, internal walls,half a staircase and a lot of block flooring was replaced etc. etc. he was left with a £550 plumbing bill that was not covered by anything. After gathering data re bad workmanship from adjacent properties and with a threat of going to court, the builder payed the balance.
A good friend of mine bought a new house and after several years the CH was performing badly.
To cut a long story short, eventually a split pipe in the concrete floor of the hall was found.
This had been leaking from day one and had been the root cause of the boiler being totally clogged up with scale.
Always get someone with experience to check over things as much as possible.
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15 years ago my parents bought a house at the plans stage with just the foundations started. During the build a surveyor kept a check on how it was being constructed, even making the builder replace a floor joist as it had a shake and twist in the timber. Before completion the surveyor checked the house over fully and found 3 pages of A4 paper of things wrong. The biggest being the kitchen had been wrongly plumbed in and no hot water came out of the hot tap and meant floorboards had to be lifted (luckily before any carpets had been fitted). It took the builder 3 days with up to 10 men to correct all the faults. So even new homes need to be checked thoroughly, more so than one that has been lived in for a few years.
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Roger
A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
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So even new homes need to be checked thoroughly, more so than one that has been lived in for a few years.>>
There's a lot to be said for owning an 1880s Victorian three-bedroomed semi-detached....:-)
They just don't build 'em like that today, as many other owners in my town will testify.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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They just don't build 'em like that today, as many other owners in my town will testify.
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My neighbours say that about their 1930s houses which were the same build as mine .
Well I think mine was built by a load of cowboys with very little idea of how to do a reasonable job.
There are both design errors and build errors plus quality control issues.
The list of bad workmanship is large but that does not stop them being in huge demand.
I bought it knowing some of the poor workmanship but I live with it and have corrected some shortcomings.
I am just a DIY type not an expert.
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They just don't build 'em like that today, as many other owners in my town will testify.
I agree, any poor construction in an old house will have been fixed by now, or if not, it's not so bad as to make the house uninhabitable.
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a lot of 1880s homes were badly built. In fact the term "jerry built" comes from that period. Poor foundations, substandard mortar, badly made bricks, poor joinery you name it all the sins were comitted in that period.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Unfortunately for Stuartli, who lives near Liverpool, the term "jerry built" originated there in the mid-late nineteenth century.
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>>My sister would never have noticed these. I did and so did her surveyor so they were put right before she completed.
My point exactly. You spotted it.
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You should have done it for free then! ;-)
And you should know it ain't rocket science then.
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"a lot of 1880s homes were badly built. In fact the term "jerry built" comes from that period. Poor foundations, substandard mortar, badly made bricks, poor joinery you name it all the sins were comitted in that period."
Yes TVM, but 130 years or so later they're still around doing a reasonable job of keeping the rain out unlike some 1960s and 1970s stuff.
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The things which worry me are those which require a detailed inspection to find. I looked at a 1960s bungalow which had had had a kitchen range removed. I queried what had had been done about the chimney and so I looked in the roof space. The chimney was corbelled to one side by about 30 cm (a feature which I'd never seen before) and (for several reasons) I ended up having a structural engineer look at the property. Even he couldn't see what supported the chimney! Needless to say I didn't buy the property.
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L\'escargot.
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had had had a kitchen range removed. I queried what had had been done about the chimney
Doh ~ delete a "had" in both places!
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L\'escargot.
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Responding to the OP - I woudn't bother with a homebuyers survey. We refuse to do them. Spend more money on a building survey and there will be less caveats and more detail and more chance of sueing if it goes wrong later.
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Many thanks for all the replies - most useful.
Ed.
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>>I ended up having a structural engineer look at the property. Even he couldn't see what supported the chimney! Needless to say I didn't buy the property.
So your engineer agreed with you, and you didn't buy the property - at a total cost of £800. A builder would have removed the chimney for less.
If you have a pair of eyes in your head and a bit of common sense, a surveyor is generally a waste of money.
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So your engineer agreed with you, and you didn't buy the property - at a total cost of £800.
As I recall the fee was less than half that amount and the survey covered items other than the chimney. This was in Lincolnshire where prices for professional services are reasonable.
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L\'escargot.
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Years ago i worked on a farm which was part of an estate near Sutton Scotney.
Up to the year before we arrived there they had a gang of estate workers who went around maintaining the estates buildings etc.
Well the beancounters got there and out went the estate workmen and in came the cowboys.
We were put into a very small house (tythed) on the promise that next door was going to be extended.
Well all quotes in and the cheapest got the job.
They were team that at the onset really defined what cowboy builders looked like ie big fat boss man, elderly shovel holder upper with fag permantly hanging in the corner of his gob and a clueless nipper.
They took so long that we actually left for another job ages before they finished but i had the exquisite delight of looking around their workmanship during and after they had finished, exquisite because we did not have live there so we could laugh.
They had extended the roofline buy joining the roof timbers with one nine inch nail per timber, this caused the roof to flex in winds and the tiles to pop off.
The walls of the rooms upstairs did not actually reach the cealings.
The good chaps had put the immersion tank in, pity no pipes in or out.
I got my wifes uncle ,who was an ex builder to have a look and he was deeply shocked.
I think the funniest bit was the fact that they had taken it upon themselves to connect the phone up and this was neatly done by bashing a hole through next door and connecting to their phone.
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