We paid £600 to get the house surveyed before we bought it....

[TheNoiseHurts]

...just in case something huge like the roof needed doing.

We got what we thought was a decent surveyor with good reviews.

We have lived here 6 weeks, the roof is leaking and is going to cost us 8-9k to repair.

What exactly is the point of surveyors?!

Fuck.

We had exactly the same thing. We even specified when we hired the surveyor “please have a good look at the roof”. The report said it was ‘consistent with its age’ which is a clever cover-all term but we needed an entire new roof within a couple of years. Many many thousands of pounds later, I am not sure why anyone bothers with surveys really.

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This is why we've never had one done. Not really worth the paper they're written on.

You can't sue your solicitor unless you specifically asked them to enquire about something. Solicitors deal with the title to the property, we are not surveyors,we don't visit the property.

Oh yes they are.

You do need to know what they are, and what are not though.

That was a response to 'Not worth the paper they're written on' of course!

Our neighbours had a builder look at their house, a lot more thorough and a lot cheaper. A builder will recognise a problem more quickly imo.
Tbf to our surveyor though he warned us that all our double glazing was in a poor state and he was absolutely correct.

@Mildura yes - you can sue for misrepresentation.

Definitely worth a go, you have a particularly strong case if you completed very recently and the fault is apparent. They can’t exactly claim it didn’t rain in 2019!

The cost doesn't sound that crazy. My mum had her end of terrace bungalow roof done last year and it was £4K, she also had to have scaffolding etc. As your house has 5 bedrooms I'm guessing the roof is probably twice as large and you're in a house so twice as much might be about right?

I would definitely go back to them - a full structural survey should have looked in the loft and if the damage was visible it should have been picked up on.

@amazon - can you? On what basis? It's caveat emptor and the OP got a survey.

You can obviously sue surveyors. Them and conveyancing solicitors are a professional negligence teams bread and butter!

What does the report say about the roof? Did the surveyor go up into the loft/roof space?

been awhile since we bought but the last 2, other than the survery required for the mortgage (of which you here terrible tales), we always taken a builder around - get a much better picture of what the structure is really like.
Had one surveyor around when we were selling our first flat, who challenged me on the price we wanted as the flat 'had no central heating'. It crossed my mind for a brief second to let it ride and see what he said in the report but thought better of it as it would be me who would have had to take another day off work to show him the boiler, and several large radiators, one of which I painted navy blue, another a tan colour and a third orange. In my defence it was the 1980s and it made perfect sense at the time. So I pointed out said radiators to this apparently professionally qualified surveyor.....

You have my sympathy. We had to do a full roof replacement a year ago, but have owned the house since 2003. There was no roof felt at all, they discovered. Just shingles (tiles?) nailed to the plywood roof deck. The person we bought the house from bragged about the new roof. Obviously he left off the felt to save a few quid, knowing it wouldn't be revealed before completion.

They don't use felt anymore (at least not in the US). They use a tough artificial membrane that is both waterproof and tear resistant. The plywood deck was waterlogged and rotting, so we had to replace the whole bloody thing. That was really expensive.

If the problem was just with your felt I don't think the inspector would have seen it from the loft. All he can inspect from under the roof is the deck.

Our roof was flagged red in our survey - 'immediate attention required'. Not unexpected to us, as most of the neighbouring properties have had the original roofs replaced. We finally got round to replacing it 8 years after we moved in (and still wasn't leaking at this point, but we'd lost a few slates over the autumn and thought better get it sorted before it causes problems).

What did the survey say about the roof?

What does the survey say about the roof, was it accurate and were they able to see the whole lift space from the hatch. Was it with a torch or was There lighting in the loft? Is the roof leaking or is the insulation blocking the air flow and the roof is sweating?

Even a small roof repair can cost quite a lot because of the cost of the scaffolding, which can easily add £1000 to the bill.

Just has another quote of 12k 😫

For those saying he shouldn't be expected to go to the roof - he wouldn't have needed to.
He just needed to go in the loft and see the felt...

Ok, that's excellent for your case. Was the relevant part of the attic accessible? Did he access it? What did he say about it?

When you look at RICS guidance for this type of survey (which gives the structure of the document - headings and sub-headings that should be used), did he include and fill in the relevant sub-headings? What didn't he say, that he could and should have done?

What did the latest roofer to quote say about your predicament? That is, what did they think your surveyor could and should have seen and understood by that?

Essentially, stop feeling sad, get angry - and start gathering evidence! Evidence; photos, verbal quotes from these roofers, plus their actual quotes, are what you need.

Just looked at the survey and looked at all the small print.

He accessed the roof and said it was in good order (via the loft and ladder to the outside).

I've called and emailed him to ask about it.

If he refuses to help, do ombudsman help with this kind of thing?

Small claims court?

They often don’t go in the loft either. Look for evidence that there have been previous repairs internally.

We complained to our surveyor for the same issue, repeatedly. It ended up with the Ombudsman and then when he still didn’t pay he was reported to RICS by the Ombudsman, he did (eventually) pay up, but what we got was around 50% of the cost of repair.

We did ask the house insurers legal team, who said suing wasn’t as straightforward as it sounded, so my advice would be:

Take LOADS of pictures, look at what the evidence shows in the report especially if the condition has been noted at the time. In our case they mentioned the cracked ceiling, and attributed it to the wrong cause. We didn’t have pictures of everything mainly as we had a house full of people and water coming through the roof, but the Ombudsman didn’t discuss the case with us/ you just have to send your evidence. So in short, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT. And you may be lucky that the surveyor you used is a nice, normal, honest one, not like the utter s*^% bag we used.

Actually, I never thought to ask the roofers what they thought. I will message them, thank you.

As far as I can see, he filled in the relevant parts. It looks very well written out.

What he hasn't said is that the felt needs replacing and so do the tiles because they are all very old and worn.

Something that doesn't occur over night or in the few weeks between surveying and moving in/experiencing leaks.

x posted, thank you!

I gave you detailed advice yesterday. Please take a deep breath, read through the thread and read that.