Bought a house.... now find out that it may have had repairs for subsidence

[DogsDontDoBallet]

We moved into our house a couple of months ago. There was no mention of subsidence or structural problems in any of the info provided by the vendor or in the survey (homebuyers). We've just discovered that the house may have previously undergone some major work and possibly repairs for subsidence

We need to do some more digging but basically I would like to know the following if anyone can assist please.

• When in the house buying process would you expect to find out about a history of subsidence?
• If the vendor doesn't declare it (possibly because they didn't know either) would it show up elsewhere?
• Where does this leave us in terms of insurance etc?
• How much should I be panicking?

Thanks

Can't answer all your questions but we sold our house a year ago. It had subsidence 10years previously. The surveyor realised (don't know how) and asked us about it. We were able to show all the paperwork relating to it. Only thing I think it affected was that the buyers had to have house insurance with the same people we had gone through.

Sorry that isn't much help. Surely the surveyor should have picked it up?

Sorry you have found yourself in this situation. we bought our house knowing it had been underpinned ~ it came up in the sellers property info form. also there was a building regs certificate with the deeds (we found building regs at our local council very helpful in giving more info tho we did have to pay £60 for a formal letter from them). We did have some issues getting insurance but used Adrian Flux who got us a policy (with a larger excess for subsidence) without us needing more surveys.

Underpinned! That's the word I couldn't remember. Thankyou daisy.

It would have come up in the property questionnaire and/or any enquiries your solicitor made. If the vendor knew about it (and it is likely that they knew or were told when they bought) and didn't tell you, you have a claim for misrepresentation. If they did mention it and your solicitor didn't tell you, you may have a claim for negligence against your solicitor.

As a first step, I'd speak to your solicitor and check the papers from when you bought.

Just spoke to DH and he is convinced that we were the ones to bring it up first on some paperwork that we had to complete.

Thanks for the replies.

The house definately hasn't been underpinned as we think that would be obvious so we are thinking more minor repairs.

The vendors were definately asked about any subsidence/structural problems and they answered "no". It looks like these repairs were done before they bought the house so potentially they weren't told about it either. Not sure where we stand if that is the case.

We only had the Homebuyers report done on the house but that was on the advice of the surveyor himself. Its a slightly odd property so we discussed with him first. He advised a Homebuyers would be fine given the age (circa 1990) plus he had already surveyed the house when our vendors bought it and no obvious problems.

It seems crazy that you can buy a house and things that happened prior to the current owner you could potentially not find out. I would have thought it would come out in the searches or something.

We will see what we find out today.... I may be back for more advice!

We had a coal authority search which highlighted there had been a claim relating to structural movement.

Owner was deceased so property questionnaire didn't highlight anything. We still don't know if any work was actually carried out, it was quite common in this area for people to claim off the coal board without doing the work.

There are a couple of insurance companies that are only concerned with subsidence if in the last 10 years so we went with one of them.

I am no expert but I had a feeling that if the prev owners knew about subsidence and didn't declare it when asked then you can sue the pants of them. (Disclaimer: that was armchair legal advice)

The vendors were definately asked about any subsidence/structural problems and they answered "no".

yes you could sue them IF a) you could prove they knew about the underpinning and lied and b) the house would be worth more if it hadn't had the underpinning.

However, if it's been underpinned the problem should be fixed so personally I wouldn't be too worried.

note for others: there is no duty for sellers to proactively mention problems if they are not asked, which is why you should always get your solicitor to ask questions about subsidence history (it is not on all standard vendor question lists either).

If it has been fixed thats great but I would have liked to have all the information before buying the house. Its unlikely that we would have bought it if we had known about the problems as the house already had other compromises and we certainly didn't get any sort of bargain because of it.

Does anyone know if we would have any right of recourse against the previous seller who potential didn't declare i.e the person to sold to our vendor? Im guessing not...

Im still hoping its just a mistake and someone has got the wrong end of the stick. Its certainly an easy way to take the shine off your nice new home. Especially as we thought we had done everything correctly.

if there is no paperwork you caan go to the council who will have a record of the approval of the work done. that;s what we had to do...we found out during the selling process and had to get a structural engineer in to do a report before any insurance would touch us...good luck!

Oooh thanks Marilyn, that's interesting. I was thinking that there must be a record of it somewhere- building regs or something.

does anyone know whether that should have come up on the local authority searches?

Bumping as this thread seems to have disappeared for me (its on my threads but not on the board) can anyone else see it?

Hi - I just found your thread in active threads. I'm afraid I have no real advice but hopefully when you get more information on timescale, you'll know whether your sellers lied to you or not.

Just one more thought - if the property was built in 1990 and the work was done in the 10 years after that the NHBC may have some records as most new builds have a ten year warranty (or the original builder). I don't think it'd show up on the local authority searches.