Large diagonal crack in estate agent details photo - subsidence on second floor?

[itstrainingmen]

There's a house we're interested in but we have not viewed yet - it's a large old Victorian house in an area we already live in which has a subsidence problem (normal London clay thing). We are aware of this and used to it causing a few minor cracks in our own old house.

This other house has a large crack apparent in one of the photos. It's diagonal from a window frame which is normally characteristic of subsidence isn't it? The thing is the estate agent said that that photo is on the second floor (which is correct) and subsidence normally shows lower down on ground and first only.

Does that sound feasible? What else could it be. OBVIOUSLY IF we went down the route of pursuing this we'd get a proper survey but I just wondered at this stage and don't want to waste my time or anyone else's even with viewings if it's a real duffer.

It has been on the market about 6 months with a price reduction but it was probably over-priced before. Then it was up for auction but that didn't happen as it was withdrawn beforehand...fishy?!

Get a proper structural engineer or the like to survey it for you, if you are really interested in it. Someone whose insurance you can rely on, if they give dodgy advice.

And get the vendor to reduce the price (at least) by the cost of the survey and cost to fix the problem.

Bear in mind that it may not be mortgageable in its current condition.

If you don't want to spend the money on a proper report, then you need to accept that that house is not for you!

It's not that we wouldn't want to spend the money on the survey, it's more that we were not planning on moving really and it's very early days.

Mortgage not an issue.

Money pit of a house probably would be but as you say a decent structural engineer would mean we'd go in with our eyes open and insurance if it were wrong.

We got interested in a house about a year ago with diagonal cracking starting from above the window frames, on both sides to produce something that looked like a massive triangle of brick which had basically dropped a bit and was resting on the top of the window frame - is that the kind of cracking you mean?

We got a reputable local builder out to have a look and he thought it looked like lintel failure, more than likely caused by replacing the original wooden weight-bearing frames with uPVC. He very firmly told us that we'd need a structural survey and an engineer's report, but that if he was right it would be about £5k to put right plus the cost of replacing the windows which would probably have warped under the weight, plus the making good internally etc.

However... when we spoke to two different mortgage advisors, both told us to forget the property on the grounds that we were extremely unlikely to get a mortgage on a house with a structural problem of any kind in the current housing market/ climate.

We lost interest and walked away as it all suddenly seemed too hard at that point!

Yes it could well be something similar from your description. It's a local house dh and I have always admired and said if it came up we'd be interested. It has some features we'd like but honestly don't actually need and we love where we are now. We can afford the other house although we'd have to do it up in stages I suppose. Now thinking that although it'd be great if it worked out and when done up, it's not worth the risk and more so the upheaval of a move and refurb that isn't essential to our lives. Plus it's ridiculously bigger than what we need which seems wasteful.