settlement not subsidence - too good to be true?

[poocatcherchampion]

we've just had a structural engineer report on the house we want to by, where our homebuyers survey had suspected subsidence.

the investigation concluded it is settlement and has been addressed and so all is well. the investigation was done by the vendor's home insurance and they are going to provide us with the report for our mortgage provider.

anyone know if this is really likely to be it or is there anything else we need to look out for, like future insurance probs or something else?

From what my surveyor told me in a similar position, it's all about passing on liability. So if you have a surveyor's report that says its fine, then the home insurance company can claim from her insurance company if anything is wrong. That said we still had problems getting insurance for a while but i think it was all miscommunication. In the end I had to get the surveyor to help me answer the insurance company's questions. In the end it was just big standard insurance but it got stressful for a while. Apparently the existing insurers have to cover you, so you could take on the current policy.

IMO homebuyers reports will be ultra cautious as they don't actually check these things properly. So I would be happy if they addressed it further and concluded settlement. Settlement is normal. You could get a structural surveyor to look at it properly. The survey on our house was done on Friday and the surveyor spent 2 hours looking at the outside of our house (a small victorian 3 bed semi!).

The way I see it is, if you can get insurance on it and not at a high premium then I would be comfortable with it, they are the experts and the ones who will ultimately be paying out.

We had a structural engineer out to ascertain that the house we were buying had settlement, not subsidence. Some insurance companies still won't touch you, but plenty will, and it wasn't overly expensive.

No one can ever give you 100% reassurance unless the house has been monitored for some time. Hopefully the structural engineer will give you a more informed view though. Usually they will let you know off the record whether you should run away or not.

Good luck