Would you pull out for this list of stuff on the survey? DH thinks we will end up doing just that.

[CrapBag]

We had to pull out of our last house, our buyer is getting anxious. We found another house that we really like and is bigger than we thought we could get (its in an area we initially didn't want but we have come around to that and were really excited).

Survey came back today with this list:-

Structural movement 1
Dampness, rot and infestation 3
Chimney stack 2
Roof including roof space (over the extension) 3
Rainwater fittings 2
Main walls 2
Windows and external joinery 2
External decoration 2
Outside access and boundaries 2
Drainage 3
Ceilings (artex possible asbestos?) 2
Internal walls 2
Floors including sub floors 3
Internal joinery and kitchen 2
Chimney breast and fire place 3
Internal decoration 1
Electrics 3
Gas 1
Water, plumbing and bathroom 3
Heating and hot water 3

1 is no problem, nothing needs doing
2 is something will need doing in the future
3 is immediate action needed

I admit I was shocked at the amount of 2's and 3's, in particular the 3's. There are things we just did not anticipate. Now DH is saying we will probably end up pulling out. I love this house and want it but we can't afford for it to be a money pit (if we can still get the mortgage based on this).

It was originally up for sale for £145000 and the price was dropped 5k, we offered £130000 which was turned down, then we upped it to £135000 and originally it was turned down after over a day thinking about it, then she changed her mind and accepted. I can't imagine she will be open to negotiation now that the survey has thrown up potentially costly problems.

I do want the house. I don't want to pull out and have to go through all this again. DH just thinks there are a lot of costly things to get done but this is only our second purchase and our current one is a shared ownership and not very old so we have never had to deal with big property stuff before, only minor things like windows. I don't know if we are overreacting. A survey is never going to come back perfect. This house was built in the 50's so its not really old but not new either. Any property could have the same or similar issues.

(I do have a similar thread going but I wanted an actual title that asked this question ).

I would ask whoever did the survey how it compares with other properties in the area. It may be that all the properties of that age have roof and electric needing work etc... so going for another one would raise the same problems.

Personally I would get this priced up and present the vendors with the following hard facts

The amount it will cost to sort the things out

The fact the market is slowing down

And the fact that each time they come to survey unless they get some clueless who opts not to have one they will have the same issue

Roof and floors and big big jobs

The threes are all big ticket items roof, floors, drainage, plumbing etc. I'd pull out unless you can get a significant discount.

That is tens of thousands worth of work. Electrics alone will be at least £2k and I wouldn't think there would be many jobs on there that would cost less than that. With no expertise at all other than coming out the other end of a series of works similar to (slightly less than) the works on your survey having paid £37k to get it all done at once, I'd say you would be looking at £16-20k pretty much straight away, followed by more later. You need a serious and detailed builder's estimate. Then (I've found) you should double it.

Can you photocopy parts of the survey that you are most concerned about, then send it to your solicitor asking them to query it with the seller's solicitor, saying that you feel a reduction in purchase price might be the only way you would consider going through with the purchase?

Also, bear in mind whether the house is worth £135k with or without the works, i.e. are other similar houses selling for similar prices that have already been done up?

I would try and find oout more specifically what the problems are (if that is possible).

I wouldn't worry about the 2s, but the drainage, electrics and flooring are big concerns and would cost £££ to fix.

I would pull put unless the vendor knocks a big whack off the price.

Meant to add, in this situation, I would pull out of purchase, and rent for 6 months, giving us time to look for something else. Would that be a possibility for you? Wish we had rented, rather than buying current house in a bit of a hurry, as we didn't want to lose buyer.

Definitely speak to your surveyor - they do a lot of covering themselves in the survey but are more open in a conversation.

We are also buying a 1950s house which we knew had not been maintained particularly well and had had the same family in for 25yrs

We had 3 major things flagged up in survey, one we were expecting, another which was manageable but our main worry was the electrics.

Speaking to the surveyor reassured me that it was in typical condition for a house that age, he said that surveyors were unlikely to ever mark this as no problem and will always recommend to be checked by a proper electrician. He reassured me that we did not need a full rewire but need to check some 'amateur DIYing' and get some new sockets & switches.

Could you move into rented for 6 months to alleviate the pressure of getting another house?

That list would worry me, especially roof and floors. It isn't just about the cost of fixing them but the upheaval of fixing them. Re-wiring and plumbing would be a nightmare in terms of floors up and dust and dirt.

I moved into a hotel for a few weeks between house moves as we couldn't get our completion dates to match. So there was me, Dh and Dcs aged 6 and 3 in one room with all our stuff in storage for 3 weeks and my Mum had just died. And I somehow didn't manage to have a breakdown

Rental would put you in a good position unless you have a mortgage deal which expires, but you can port them for months afterwards, it depends on the lender.

Thank you for your replies.

We aren't willing to move somewhere else in the meantime. If there are unforseen delays we will be stuck and we definitely won't go into rented as we would be paying more than double what we are now and be tied into a contract. Our buyer had already asked this and we said no.

I have been through the survey again, as has DH and I am not sure if it is as bad as it seems. The electrics is the fuse box needs updating. My friends BIL is an electrician and this is apparently £200. The heating and hot water is to do with taps losing pressure if there is more than one on, our house now does this. Plus there was a comment about the hot tap being on the right in the kitchen rather than the left which is standard, not a huge deal.

The damp bit in the kitchen floor he thinks could be down to a rip in the damp proof underfloor stuff (can't remember what its called) or a leak from the shower room which is the other side of the wall from where the floor bows slightly. No idea how bad the woodboring beetle infestation is. Got a quote of £150 for someone to asses the damp and wood.

The roof is the main one. He has noted that others in the area of the same age are being replaced and the inside bits are defective and need replacing and we should budget for the replacement of it. But to replace the inside stuff you need to take the tiles off the outside so would make sense to get it all done. No idea how much though.

One of the drain problems was it needs a bracket to fix it to the wall. Not anything major in my eyes. The fire needs checking as he doesn't know if it has a certain thing inside, but again its listed as a 3 but nothing too major IMO.

I don't know if it is as bad as we first thought but the main things that we need looking into are the roof, damp and infestation. The vendor will need to give written permission for the inspection though as he will need to lift flooring up. I just hope she is willing to do that.

Is it a doer-upper? If so, is it still significantly cheaper than similar properties on the road, that have been done up?

Still worth trying to renegotiate, we did with ours but knew it was a mess and needed a lot of work doin to it. Still, when the survey came back with some unexpected big jobs, we renegotiated their cost with the seller.

Its not a doer-upper! It looks like a well looked after, nice house. We were shocked at the things the survey has picked up. Some are minor, small cracks to be filled, bathroom needing replacing (which we knew), outside needs repainting. We also knew the windows would need doing in the future but there was a comment about how they weren't set back in the wall very far and damp could come in?! The vendor has lived there for 35 years and you can tell the house has been looked after so we were surprised at the problems. She clearly loves the house which is why she was reluctant to accept our offer.

It is about average for houses around here, maybe a little bit lower but there are a few that have been up for £140000 or more that have had to drop their prices as they weren't selling. This is the only one that has an extension on the side so it is bigger than the normal ones around here, which in my mind, would make it priced slightly higher. The surveyor did say the £135000 valuation was in the condition it was in so I am thinking she isn't going to give us a discount for the works that need doing. It is just that we weren't anticipating many of these works.

Well, I guess it all boils down to whether or not you are prepared for the ongoing maintenance that is part of owning a 60+ year old house. I think if you can get some more in-depth investigations, it may not be quite as ££££ as you first thought. Surveyors do cover themselves with ambiguous statements, so it might be worth asking to view the property once more so you can look specifically at some of the bigger issues raised in the survey.

Our house was built in the 50s and we also had some damp - turned out the old shower was leaking (black mould around grouting on the tiles) and there was no downpipe on an extension so water was penetrating the walls. Also the roof is original and we have been quoted around £4k to replace, but it is a bungalow so the roof is quite big. Our survey (full structural) was 60 pages long, there were loads of things to consider but now we are living here, it just seems part and parcel of owning a home.

I would have thought that a lot of that list would have been apparent on viewing, you have to accept as said above, that a non new house comes with ongoing maintenance, the big ticket things would be visible for all to see and I imagine the house is priced accordingly - why make an offer?!

Most of the 3s are things it's probably best to do yourself in time anyway - boiler, electrics, but anything structural, roof, chimney etc I'd be getting a 2nd opinion on. Having pulled out because the survey showed the front wall coming away from the rest of the house, there are some things that you don't want to bet getting involved with.

Don't panic. The house we've just bought and are doing up had almostly exclusively 3's for everything and a few 2's and only two 1's!! When I first read it and saw all that red I got really upset as I instantly thought we'd end up pulling out.

We didn't, as on closer inspection it wasn't half as bad as we thought. A number 3 just means action is urgently required, not that it's necessarily a big/expensive job. Eg our guttering scored a 3, but that's because it's missing a stop end and needs clearing out, so a minor job, but because it's urgent it gets a 3. Likewise the roof had a 3 but that's because there are a couple of cracked tiles and a bit of mortar that needs doing. Even the walls were given a 3 because the plaster apparently was "coming to the end of its useful life", well we've had a plasterer out to quote and it basically needs a skim throughout.

So try not to focus on the number of 3's, instead read carefully what work it actually says is needed to fix the issue. And then get some prices together to help you decide what to do.

We're glad we went ahead, the survey really scared me on first reading it, but the builder we got in to quote to put it all right said that overall the house was in good shape it was just a list of smallish jobs that it was sensible to get sorted.

Good luck whatever you decide

Sometimes surveyors give a 3 because they are not able to make much of an assessment on an item and so they say it needs an expert to look at (so the property we are buying got a 3 for electrics and boiler with advice saying should get expert to look at). However, just because fuse board and boiler are a few years old doesn't mean they are not ok. Regulations change all the time and so it doesn't take long for something's to no longer meet current standards.

That said, you do have quite a lot of 3s and not just for electrics and boiler.... it may be that they are not insurmountable if the rest of the house is perfect.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do

I would speak to him too They cover their arses big time. I fitted a whole new central heating system in the flat I am in atm. Top spec boiler etc.All the paperwork for it was at the solicitors and I said he was welcome to request it but he said I could just tell him when it was fitted and that would be fine. He then put it as a 3 on the report and said it looked about 12 years old even though I told him it was fitted in december!

Our survey was similar and we still moved in, however it wasn't our 'forever' house - we're selling it now, 4.5 yrs later and so far haven't heard anything from our buyers about their survey, done 2 weeks ago. We have done barely anything to the house.

Roof =3 because house was built in the 40s and original roof still on - however in our case there are 100+ identical houses on our road and none yet had replaced theirs so we weren't too worried.
Infestation was 3 because the surveyor "could not check every wooden beam in the loft so cannot confirm complete absence of woodworm"... wtf?!

Rainwater fittings =3 because they were old, we have had the guttering completely replaced a couple of years ago which cost about 400.

Electrics =3 because they were old and did not adhere to current regulations. An electrician said the fuse box was old but had no safety concerns. Again we have been lucky here because we didn't need to get any work done on the electrics so have been able to keep it as it is.

Boundaries = 3 because the fence doesn't quite follow the straight line it should and is slightly too far into our side where it meets the house, I think this is because a lazy fencer couldn't be bothered to cut a hole for a drain that is on the boundary. I admit we did just put our head in the sand on this and ignore it.

Ceilings = 3 because he thought it may be asbestos / artex; however it was just textured paint and the owners told us they had repainted them 6 years previously and even showed us the leftover cans of paint in the garage.

There was also a 3 somewhere because the surveyor could not find the ventilation grate for the back boiler in the chimney breast; we asked the owners and they showed it to us when we visited. And a 2 because the stairs were too steep (again, based on current bldg regulations. What exactly are we supposed to do about that?)

Anyway this all generally made me very cross as the surveyor never answered my calls as I tried to find out how much he was covering his back and how much we really should worry. We did really want the house, and it would've been snapped up at asking price if we had tried to negotiate, so we decided to go ahead on the understanding that although there may not be anything that truly immediately needed fixing, we may have to put some money into the house over the next few years. Obviously as we haven't had to really we don't regret it!

I had a lengthy conversation with the surveyor today and it is no where near as bad as we thought.

The fireplace is a health and safety thing and he advised we get someone in because current recommendations say there should be a vent. The roof needs doing as its nearing the end of its life but definitely not in the next 12 months but within a few years. The drainage is a bracket on the wall to secure the pipe as its not secured at the top. The electric is a new box and possible a few wires, not rewiring. The infestation does need immediate treatment and I have a thread on that at the moment as the EA is arranging for the specialist to go and have a look but I feel they are trying to fob me off on that one. The damp in the kitchen floor also needs checking to see its source but its not something that should require the floor replacing.

moggle we have had the asbestos comment because of artex on the ceilings. I don't actually know anyone who doesn't have bloody artex but I don't think the asbestos is enough to worry about (if it is in the artex).

He said there is nothing to say don't go ahead but just be aware that there are things that will require some money spent on them. I feel reassured after speaking to him and then we got the mortgage offer through whilst I was on the phone to him so happy days and hopefully things can now bloody progress.

Glad you had good news. I was also coming on to say it won't be as bad as you fear! Survey on the house we are buying looks awful but surveyor has confirmed it's worth what we're paying and nothing we should run away from. It's just an old house.