BISF Property - yes or no?

[Alwaysconfusedmum]

this house

This is my first post. I have offered full asking price on this property, its been undervalued by 25k in basic (bank)valuation. The report says its a BISF property which may have concealed structural issues. Shall I get full survey done before revising my offer? or Shall I just withdraw my offer and play safe...
Thanks in advance for your time and advice.

If you love the house then, yes, pay for a full structural survey if it will actually look at the potential issues. The fact is has been valued under the asking price is a big issue - especially if you need a mortgage as you will need to revise the offer or use your own money to make up the shortfall depending on the findings of any additional survey.

That's right, I should get full structural survey done to find out exact potential.
I don't love the house as it is, but I like it for practical reasons like schools, transport link etc.

Okay - well before you commit yourself to spending more money, has anything else which might be suitable come onto the market in the area since your offer was accepted?

Sorry, what is BISF?

British steel framed house (BISF) non traditional constriction.

Oh! Thankyou.

If you don't love the house, my hunch is to play it safe. But this isn't actually an informed opinion, on my part!

I've just looked up BISF houses on google and there are some useful articles about them. Looks like you need to check the base of the walls, particularly the corners, in case the steel has started to corrode and may need repairing. I personally would keep away from a house like this unless my options were very limited - in which case I would try to find a builder/surveyor who knows about these type of houses and get them to look at it before going any further. Having a full structural survey done by just anyone wont help you much - they will probably just suggest you get experts in to look at it. Go straight to the e xperts.

Thanks bilbodog !

I pulled out of a BISF house purchase last year.

It was next door to family, I always said I wanted to buy it one day (to my family) then the owner approached my relatives asking if they knew anyone who wanted to buy the house! I didn't know anything about BISF houses though and grew up in one so I just saw good size rooms and huge garden.

Everything was going through, I was a little wary as the house was in a bit of a state but it was very very cheap and we would have had a lot of money left to do it up so we kept going.

We were going through Nationwide who was our mortgage provider at the time and we had a home buyers report done which threw up several issues but we still kept going. Then Nationwide came back and said they wouldn't lend unless we had a report done by a structural engineer to assess the condition of the steel. It involved a builder removing sections of the wall in 3 or 4 places, then the structural engineer doing a report from the exposed steel. The structural engineer said it was down to the vendor to get done and pay for as if we didn't go ahead, another buyer was going to need to same thing done. The vendor was broke and couldn't do it. The structural engineer told me off the record that in 5-10 years the ones we were looking at were likely to become unsellable and similar ones nearby were already starting to have problems.

We decided it was too much of a risk and we'd never get back the money we would have had to put in to do to up as they aren't worth much to begin with.

A full survey will be no good. You will have to get a specialist survey and you have to have the vendors permit as it is invasive and involves the walls being opened up. I was also told that fewer and fewer lenders are willing to lend on them these days.

We decided not to proceed with a steel framed house last year despite it being ideal in most other ways. I just didn't want the worry of it, if it goes wrong it goes very wrong. We had no problems with mortgage offer subject to survey but you would need full survey with bricks removed etc as described blow.

Don't buy for all the reasons stated above. Just 10 years ago these houses round your parts were unsellable. For the same bucks you can
get Roding Rd, River Way, Avondale Way, Southern Drive - lovely areas and houses all 30s built.

Newmans is not that nice of an area.

I've decided to withdraw the offer. Thank you so much for helping me make my decision....

I have built up a relatively modest property portfolio that I have been fortunate enough to build up over the years which includes 3 BISF houses and four traditional brick houses.
I must first say that I have encountered many more structural problems with the brick houses than any of the BISF houses which I have found to be very easy properties to renovate.
Structural surveys are vital with any purchase, my BISF houses were all subjected to invasive surveys where a small portion of the render is removed so that the legs of the steel frame can be inspected. Four holes were cut each around 8 inches square. In every case the steel was found to be in near factory perfect condition. It cost me around £180 to have the holes repaired back to render and a local builder did this for me.

In my experience BISF houses are great properties to purchase as many people wrongly believe they are inferior or have short lives or worse they assume they are prefabs, but they are none of the above.
They have the same expected life span as a traditional brick house.

All of these false rumours only serve to keep the values slightly lower than what they should be, which is great for me as a property investor. I also have a relative who lives in one and thanks to external improvements obtained under the Governments Green Deal scheme in which a grant of £6000 was obtained toward the cost of an £8,500 external wall insulation project, they couldn't be happier as the house now looks fantastic too and is very warm.

My advice would be not to fear BISF houses. They make great homes, are easy to renovate and alter inside, have large rooms and often very large gardens at a great price too.

Just my thoughts for any future Mums in a similar position to the OP.