Is a home buyers survey worth it? (£800)

[SoftlyCatchyMonkey1]

It's a 30 year old house. All the other searches have come back fine. My dad and brother in law have had a look at the house and determined there's no evidence of damp / rot / subsidence etc (I trust them)

£800 is a lot of money to us. I'm thinking if there's no evidence of any deal breaking problems then to just leave the survey.

What do you lovely mumsnetters think?

We had a homebuyers survey done & it was a complete waste of money. May as well of stuck with the basic mortgage valuation. It flagged up literally everything to get further reports on & was a huge arse covering pile of crap. On an older house in future I'd get a structural survey done, but on a 30-year-old house, if nothing obvious shows then the mortgage valuation will suffice. I bought a 60's chalet bungalow mortgage free & had no survey at all because I really couldn't afford it. The guy who surveyed my own house had been in houses in the street before & told me they were basically fine & if I hadn't noticed anything not to bother. I wouldn't recommend that tbh, but I wouldn't waste cash on another homebuyers either!

Spent £1.5 on full structural surgery which found the house needed 250K spent on it. Needless to say we walked a away, worth every penny.

We had a homebuyers survey done & it was a complete waste of money. May as well of stuck with the basic mortgage valuation. It flagged up literally everything to get further reports on & was a huge arse covering pile of crap. On an older house in future I'd get a structural survey done,

^^This

Yeah I'm thinking of not bothering with the homebuyers. The house was built in 2002, appears to have been well maintained and has not been altered other than a partial garage conversion.
Last time we bought, the homebuyers report didn't flag up anything we couldn't have seen ourselves.

I've bought 4 houses and 2 flats during my lifetime without ever having a survey done, and never any problems with any of them. Imho surveyors cover their backs so thoroughly that they don't really say anything sensible anyway. "There was carpet down so the floorboards couldn't be seen". "There was no access into the loft so we couldn't observe the attic space"

I paid for a Homebuyer's survey on an ex council flat in a 1950s block. TBH it was a complete waste of money. All he told me was that the place was grotty and neglected, and would probably need all new electrics/plumbing/boiler, etc., as well as more general total renovation.
All of which I was well able to see or work out for myself.

In the case of any house where there's the slightest hint of damp/cracks/odd or musty smells/peeling wallpaper/subsidence in the area, or just one that has evidently not been well looked after, I'd always go for a full structural survey.

I had a homebuyer's survey on the first place I offered on, and it was worth every penny because the surveyor pretty much gave me a structural survey for the price of a homebuyer's. He rang me for a chat afterwards and gave me some really useful advice that helped me make the decision to withdraw from the purchase.

I then had one on the second place (which I'm now living in) and it was pretty pointless, apart from spotting a bit of woodworm in the loft. Both surveyors were from the same company, but their approaches were completely different.

When I next move, I'll be getting a full structural survey, despite the extra cost. I'd also ask for the first surveyor to come back; he was great.

The buyers on my last house had a survey done and I accompanied the surveyor while they did it (this was last year).

They were in my house about 15 mins and that included introduction and asking me various questions. All they did was walk around the house and garden and took a few photos. They didn't touch anything (were claiming this was due to covid restrictions).

The questions that the solicitor asked off the back of it were nonsense that showed the surveyor hadn't looked properly.

Basically it was a complete waste of their money.

We had a L2 survey recently for £500, L3 would have been £650. He discouraged us from the L3 as said he has a duty of care to us and would disclose anything we needed to know about the structure. Very helpful survey and confirmed what we thought about house ie. basically sound, needs updating plus a few other bits we wouldn’t have known.

A drains issue has just come to light but there is now way a surveyor could have known and only been discovered by chance by someone washing a paintbrush at the same time plumber had a specific floorboard up. A good survey from a good surveyor is worth it I personally feel and we have done a number of renovations so do know what we are looking for .

My mortgage broker said to me usually a home buyers report is a waste of money since it’s all done visually - he advised if I had a family member who was a joiner / carpenter etc etc to get them to go have a look around as they’d notice the same things but know what to do about it (rather than being one big scary report lol)

regret getting one on my first house and I’m not getting one on the one I’m buying now.

In fact one of the “red” items on my last one was - you may want to decorate it to your style!!

No way 🙄