A two bedroom house, small but lovely. Just what I have been looking for. It's a mid terrace. Can't afford detached unfortunately! Anyway the house comes with a garage, though it's not attached to the house or garden. It's one of the middle of six or seven garages in a block on some wasteland around the back. I think there's one garage allocated to each house. Both freehold. By the looks of it they're barely used, certainly not for cars. They all look a bit shit. Built in 80s I believe. Overgrown grass and tatty doors etc. I'd probably use mine for a Christmas tree and a lawnmower but little else. The survey I had done by a RICS specialist was very detailed and came back with an overall comment at the beginning saying "can't see any special reason why you couldn't sell at market value in the future, property is in a reasonable condition etc" then the standard scary wording about how the world will end if you don't check everything and it's nothing to do with them etc. So a few things came up 'red' that I will get around to fixing in the future like replacing kitchen cupboards and updating the plug sockets etc. The thing that bothered me was the comments on the garage. He said the right side wall was damaged but he couldn't identify the cause of the movement, said it should be repaired as it could get worse (you can see the mortar needs redoing and the bricks are old, some chipped or blown etc). Sounds terrifying to me. But I phoned him and he was much more casual about it than on paper. He said it would probably cost a couple of grand to repair if I chose to, it's up to me and how important a garage is to me and I'm not going to come home from work and see it's fallen down. He said it's not like it's a problem with the house itself. I asked him if I should pull out over it and he said no, not at all. I got the impression he was just covering his arse, fair enough I guess. No report on any house is going to come back without something. Surely if it was that serious he wouldn't have put on paper that I'd have no issues selling up in the future? I admit I'm a worrier and an overthinker. But would this make you run like the wind?
I also emailed him because the word "subsidence" wasn't mentioned at all on the report. He confirmed it was covered in the report, it wasn't mentioned because there was no risk of evidence of it, so I'm assuming this garage wall damage isn't because of that and more to do with settlement, something else or just wasn't built to the same standard an actual house would be...