Would you buy a damp house?

[HooseDilemma]

We viewed a house last week. Lovely location (ideal really) and with a bigger garden than is the norm for the area. House needs cosmetic work, as we expected from the advert.

However, we also noticed that upstairs, every outside wall was damp at the top and around the windows. We're talking maybe about a foot of discoloration (some rooms more obvious than others) along the top of the wall, along with peeling wallpaper. There was mould in all the window sealant and on the ceiling in one of the bedrooms. You could see condensation lines running down the wallpaper in another if the bedrooms. House is approx 1970s/80s so not particularly old.

Only a few houses a year come up in this location, but we'd be mad to buy a house with obvious damp, wouldn't we?

Yes but I'm saying that from bitter experience. I'm not sure I'd even be willing to pay for a full survey to work out potential costs. However, if it's one of a few houses a year that come up in your location, you might be willing to pay the cost and put in the time and energy required to hopefully resolve it?

That sounds like a pretty serious damp problem to me. If it's like that in the summer what would winter be like.

I wouldn't buy it. Friends of ours have a house with a damp problem. They have spent £££ trying to sort it but nothing works long term. They constantly have to redecorate and it's been a real blight on their lives. They are trying to sell now.

Depends if it’s fairly clear what the problem is and you’re up for the level of work needed to fix it.
If it’s coming from the top it would suggest a problem with roof or gutters. If the roof you would need to be sure that water getting in hasn’t caused other damage you can’t see (eg rot in roof timbers).
I think as things stand you would need a lot more information before confidently deciding to buy. Or you could just walk away and find a property without damp!

If it's condensation it can be remedied with decent venitilation, extractor fans, heating and not drying washing indoors.

I bought and live in an old damp house, it's built with rubble and is like a big sponge, but the house isn't actually moist IYSWIM as we heat and ventilate it well, and are careful with placing furniture and maintaining air flow.

If I really liked the house and it was well-priced to acknowledge the condition I’d at least get a survey to assess the extent of the problem.

Damp (do you mean black mould?) around windows is almost always caused by poor ventilation / not opening windows regularly and condensation building up, and isn’t necessarily a huge issue in itself once you remedy it and make sure you ventilate properly thereafter.

Penetrating damp (patches on internal walls) is often the result of faulty guttering or drainpipes or missing roof tiles, and so can be relatively simple to put right.

No I wouldnt buy it. Damp is a stress, it can damage your goods and health. If it was easily fiaxable why haven't they done it? If they've not end bothered with this what else will you find wrong with the house? It's summer, if it is damp now imagine it in Feb.

When we bought our house there was a tiny patch of damp in a cupboard area - very small, It was treated and cost £500 years ago, but was a tiny issue. This issue sounds huge and a real stress. Don't touch it.

Ask the estate agents to allow a couple of companies to have a look at quote for repairs or new roof - which ever is the better option

It would depend, if you can work out the reason and factor the cost of fixing into your offer then I might, but I'd have to be relitivly desperate to take it on.

Our first house had damp, we worked out during viewing that the yard had been laid higher than the damp proof (old house with slate layer in sandstone). Fixing the source of the damp was easy enough (french drains along wall), but fixing everything that had been effected by the damp took a long time. We ended up stripping out all the damp plaster and a couple of floorboards along the wall, then leave it bare for about a year to dry out. Even after that we had to be careful about airing out the house or running a dehumidifier for another few years before it was truly dry and the musty smell gone.

If you don't know what is causing the damp, walk away no matter how perfect it is. It will cost you a fortune, and you won't know if you've stopped it until it ruins your new decoration.

my parents did they bought a dehumidifier and emptied it hourly at first 😳 then it got less and less eventually my dad replaced the doors windows and gutters etc it fixed the problem

I’m no expert but it doesn’t sound too bad to me!

Is the house empty/upstairs not much used?

It sounds like there’s a lot of condensation, which means you need to ventilate more (open windows, extractor fan in bathrooms/kitchens, trickle thing on windows opened).

Are the gutters in good repair, not full with leaves etc? How about the roof? A few slipped slates and blocked guttering is easy to fix.

If otherwise good, then can you arrange a second viewing, and explain you’d like to look in the loft and at guttering.

Could you get a builder or similar to go and view it with you?
Damp can be caused by something really minor and easily fixed, or something serious and expensive. The cause is really the deciding factor here.

Thanks all.

The house definitely isn't priced to reflect the damp. It's priced to do lots of cosmetic work, but not damp. In my opinion, of course! It's well above the ceiling price of the street, but that was set 15 years ago, so not relevant really! DH is dead against, so probably a moot point really. But I am in two minds.

The gutters and roof looked fine, from what we can see, but we weren't able to get into the loft.

The replies seem split between walk away and only buy if you can explain the source. Will have a chat with DH and see whether a second viewing with a builder will tempt him. This is the first viewing since our house purchase fell through last week, so we're both feeling a bit bruised. Perhaps we need some time to recover... Decisions weren't so hard before!

One of our previous houses had a pretty severe damp problem. Between the full structural survey, to identify the full extent of the problem and a quote to fix it all we knew what we were getting into and negotiated accordingly on the price. We didn’t move in for about 4 months after completion (stayed in our rented flat) but when we did we had a beautiful house, no damp, every room redecorated and we lived there happily for 6 years before moving on.

It doesn’t have to be a deal breaker but you have to go in with your eyes open, be happy to do messy work and most importantly do not overpay for it.

I bought a house with damp issues but there are lots of things you can do to address the problem: find out the cause , get a quote to fix the source of the damp ( we had several reasons why it was damp) and it's surprising how your lifestyle can affect the damp issue - wet washing, cooking in a poorly ventilated kitchen closed windows, windows without vents , no damp proof course, the number of people living in the house, is it near a river ? even the type of brick can affect the level of humidity.
my (online) architect was very helpful and gave me some practical tips which has sorted the problem

Are they solid or cavity walls? What is the condition otherwise of the house

It is possible it is leaky gutters or tiles near the gutters if in every room

If solid walls, or walls that have had cavity insulation installed it could be penetrating damp but you would expect it lower down walls as well.

It might be easily fixed

I'm not even a homeowner but as a long term tenant, very little would make me say 'no' to a house faster than it being damp. It's horrible to live in a damp house and given the extent to which landlords will seek to avoid doing the work needed to fix it, I imagine fixing it is a big and costly undertaking. I would only buy a house with damp if I was a)sure of the cause, b) absolutely sure I could afford for it to be dealt with and c) utterly in love with it in every other way.

Nope. Nope. Nope. After 3 military married quarters. Nope.

Amen to the crappiness of landlords who let out a damp house!

We bought a damp ex rental house. Damp proof course put in before sale by vendors (condition of purchase). All windows other than extensiony bit replaced since we bought (sometimes, the problem with windows is not that people breath too much, or wash and dry their clothes - sometimes, the problem with windows is that they're crap and bust and need replacing) and we're about to spend up to £10k on the roof, which will hopefully fix the rest of it. Plus we've bodge repaired quite a bit of render, in the hope it'll last until this time next year and the next injection of cash.

The shits who owned the house before us rented it out, and made no attempt to make it better for the tenants. The bloke in the couple was a (rubbish) plasterer, and couldn't even be arsed to do crappy render repairs. Must have been a nightmare to live in - bet the tenants were always full of colds and coughs. Grrrrrr.

I would buy it of it was smth like a black Friday offer buy a garage get a house free. Otherwise never ever!!!

No no no.

A colleague in another office lives in a damp house and honestly I can smell her from a few rooms down and I know she has arrived because often smell of her clothes.

It's never that easy to fix, often comes back and will just not make living in your house enjoyable at all!

It wouldn't put me off completely, no. I'd definitely get a survey if I loved the house.

The house I live in now had 2 sales fall through before I bought. I imagine they fell through at the point of getting the survey and identifying damp. We got a specialist round to identify the cause, and it was because an extension that had been built - the builders hadn't joined up the damp proof membrane. It was actually really easy to fix - you can just inject the damp proof into holes in the wall. We were planning quite a bit of building work and replastering the whole downstairs anyway.

Damp from underneath I wouldn't ever touch.

Damp from the top - well, factor in the price of a complete roof rebuild into your plans. And then go elsewhere, probably.

We have a Georgian house with damp issues here and there and we have spent thousands of pounds fixing the worst bits (probably over £10k now on repointing, dpc, guttering etc). The house you describe sounds pretty horrendous. If you don’t mind injecting money into your walls (guttering, windows etc) go for it. I personally hate spending all this money just to fix a damp patch!

If it’s penetrating damp from leaky gutters or roof it’s fixable but pricy. Was it damp now due to recent rain or was it dry at the moment? Was the peeling paper from lack of maintenance snd damp over years?

If it’s cavity wall there shouldn’t be damp like this.

Solid walls are cold and it could be condensation but what was the bathroom like? Apart from heat and ventilation this is difficult to cure in old houses.

On balance - can you afford to put this right if it’s the high end of work needed?

Damp from underneath can still be simple - we had a flooding cellar that was cured by fixing a single broken outside drain.