At what point in the process should a survey be done?

[FlumpetCrumpet]

Hello,

On the house we are wanting to buy we have had an offer accepted, done ID checks and they have taken it off the market, we have applied for a mortgage, and instructed solicitors. Should we be getting the survey done now or wait until we have an offer of a mortgage? I don’t want to hold things up but equally if there’s some reason we don’t get a mortgage or we don’t go ahead due to some other reason to do with the mortgage valuation I don’t want to pay out for a survey on a house we are not buying.

So, line something up now or wait for the mortgage offer?

The mortgage company will normally be involved in letting you know which surveyors are acceptable, so wait to hear from them or contact them.

As above, our lender arranged ours.

Thanks. Is this for a homebuyers report / full building survey? I realise the bank will do a valuation survey but we want our own survey on the condition of the property and I didn’t think the banks got involved in that?

Banks don't get involved in building surveys.
Find your own now and understand their availability.

Its up to you whether you want to wait for mortgage offer or not before scheduling the survey... we didn't, but our buyer did.

Thanks @oatmilk1

The banks do not get involved in building surveys.

I’ve had my building survey done already and still waiting for the mortgage valuation survey, depend on the bank there is a backlog. I decided to take the risk because I wanted to know if there were any issues before I got too far down the line.

I'm getting my mortgage with a building society and chose to pay to upgrade my valuation to a homebuyers survey. Was very good, survey was carried out a week after mortgage application was put in and got the report within 2 days.

We’ve had our building survey done today, but the mortgage valuation isn’t until next Thursday. We didn’t plan it that way, just wanted to get things moving quickly. I think if we have both surveys to hand before we start negotiating then, we’ve got the full picture at once.

I'd look to book one now because in many areas they are running at a big backlog.
To be honest you run risks either way. You either go further down the line with mortgage applications and paying for searches and then risk something coming up on the survey that is a deal breaker, or you get a survey before the searches and mortgage and risk paying for a survey on a house you can't buy. I think you just have to go for it!

Our mortgage application has been submitted with a 19 working day return time.

We're going ahead and getting survey done next week. Don't want to cause any further delays to risk missing the stamp duty holiday!

In everyday life, a few hundred pounds is a huge amount. In the moving process, a few hundred pounds is very little.

At least that's my skewed logic to make myself feel better about the risk :)

Most surveyors have a huge backlog so I’d book sooner rather than later in your shoes. We’re expecting our formal mortgage to come in on November 19th and have our survey booked for the 9th. We didn’t want to wait until after the mortgage decision as didn’t want to unnecessarily delay exchanging.