To Survey or Not to Survey?

[Lekky12]

So we have had our offer accepted on a lovely 3 bed semi, early 1900s, renovated in 2019 with new boiler, fusebox, rewire, new double glazing, big window in gable end & loft 2/3 boarded out. Would you pay the £570 for a survey?
We know it's wonky, it's old, no evident cracks, roof looks reasonable with felt beneath the slate, will probably need attention in the next 5 years. Bay window will need the roof sorting as you can see that's been a bit of a cover up. Other than that if a surveyor can't see it they are just going to say well there is a boiler but it wasn't working, the house was fully carpeted/covered so could not inspect the joists or floorboards.....yes we know that.
Does the mortgage provider want to see the survey before they lend you the money?
Thanks for reading. The last house we bought was in Oz and took 30days from offer acceptance to getting the keys. Best pull up a chair and wait this out!

I always get houses surveyed. If you're going to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds, £750 is nothing.

Of course, jeez, it's 100 years old!

Of course..

The bank only care that they can get back the amount they have lent you if the house needs to be sold for some reason. Definitely need a survey.

I would definitely fork out on a full buildings survey on a house of that age.

It's not just about what level of risk YOU are happy to take on, it's also about being able to sell it on in the future too. You could buy it in blissful ignorance and then discover serious issues when years down the line your buyers survey it and find something awful wrong. Not worth the gamble.

They check for damp and dry rot and wet rot, I wouldn't trust myself to do that myself. And things about drains.

Yes would always have a survey just incase

Surveys aren't worth the paper they are written on in my opinion. If you know a builder have them walk around with you. Most old buildings have a bit of damp, a bit of movement etc. You can see it. Surveyors do not remove anything, though they may see things you do not recognise, like woodworm. But frankly it's common sense. I've had surveys who have highlighted stuff that was not an issue, and missed stuff that required immediate attention. Over and over. If the house has had a lot of alterations and you have suspicions, then yes, but if all paperwork in place snd you have a more knowledgeable friend, then don't bother.

I never have a survey. But I’ve done a lot of renovations. There should be fensa certs for windows, a sign of cert by registered electrician for the wiring etc for the house you are looking at.

I've just bought a house without a survey. Lots of "hidden", expensive problems that required immediate attention. It would've have put me off buying the property but certainly would've been grounds for negotiation on the price. i hope to enjoy the new property once I've sorted out the problems but at the moment it has put a dampener on things.
As someone mentioned, the survey will only point out the issues, you will still have to pay for the issues to be fixed (if the seller refuses to fix the issues or refuses to negotiate on the price post a bad survey). It will then be a case of "how much do I want this property?'
A heads up is always good so that there are no surprises down the line.

My friend recently bought a house that was significantly younger than your purchase - they decided not to get a survey to save money as they planned to pretty much gut the house anyway to change the layout and modernise. All great until they moved in, got builders to come and quote and they immediately picked up on subsidence. Consequently it's cost them more than £10,000 so far to rectify and set their build time back by months. We were talking about it a few weeks ago and she literally said they love the house but her one regret is not having commissioned a survey.

I second Midlifelady. We got a survey done over a 100 year flat and I could have written the survey myself! They charged 500 quid and he came up with the most obvious rubbish!

Builder is the way to go.

We bought our house without a survey, but we had an ex-builder (DP's dad) walk around it with us before we put our offer in. We knew the house had already been significantly reduced, and we could see some of the issues with it, and it was still going to be worthwhile to buy at the reduced price and fix the issues. I think a survey would have just unnerved me to be honest. Really, I was only concerned about subsidence, damp, the roof. We knew all the windows and doors needed replacing, the boiler, knew there were plumbing issues. We can/have fixed all these, but seeing it written down in pages of report wouldn't have helped.