Getting a Builder to View Prospective Purchase

[maybeshesawomble]

Hi everyone, apologies if this is a really stupid question...

Looks like our dream home is about to fall through so it’s back to the drawing board. I’ve seen a property that looks great but will need work. We would obviously need to assess this and budget for it before putting in an offer. We are clueless on how much building work might cost and don’t know any builders personally who we could ask a favour of.

Does anyone have any experience of this? How can we get a builder round without knowing whether they’d do the work etc., be the most competitive etc.? Is Covid going to make this harder still?

Many thanks!

We ended up paying a builder a consultancy fee as it was the only way to get a builder to look at the property and give estimates of work. This was a period property but not listed. Builders are really busy with long waiting lists, you may struggle. Ultimately we didn’t buy the property but the £300 we paid the builder was insignificant compared to the projected £40k costs of which £30k was essential for the protection of the structure.

Thank you. Yes, money well spent and cheaper than the survey telling you that (she says, having just lost £1500 for the survey to cause us to pull out...).

A friend who was having some work done recommended her builder, he came round and had a quick look. But tbh we’d a fairly good idea what it would cost and entail from looking at planning applications on similar houses, talking to people and googling.

My brother is a builder and people expect him to do this all this time. Always people he kind of knows, they don’t seem to understand his time is valuable.

Offer to pay a builder for heir time and I am sure they will be happy to - of they can fit it in.

My DH offers consultancy for a fee and it’s quite common within the trade.
Call a few and I’m sure you’d find someone

You are probably going to struggle at the moment as construction is incredibly busy.
I'm an architect and struggling to get them for jobs that are definitely going ahead/ have planning permission etc and I already have links with.
If you do get one you'll need to pay for their time, a couple of hours with you is a couple of hours they could be on a job.
I would also bear in mind that there is likely to be sharp increases in costs over the at least the next 12 months due to shortages of construction materials and issues with supply and demand so I would plan hefty contingencies.
I have already recommended some clients hold off until it settles a bit.

Not directly related but the next prospective buyers of the house you are pulling out of can buy from survey from you. So all my not be lost on that front...

Many thanks all.

I paid a structural engineer to come check out a house. It was less than £100 (some years ago, not in London). The house had major cracks, but he said that wasn't what concerned him, it was the rear garden retaining wall that would cost us the most, which I hadn't even thought about!