‘Movement’ in a Victorian terrace 😱

[Pietr]

I offered quite a bit over asking to secure the property. The bank did an in person survey and thankfully agreed with our offer price. Which in one sense is a relief as you’d think they’d look for any opportunity to downvalue.

However, they have ticked the box that says Movement appears to be longstanding and unlikely to be progressive which obviously has panicked me - what movement?!

I am sending in a Level 3 surveyor and I just scared that he is going to come back and say the house is about ready to fall down.

How easy is it to fix ‘movement’?

Well if it's long standing and not currently moving then it is fixed.

Sorry - to elaborate, my concern is that surveyor will disagree with the bank’s surveyor.

Has there been any work done to address "movement" in the past?

We had this with our current house. Some movement of the kitchen extension wall. Given that the extension is about 70 years old and the movement is at least 20 years old according to the surveyor, we aren’t worried. Been here three years and not a sniff of a crack.

Consider the location. A colleague intended to buy a Victorian terraced house in Southampton. I'd lived next door to it as a student and told him that we'd laughed at its cracks and suspected it was bomb damaged. 20 years later it was beautifully done up and probably had similar wording to what you've read. For most houses, it'll be fine, but if it's in a city that was heavily bombed in WWII, look into it a bit!

Victorian houses do move. They are made of brick, wood and lath and plaster. They were also designed to “breathe” so you’ll see lots of air vent bricks ventilating the space under the floorboards. Changes in temperature cause things to expand and contract.

It’s all perfectly normal and you’ll see hairline cracks on walls and ceilings. Movement in our house caused our glass splash backs to crack though so be warned!! Tiles have been fine.

If you have large cracks or serious wonk going on then that’s a different story though

In our Victorian terrace we took a supporting wall out between the hall and the living room. It was done by expensive architects and builders and the council came and certified the new load bearing beam as legally correct etc.

A short time later, the big double glazed window in the attic 2 floors above cracked right across! We put it down to "movement" 😬
That was 3 years ago nothing else has happened since then.

Our survey said similar - I think it's not unusual for shallow foundation properties that were designed to breathe a bit IYSWIM. We get minor seasonal cosmetic cracking, which is mildly irritating at worst. We are friends of lining paper.

Ok, these replies are reassuring me!

thank you.