Buying house with subsidence via probate

[bootsyjam]

Have found our dream home and the subject header says it all:(
Had a full survey and chatted to the surveyor today after receiving his report and it wasn't pretty. As most will know you're not going to get a yes or no answer from a surveyor but after some gentle cajoling he said that in so many words that it's subsidence for sure. After more research on what he flagged then it's not really arguable at this point.

To find out what type, how severe, what to do to stop it will entail hiring a Structural Engineer and will cost 3-5k+ as it won't be a simple walk around.

Does the fact that the property is being sold via probate mean anything at all in what happens? Do we have to shoulder the burden of discovery ourselves and it's just tough luck?

As if buying a place with subsidence wasn't bad enough already!

Any advice will be gratefully received:)

I would run a mile. The issue is that any problem like that won’t be covered by your insurance as it’s a known issue, but should be covered by the current owners insurance.

the best option is likely for them to take care of subsidence and then sell, but if you really really want it you’re going to need to try and get some idea of what it’s going to cost to fix and see what contribution they will make. But at the same time, they’ve owned the house (or at least their relative has) and have not noticed/remedied structural issues. What else have they neglected?

nope, buying a house sold via probate is no different at all for the buyer. Whoever the seller is, the setup is the same and your choices are the same. The seller can sell the house "as is", you can walk away, the seller can get the house fixed, you can pay mega bucks to get the survey done, you can put in an offer based on what you know and are prepared to pay, or anything else that would normally happen. If the house is being sold by the executor, they have a duty to get the best price they can for the beneficiaries.

I bought one of these and I don't regret it!

Firstly, if your surveyor flagged subsidence, then any one else's surveyor will notice it too. That means the house is likely unmortgageable at present as no bank will lend on a house with subsidence.

Secondly, it is likely covered on the owners house insurance (and incidentally, their current insurance company has to allow you to insure with them at a similar price to the current insurance if you do buy it ...).

In our case, the vendors (Executor) got the house fixed via their insurance company. For our house, this took 4 years from death of the owner through to us moving in, though we were not the first interested buyer and so were only involved in the last 9 months of subsidence treatment and then we moved in. I don't know whether it would have been possible for us to buy it during the treatment; I would imagine it would have been ok as long as the insurance company could satisfy the mortgage company that they would sort the issues.

If you love the house, subsidence doesn't have to mean the end of the dream. However, it could take some time, be more complicated, and if you want to move soon then might involve you living through intrusive remedial treatments. Speak to the vendor, their insurance company, your solicitor and mortgage company and see what they all say. I would definitely expect a substantial reduction in price, to reflect the hassle and any ongoing issues.

Thanks very much for your responses. They have all been a great help in organising our thoughts on how we should proceed.
We will have to pull out and go to the agents to let them know and to hand it over to the executors to get the home insurance involved. It's not worth doing the investigations ourselves and doing the job for them which puts us further out of pocket with no discernible return.
Have a great weekend!

If the house is priced with the faults in mind it’s worth doing but in most cases, you need to be a builder! You won’t have insurance or a mortgage. The owner should get it fixed on their insurance. It’s expensive to get accurate surveys and advice on remedial works because consultants are usually involved. They don’t come cheap and have years of training after a degree.

We almost brought one like this earlier in the year. It’s not in South Wales is it?!

For us, the vendor wasn’t prepared to sort it. They apparently didn’t know it had subsidence, I don’t think they believed our surveyor to be honest.

They filled in the internal cracks and put some strategically placed furniture and it’s SSTC again. I presume they’re hoping the next surveyor won’t pick it up.

Subsidence will be very visible on the exterior of a property. Inside cracks alone probably is not subsidence. Exterior cracks and misaligned windows etc is evidence it’s probably subsidence. Internal cracks are probably settlement cracks which are relatively minor.

Any advice will be gratefully received:)

Don't buy it!

Hi Lioupin, no it's not in South Wales:)

We bought a place that had subsidence.

The vendor had to get his insurance to own the claim and then agree to transfer the claim over to us, and to keep it insured indefinitely.

He paid the policy excess.

It wasn't probate though but I'm assuming executors would have to do the same.

Worth asking your surveyor what he/she thinks the cause is and the likely extent of remedial works would be.

The reason surveyors dodge questions about subsidence is that they don’t know. They are not experts in it. That’s why they neatly always want a structural engineer involved as they carry insurance for such diagnostics and specifying remedial work.

Hi All,
Have told the agent who has passed on the findings to the vendor. They have contacted the insurance company who will perform their own investigations so we'll see what happens.

@TizerorFizz Yes you're right they definitely don't know for sure. In our chat with him we managed to pretty much pin him down a bit and without being able to say with 100% certainty (they never do) he was fairly firm in his findings on the.matter.
The fact is that there were consistent (but not huge) signs that the subsidence was occurring in different areas and in the same direction.

@catwomando Thanks very much for the info, that's very interesting and we'll look into that depending on what occurs in future.

Subsidence is typically one area of a property. Has he given you photos of the cracks? Are they on the outside and is there noticeable movement in a window or door. However it’s really up the vendors to sort out via their insurance. You would be spending a lot to evaluate this, get remedial works specified snd then carried out. You won’t get this expenditure on a mortgage and nor is the property mortgageable , probably.

@TizerorFizz
Yes it's mainly in one area and going in one direction. The external garage is also showing signs of moving away from the main building (not that I can see it) which is apparently a real marker as well.

We noticed cracks when looking round initially, mainly over/to the side of the front door, and there are similar (albeit not huge) cracks elsewhere.

Yes having had time to reflect we would be crazy to even reduce our price by 20% as it could end up being far more to fix, have expensive insurance. And we would be taking on all the stress of managing the project(s) as well as sorting out contractors. And then being faced with not being able to sell it in future!

20% off doesn't seem to come close with all that in mind....

@catwomando
Is there a time period after subsidence has been fixed that a property is deemed to be no longer suffering from it. So then the subsidence is effectively cleared from the records (a bit like having a criminal record wiped clean!). Or is it always on record which would cause issues for anyone looking to buy using a mortgage?

@bootsyjam
After work was completed we had a 'building integrity certificate' or something like that, which confirmed that the building was structurally sound.

We passed that on when we sold and had no issues.

We also got the insurer to confirm IN WRITING before we bought that they would insure the property in the same basis and that we could pass that guarantee onto later purchasers.

So it was pretty reassuring.

The works were disruptive though and went on for ages. The scope increased too and I managed to blag a few additions too.

From experience subsidence was much less of an issue than heave (which is more unpredictable), and underpinning seems to be viewed more dimly than simpler remedial works (which include wall ties, rods, new lintels etc.)

Common causes are cracked/broken drains which wash away soil under the foundations (if there are foundations!) So they repair the drains first then stabilise (can take ages -they put little gauges on the cracks snd measure movement), then repair.

Our surveyor said that 10% of london houses have subsidence as it's built in river silt.

@bootsyjam it's also worth noting that lots of houses have signs of old movement and subsidence - just look for wall ties abs plates -a dead giveaway !

I have a house with subsidence, it's not really bad and the only action that needed to be taken after monitoring was to make sure that the council keeps the tree outside cut back, there was no other structural work needed, just a bit of redecoration, although who knows maybe at some point in the future with the drier hotter weather it will need underpinning. The main thing is what's the cause of it, and can you get rid of the cause, a situation in which there's something obvious going on that you can fix is very different from something that might be ongoing. I agree that the vendors need to investigate it.

If a property has substantial cracks through bricks, you cannot really live with it. It’s not just a bit of redecoration.

Once remedial work is complete, eg underpinning, the house is in much better condition and certainly can be sold.

It’s London clay snd shrinkage that’s the issue in London. It’s not silt. It’s also lack of foundations to cope with ground conditions. Therefore it’s often an issue for older houses. Insurance compromise can be less than enthusiastic about paying for underpinning so sometimes it’s better to employ your own structural engineer who advocates for you. However it’s not an easy fix and it’s disruptive.

Heave is where the ground conditions swell and push the walls outwards. You might see ceiling cracks and the walls not aligning with the ceilings. This can happen after removal of thirsty trees nearby. It’s another foundation issue!

@catwomando Brilliant, thanks once again. Your mention of a building integrity certificate rang a few bells, I think that's what I was talking about. Yes the surveyor mentioned a drain survey, I thought that would be a minor issue (propertt is at the bottom of a small steep hill in an area of sandy soil +lots of trees nearby) but that does seem to make sense that this simple issue could have huge repercussions.

Thanks for the info on how long it takes. I assumed it would be a one stop shop e.g. do drains+underpin+prune trees etc but it makes sense that they would do it in stages, stop and then monitor. Which would take years by the sound of it

Sorry to keep pestering you, when you say that underpinning is viewed more dimly than other remedial works, what do you mean by that? As in they will do other remedial works first to see if that solves the issue rather than jumping straight to underpinning? Or do you mean that underpinning is not seen as being very effective, or a combination of all of the above?

Thanks for the advice r.e. insurance, that really is the sting in the tail for increased costs, especially since lockdown which has seen many premiums soar a lot higher.

@SierraSapphire Thanks for your post, and yes I concur, fixing the subsidence doesn't mean a lot unless you've identified the cause of it which has rather large potential for trouble in future.
From your post and others, it would appear that to find out for certain will take a long time....

No. That’s not correct. You can underpin quite large parts of a house. In effect it’s giving it new foundations. We have a large oak tree a little over 5m from our house. We are on clay. We have substantial foundations. We have a wood near to the other side of the house. Structural engineers (DH is one) can ensure the house does not have future issues even if trees are still present. In fact taking them out might well cause other issues. Sometimes you won’t control other peoples trees either! You have to work around them. You won’t change the elasticity of clay either. So engineers design to minimise future risk,

Of course drains should be checked but you cannot eliminate all risk with roots if you have shallow foundations. This is why foundations are vital and need to be designed to take account of ground conditions. Underpinning does this retrospectively.

Re the underpinning it seems to carry more of a potential issue for ongoing insurance as it seems to suggest more serious problems that have needed drastic (and expensive) action. That's more anecdotal though. That said there are insurance companies that specialise in such insurance.

In terms of logistics They do the causal assessment first, including the initial monitoring, then a plan of remedial action , then tender for the works, award to chosen specialist contractor and then do the fixing (which might be in stages) . The insurance loss adjuster appointed a project manager.

With us the causal stuff/diagnostic stuff was quick. Then they fixed the cause -drains , then did monitoring to check movement had stopped (over several months). The more structural repairs like tying walls together, rebuild of the bay window, plastering and decoration were the last things (all were checked by the insurance co surveyor as they went along). Then a surveyor came to do a final check and certify and issue the certificate.

It took about 12 months in all.

Re effectiveness of repairs - I think they tend to err on side of caution and over spec rather than chance it. All the works come with guarantees and the aforementioned certificate so you are covered in case they did a poor job.

Happy to answer any more questions if that's helpful.

In our case we couldn't afford a non subsidence place so it was our only option. It turned out fine for us but was messy and stressful !

@TizerorFizz Hmm your last sentence really does hit home. The Property is at the bottom of a deep dip/small hill near the bottom of this 'valley' and it also has a large water pipe running down the side. And the soil is sandy. If the foundations aren't very deep to reflect this....

@catwomando Thanks once again for your detailed and informative replies.

Looking at your advice and your own experiences, your situation does bring up an issue that has us a bit flummoxed! Hope I can explain it.

So you bought a house with subsidence. The thing is, the repairs and discovery about the type of subsidence that the property had was ongoing AFTER you bought it. So how did you manage to reach a sale price that was acceptable to you when you didn't know the severity and extent of the subsidence? Did your sale price represent the worst possible scenario e.g. fix drains, property still shows signs of movement, do some underpinning, property still shows signs of movement and/or whole property gets underpinned after the drain repairs didn't work.

If subsidence is a process of ongoing discovery with substantial extra costs attached then on what basis did you make an offer that you were happy with?

Apologies if this is a bit personal so no need to answer!