Persistent Damp

[Chris001]

Hello,
I recently had a report on a property I made an offer on and it has flagged major rising damp. The surveyor is unable to establish how much the works would cost to fix and recommends a specialist survey. The vendor doesn't want to lower the price and the agent says all old houses have damp to some extent. Considering the garden and the affected walls are north facing is this something that's better to withdraw from? Thank you.

All old houses need to be maintained and managed with damp in mind. They are not all damp though.
It depends on what the source of the damp is.

If it is rising damp and there is a wooden suspended floor then you need to insure that the outside ground level is lower than the slate damp proof course (I am assuming it is Victorian?) And that the under floor void is ventilated and that the bottom of the walls haven't been covered with non water permiable stuff like modern plaster.

The problem is that without further investigation, you can't be certain that there isn't a leaky pipe somewhere that is causing the damp. This can't be checked without taking the floor up with the buyer is not going to allow.

Either way damp repairs are a bit of a pain and can be messy but not generally expensive.

Unless of course it has been there for ages and the whole floor is rotten!