Slipped slates after 8 years - would this worry you?

[cakehoover123]

Our surveyor flagged up that the house we're looking at has has quite a few slipped slates (see pics).

This roof was only replaced in 2015. Is this normal within 8 years, or would you worry that it's going to fail further?

The roofing firm that did it is no longer in business, so there's no guarantee.

That doesn't look anything like a roof that was last completely redone 8 years ago. Even if they kept the slates from the original roof you wouldn't have that level of green on it yet in an exact pattern down multiple slates, showing the tiles were in-situ when it grew. The bitumen on the flat roof is also not in a good enough condition to have been done so recently either. That's had water sitting on it repeatedly for many years.

You say the roofing company went out of business, I'd say the sellers are lying and they never got the roof redone and have possibly mocked up an invoice from a defunct company to cover themselves for the fact that roof needs redoing to try and not get a reduction for the fact it needs a roof.

Edited to correct the fact the other issue is with the flat roof, I put lead and meant bitumen.

Thanks! It's definitely been redone though, there's no doubt about that - we can see from Google Street View that it changed in 2015.

Doesn’t look great in my view. The first bigger picture. What is it? Looks very odd. Is it a gulley? Is there guttering all round? Including on the dormer window? If the surveyor says the roof is sound but has loose slates, I might be inclined to ask if they are robustly fixed.

It will get worse if it's not fixed, yes.

I have an old house with a slate roof and we had the slates all refitted about 15 years ago. None have slipped since. So yeah, not great.

Sorry yes, the first pic is a gulley between two roofs, it's taken at an angle, the current top of the photo shows the flat gulley between the roofs.

And yes there is guttering all around.

We asked the surveyor if we should be concerned, and he prevaricated. Our own roof was done at about the same time and looks nothing like this.

It looks very badly done which is why it's failing. Looks like some corners have been cut...what's the wood like on the underside? Why don't you get a few roofers out to give an opnion?

@cakehoover123 A flat gulley between roofs is hard work to keep watertight. Where does the rainwater drain to? Is there any slope on it? Or would water pond on it? If it does, it’s bad news. I think I would try and ask some more searching questions about the gulley. How is it constructed? How does it drain?

Thanks. I'm hoping the gulley is OK, as it was redone recently and the surveyor didn't raise any concerns about it (and no signs of recent leaks).

But I will ask a roofer to take a look!

I think that’s a good idea.

If that work was carried out 8 years ago I don’t think it’s too hard to work out why the roofer went out of business

@Heyhoherewegoagain you think it looks that bad?

@cakehoover123 bad enough after only 8 years…we’ve had to do some repairs for issues like that on our roof but it’s over 60 years old!
At the very least I’d get a roofer to check it. If it was one repair that would cost a couple of hundred quid, it wouldn’t put me off the house, but I’d want to know for sure