Positive Subsidence Stories Please 🙏

[Cece87]

As the title suggests, I’d love to hear positive stories from people who have purchased a home where subsidence was found.

A little background, we are edging closer to exchanging on a ground floor flat and have just had subsidence found in our survey, we are awaiting results from further investigations.

We will be making big renovations to the flat once it’s ours, we have found nothing else in the our area for months that fits what we want/can afford so we really don’t want to let it go, but we’re panicking it’s a mistake to go ahead now.

TIA 🙏

If it's a flat can you control how the subsidence is dealt with? Or do you need to involve other flat owners and a freeholder?

I do know someone who had their house underpinned and as far as I know was fine afterwards. However was a detached house so no neighbours even

We would be joint freeholders with the owners of the above flat & we will likely liaise with them once we know more

Just proceed with caution... Incredibly unlucky but I bought a flat ages ago that the Council 6 months later had to demolish due to subsidence that was active... the building developed large cracks and had to be evacuated 🙈

If the sellers are trying to rush the purchase or have set the purchase price very low there will be a reason behind that.

Do all the surveys and if you have a mortgage the bank will likely insist everything is done properly and probably won't let you do anything stupid like I did because their money is on line (mine was a cash purchase).

We also had trouble trying to agree work with other owners (several had lapsed insurance policies, or ones that refused to pay), and so despite a council order on the property we could not get the work done. The council took the easy option of demolishing as this was least expensive for them and their priority was making safe and opening the road again. They then billed us for the cost of the demolition 😂.

We then couldn't coordinate a sale of the land as the Council refused to give us all the other owners' details 😂 Honestly, one of the most stressful periods of my life. The site is going through a compulsory purchase process soon I hope, which should eventually see some money from it 13 years later.

A lot of the time subsidence can be appropriately addressed but yeah, in the absolute worst case scenario it can be an utter nightmare.

Wow. Thus sounds absolutely horrendous. Thank you for sharing your experience.

Reading this OP I would seriously reconsider purchase

Based on the information you have given, I would walk away. If it was a detached property I might consider it with a full picture of the issues but when you don't have complete control it could be a nightmare. At the very least, now it has been flagged as a problem, the current owner needs to start an insurance claim which would then be transferred on the sale of the property. It's unlikely that a mortgage company will loan against it until the problem has been resolved and even then properties with history subsidence are down valued significantly.

Absolutely this. Don't do it.

What's the cause of the subsidence? If its a tree causing it, then I'd be less concerned.

Walk away.

Legal minefield.

I live in an area where subsidence is common .I live in a property divided into 2 flats , shared freehold, underpinned due to subsidence after we'd moved in.
No dramas.
No experience of affect on survey finding subsidence during purchase process and effect on valuation for mortgages.
Presumably insurance is in place and i think sellers need to start claim , this will generate more info on cause and remedy required.
Can you share more detail on what your survey has found ?

Can I ask why only if it was detached? And we’re willing to do the work to fix it so is it still a bad idea?

You would be mad to go ahead with this.

Firstly it’s unlikely you’ll be granted a mortgage now, but even if you are, and even if you take steps to fix the issue, you’re buying a white elephant which you’ll never be able to sell.

From a previous post it sounds like any works needed would be a joint process with other flat owners...but you don't know in advance how that will work out presumably?

Unless there is a block building insurance policy in place perhaps? One that covers the entire building and is paid into by all owners? If this is the case and you will be paying into that too and the insurer is aware of the issues already and are in agreement with bearing responsibility for works then perhaps that is ok.

The real danger would be if you all had separate insurance policies because you are not able to access those in advance from other owners so you do not know if they are in place, or if they would agree to pay out. In my situation that I described above we had some owners who did not have insurance and other owners whose insurance would not pay because they disputed the information that was given by owners when taking out the insurance policies. I imagine you have no legal right to access that information before you become an owner in the building.

If people are paying out of their own pockets for remedial work how do you know that you will get agreement and contributions here? Are you planning on spending all the money yourself on the work? I think that is what you will have to be prepared for has you will not be able to guarantee that others will pay up.

We’re lucky enough to know the upstairs neighbours, they warned us in advance that there was a problem although we haven’t updated them yet so we’re not sure they know that it’s subsidence.
There is one insurance policy on the whole house & we have it already agreed with solicitors that we spilt the costs on works to the house. Does that help the situation at all?

The info we have so far is that it’s related to the back wall of the house, we had to have someone to look inside the drains yesterday, we don’t have his full report back yet but he did say it doesn’t look too bad.

Thanks for your help, much appreciated!

From a previous post it sounds like any works needed would be a joint process with other flat owners...but you don't know in advance how that will work out presumably?
Why would the joint process be unknowable ?
Whenever the other flat in our building is sold as joint free holders we are asked to complete an LP1 form
"The LPE1 form is used to gather information about a leasehold property, such as contact details for the freeholder, service charge details, ground rent, building insurance, and any known issues or disputes. "
Admittedly this is during conveyancing and the OP is presumably not at that stage .
But the info will be available and presumably one can ask for details of insurance cover and any sinking fund etc now.
If the seller refuses to provide then that would of course be a red flag.
Our property has only 2 flats so might be a simpler set up , we have no sinking fund but have met the cost of the excess on the insurance policy when underpinned and roof refurbishment . The cost is spilt between the flats . The apportionment will be specified in the lease , in our case it's 60/40%.

Firstly it’s unlikely you’ll be granted a mortgage now, but even if you are, and even if you take steps to fix the issue, you’re buying a white elephant which you’ll never be able to sell.
I wish posters wouldn't say things like this . Maybe they've had a terrible experience but honestly where I live the majority of properties have subsidence issues and they change hands all the time.
Maybe it's the being the norm that makes the difference. If the OP is considering a property with subsidence and this is rare in the locality, then it might possibly be a worry .

If it's only two flats and one insurance policy I wouldn't think there will be a problem .
What is the excess on the policy?
Never mind what the estate agents say about the flats splitting the cost .
This will be in the lease . Get your own copy from the land reg for £11( though you do have to print off a form and post it ) or ask the upstairs neighbour for a copy of theirs.

We had subsidence in a previous home. A row of 3 houses, we were the end house. The glass plates with grid lines were put over the main cracks to monitor them and the surveyor said he would come back in a month to check them. That night one of the plates cracked and in the morning - we could pass cutlery through the kitchen wall to our neighbours.

We left the house that day and it was 18m before we could return. The whole house was slightly different afterward. The made to measure curtains didn’t fit. The carpets had to be re-cut etc.

I would not touch a flat with this issue. Could be nothing. Could be hideous.

@AgathaMystery that does indeed sound terrifying and enough to put anyone off even the word subsidence.

I think ideally yes, you're right, but things don't always fall into place like that and you can have headaches. (I'm in Scotland so possibly things work differently here, and this was many years ago so perhaps the legal situation was different)

For eg, when I bought the flat that was demolished the sellers had given false information on the sellers questionnaire that there was a block buildings insurance policy in place (there wasn't) I tried to go down a legal route here but this was a minefield...they had not actually signed the document and someone else had on their behalf, then there was confusion about where the false information had come from...the Factor of the building or the sellers..then was it my solicitor's shortcoming for not having checked everything out properly? Or my own fault for not looking through the paperwork thoroughly enough?

So it was a complete legal headache and unfortunately I was never able to get to the bottom of it and it would have cost vast sums to try to resolve, with a possibility that nothing could be recovered.

So there's just still the potential for massive headaches, but yes I guess you can try to minimise this as much as possible and from OP recent posts the work they are doing in that respect sounds promising.

OP are they saying that the subsidence is new?
Or historical ?

Walk away OP, one of my neighbours years ago had subsidence on their house, fortunately the insurance covered the whole works but it was a hell of a messy time to live through. Whole building underpinned and every room had to be redecorated.

Not a chance would I buy a house knowing it had that going on, let alone a flat where it’s no where near as straight forward to deal with.

why buy a property with a known problem? just why?

I bought a property in a similar position. I made the vendors do the necessary work, it wasn't full subsidence but some "structural movement" due to poor drainage.
The vendors (with their insurers) footed the entire bill. They also paid for a structural engineer who wrote me a report before and after which is what I then used to provide to my building insurers.
Ultimately I decided it was better to have a property where the work was already done and where I live London clay means most properties are at risk of subsidence anyway !
The main impact is that I have to get specialist building insurance and can't use online comparison sites as they won't accept properties with subsidence. I have the report which I have to send showing what was done etc. There's not much shopping around and I have a large excess for any future subsidence claim.

So in summary, it's worked out fine for me. I'm OK with the excess but definitely get vendor to do the work pre sale and definitely get an independent report on this work so you can use for insurance

why buy a property with a known problem? just why?
Probably because there isn't masses of choice.
The OP. has explained in her first post.

Thank you - exactly that, so unhelpful to just chime in with your opinion. I asked for positive stories because it’s very easy to find negative ones online!