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 🙏

Buying a new place with subsidence which is going to be subject to renovation anyway is a bit different to when your beloved home develops problems. The latter is incredibly stressful - I have first hand experience there, and I think most people who have suffered it wouldn't want to go through it again.

You're not emotionally attached to the new place - you just need a willing insurer and decent repair company / builder. If you're absolutely certain that the other neighbours in the block are willing and able to do the work then I guess go ahead with the purchase - but it does feel more complicated when you don't own the entire building.

I assume you don't need a mortgage for your purchase .... because you probably won't get one.

What I would add is that it's rare for an insurer to pay up for underpinning now - it's usually a "remove the cause (ie tree or broken drain), repair the cracks, then watch and wait". That's what happened to us. So it's not really "fixed" as such. You continue to be hyper-vigilant and anxious about futher cracks developing.

Underpinning is not without issues. If only a part of the structure is underpinned, be it a corner or one wall of a house, or one house at the end of a terrace or one of a pair of semis, a stress is set up between the underpinned parts (which are on rock solid foundations) and the non-underpinned parts which continue to shift slightly. There is always a risk of further cracking at the junction between underpinned areas and non underpinned areas. There is a clear explanation for this so I suppose it's not a worry - but it's still as hassle with regard to ongoing repair of cracks and damage to finishes.

What did you decide @Cece87 ?

We’re going ahead, we got a decent amount of money knocked off, a drain report with things that we can fix immediately & then we will underpin the one part of the house that is affected when we are doing our complete renovation 😊
All due to a tap that was left running for a year!