2 questions about surveys

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1. at what point do i go about booking a survey on the house we want to buy? Is it as soon as the memo of sale is through?

2. if there was a previous person wanted to buy the house, they had a survey done but then the sale fell through (not related to survey results), would we be able to access that survey instead of paying for a new one? Would the estate agents have the information? Or is that not doable?

(First time buyers, hence the potentially stupid questions!)

Yes, you need to get the survey when you receive the memorandum of sale. If the house is over 25-30 years old, you will need a level 3 survey for safety, it’s far more comprehensive.
Generally, surveys have to be repeated but some (a few) will have been marked as shareable. This is fairly new and not many are part of the system. You can ask the estate agent if the previous buyers marked their survey as shareable through, but be prepared for it not to have been.
Price depending on where you are located, in Hampshire I paid £1000 for a L3 survey this year.
Good luck.

Thanks - what difference is there between a level 2 and a level 3? I've seen on previous posts that people recommended a level 3 only for older houses, like properly older. The one we're looking at is 1960s/70s.

Does it include looking at plumbing and wiring?

My bungalow was built in the 60’s and I had a L3. It’s recommended for anything over a few years old.

Here’s the RICS page that tells you what is included in each type of survey.
https://www.rics.org/consumer-guides/house-surveys-uk-the-costs-types-and-benefits-of-an-rics-home-survey

In answer to your follow up question you’ll generally find they suggest specialists for electrics, gas and damp. Maybe something else I’ve forgotten. They can give general vague advice, like ‘I recommend a specialist check your electrics’.

Thanks, I’ve just realised I forgot to add that bit. 😊

No, you don't have to book the survey when you get the memo of sale. You book it when you feel comfortable that the process is going as expected.

Depending on your deposit size, your mortgage lender might want to see the house in person before they'll agree to lend you the full amount. We're about to go 90% LTV so our lender has just visited the house. We're awaiting confirmation from them that the house is worth what we've offered for it. If their view of its value versus what we've offered differs by more than 5k, we simply can't make up the difference, so I'm not prepared to spend money on a survey until the first hurdle is passed: the bank will lend us the full amount. Of course we could always go back to the vendor and negotiate, but there's no guarantee that would be successful. I've also got my solicitor on hold until the mortgage is approved too - they tell me this is really, really common. They haven't even ordered searches yet - because as soon as they do you start passing over money in £250-300 chunks.

From someone with not a huge amount of savings for post-move, one of my priorities is absolutely not spending money until I'm confident it is the right step in the process to do so.

Everyone else on mumsnet will tell you to full on in - order the survey, start the searches. But, for the most part, they aren't FTBs and don't remember how scary and expensive it is first time round!

The mortgage lenders 'valuation' is free, by the way - and they won't necessarily tell you how much THEY think the house is worth, they'll just approve the mortgage. Same in-person check happened with a different lender on a different house when we were at 95% LTV. Our broker tells us it's common for higher than 80% LTV. For those with larger deposits, the lender usually just does a desktop or drive by valuation (drive by meaning: I saw the house with my own eyes and can confirm it does actually exist!).

If you're in the same situation, you can call the surveyor and ask them to book a slot in, say, 3 weeks time. This should reassure the seller that you're serious, and surveyors don't usually want immediate payment, it can happen a day or two before the appointment. So if your bank valuation comes short you haven't forked out any money yet.

Level 3 is recommended for: houses over 90 years old, those with extensions, or significant internal alterations, e.g. walls have been knocked down and moved around.

We're about to pay £725 for a L3 in the North East. Adding getting it valued onto that would be an extra £50.

You can feel free to ask them for a sample report of a similar property type. I've swerved the one who say 'we can't do that because they're all so very different.' The one who sent me a sample report without me even asking is getting my business.

Another difference between L2 and 3 - and any readers, please correct me if I am wrong - is that with a L3 they will also cost up any works they think need doing, which work on a traffic light system: red - hardcore danger, needs immediately resolving, amber, will need attention in the future, green - checked and all good.

They won't check the quality of any electrical installations or pipework. You may get general comments such is 'consumer unit appears to be quite new' or 'pipework may be lead.' They will comment on the strikingly obvious, e.g. 'gutter from roof to kitchen has a large crack.'

NB, anything they are unsure about, they're gonna tell you to get a specialist in to check. That's their arse covering. You'll get that on any survey - but - you can pick up the phone to a surveyor and off the record they'll usually be quite friendly and give you a sense of whether a problem looks like a really big 'swerve this house' or not.

You can ask to buy the previous survey off the previous buyers, but usually when that happens, you lose any power to sue the surveyor for missing glaringly obvious, expensive things - they have liability insurance for missing things, it's part and parcel of their job. But, generally, if YOU did not commission the survey, you have no recourse for it being wrong. A PP mentioned some are shareable - I don't know about that. I know mine says 'do not share without permission.'

Thank you, this is super helpful! It is a scary thing buying for the first time: I knew that our mortgage lenders would likely want to view the property to value it and check they're happy to lend due to family having had this previously, but I hadn't considered that they might have a different opinion on the value and therefore it would affect our buying at all...

If they think the house isn't worth what we've offered/had agreed, why wouldn't they tell us what they think it is worth? How are you supposed to negotiate with the vendor if they don't tell you?

We're expecting the memorandum of sale in the next couple of days, as well as the mortgage offer, though I'm guessing this would be a mortgage in principle until they've viewed and valued, based on what you've said? In which case, I'll hold off booking a survey - our vendor will have to deal with it, as I've been putting in a huge amount of effort to even get to this point (on top of being 5 months pregnant, working full time and having a 2 year old who has recently recovered from chicken pox. Evidently I don't do things by half 😲😆)

Sorry, I worded that badly/wasn't specific enough.

If they think the house isn't worth what we've offered/had agreed, why wouldn't they tell us what they think it is worth? How are you supposed to negotiate with the vendor if they don't tell you?

We've never had a mortgage application return to us saying 'we don't think it's worth this much so we're lowering what we're prepared to lend you' - I imagine in that case, they will absolutely tell you what they think it's worth, because that affects how much they're prepared to lend you, as they'll expect you to negotiate the price down or make the rest up yourselves.

If they think the house is worth what you offered or more (and this has happened to me twice), your mortgage offer will come through with the value of the house being exactly what you offered! Our first house ended in 48 and the second in 65 so isn't it peculiar that this is exactly what was said on the mortgage paperwork across two different lenders and houses? No - they won't tell you if the house you think is worth £365k is worth more, e.g. 80. It'll say: house value, £365k. Does that make sense? Idk why they do that. I guess it's not their job to tell you if you managed to negotiate a really good price and they think it's worth more.

But, as I said, you can pay your building surveyor a little bit extra to add in a valuation component if you like. If you do this, and the value is important to you, make sure that surveyor is really local to where you're buying and knows the market well.

We're expecting the memorandum of sale in the next couple of days, as well as the mortgage offer, though I'm guessing this would be a mortgage in principle until they've viewed and valued, based on what you've said?

Yes. And here's a thing to know about mortgage lenders if you haven't gone through a broker (at least, this happened to us with First Direct) - it doesn't list the % rate on it. We went direct one time and I bloody hated it, FD were absolutely crap to deal with and painfully slow, brokers are ten times faster. The broker also locked the rate in immediately on the MIP. With FD, the MIP offered to lend us the amount required but at what rate was up for discussion with them in later phone calls. I was quite pissed off.

Also, do you know you can ask to get your mortgage reissued at a lower rate if the deals they're offering drop between when you apply versus when they release the mortgage funds? It's advised to do this at least 3 weeks before exchange to give time for the paperwork to be completed. Again, this is something a broker can do in a day or two and they do it all the time.

(I'm not a broker, honest!)

In which case, I'll hold off booking a survey - our vendor will have to deal with it, as I've been putting in a huge amount of effort to even get to this point (on top of being 5 months pregnant, working full time and having a 2 year old who has recently recovered from chicken pox. Evidently I don't do things by half 😲😆)

It doesn't hurt to book your survey in now, but tell the firm you want it booked in 3-4 weeks time and that you'll be paying them shortly before the appointment date. They should be pretty used to this.

Thank you so much! Thankfully, we do have a mortgage broker and she is fabulous, so i know we're in good hands there. When I have a bit of mental energy to spare, I'll sort a survey out!

Personally I would only do the survey once the chain is complete. We sat waiting on a house and then the vendor pulled out as he couldn't find anywhere. I was relieved we didn't pay all that money to just not get anyway. That being said I can see it would be annoying to wait all that time in some cases and then survey to pull things up that mean you pull out anyway.

I took out home buyer's insurance before making an offer on a house, a 50s semi-detached. After having the offer accepted, hiring a solicitor, and also getting a mortgage offer, I contacted a surveyor for a RICS Survey Level 3.

That happened last Wednesday (18th). I'm still waiting for the report. As of yet, the sale hasn't fallen through. I'm crossing my fingers that the vendor is very organised and keen to move a.s.a.p.

If you go early with the survey and the chain is not complete - it can be a waste of money. There are numerous threads on here that the top of the chain takes weeks to find a house and then pulls out and the chain collapses. I'm at the top of a chain at the moment and the FTB didn't get the survey done until the chain was completed.