Buying a house with movement

[user1480677551]

We are in the process of buying a home and have had a structural survey done to address cracks in external brickwork and internally. It’s by no means unsafe or severe. Remedial measures include drainage assessments, possible trial pits and maybe underpinning but we aren’t sure on the extent until these works are done..

Has anyone found similar and what did you do?

what is the insurance situation? Are the current insurers doing investigations? Will they continue to provide insurance for you? Houses with unexplained movement are very hard to insure. Also your bank may not be willing to lend on it.

How old is the house? Is it near a water course?

It’s around 40 yrs old … Not near a water course and we’ve had a quiite from an insurers who give specialist quotes for these issues so that’s positive.

@user1480677551 can you please tell me who your insurance quote is from? We have a structural engineer coming to look at a house that we have put an offer on, next week.

We purchased a house where the drains had collapsed and the cellar would fill with the drainage water. We bought it , replaced the whole drainage system , helifix ties brought the house back into line. We had to let the house settle for a couple of years , leaving any cracks that appeared alone as the house was slowly moving back to where it should be. Don’t regret it and love my house. But this was all done after extensive surveys so we knew it was all fixable x

Unfortunately the quote we had we weren’t able to go ahead when it came to it whilst movement is still ongoing and not fixed. 😔 I joe you get on okay with your report? - have you had something flagged in a survey too?

This is good to hear and shows things are always fixable if you love the house enough it’s worth it! Did you have insurance throughout your the process if you’d just bought it and needed all that work? It’s proving so difficult 😞

This is good to hear and shows things are always fixable if you love the house enough it’s worth it! Did you have insurance throughout your the process if you’d just bought it and needed all that work? It’s proving so difficult 😞

yes we had insurance , the work being done was a condition of our mortgage. It was made clear to the insurance company that this wasn’t subsidence as shown by the surveyors reports. We had excellent estate agents who were really good at helping us through the process. Good luck ☺️

I used to work for an insurance company - no insurer will cover whilst the cause of the issues is unknown and you will struggle to insure it even after remedial work. Honestly, walk away.

Hi
This could be doable but it’s a major hassle
I used to underwrite for exactly this type of issue .
The owners need to make a claim and once it’s proceeding there is an agreement between insurers to offer cover for any new owners of the property ( subject to you being an acceptable risk in other ways eg no criminal convictions etc)
This process could take up to a year or more to sort as theres often ongoing monitoring .
Thats the only way to sort the insurance side out and it has to be insured if you’re getting a mortgage . But even then 95% of mortgage companies will say no as it’s an unknown risk, the ones that do have much higher rates .
It’s also really wise to consider your future plans , if you ever sell it will limit your pool of buyers as some people are more risk adverse and don’t want to pay drastically higher premiums .