The Big Surveyor Survey — Results May Shock!
What percentage of people do you think commission a full survey on a property they are seriously considering buying? As buying a house is such a serious matter and a huge investment to boot, you would think that the figure would obviously be very closed to 100% - after all, who would want to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on something they hadn’t checked out properly? The actual figure, according to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), is shockingly lower…
RICS carried out a detailed survey that questioned over 1,000 recent buyers of property in the UK. Of these people, only around 75% had commissioned a home survey before purchasing their current house or apartment, meaning that more than 250 buyers simply hadn’t bothered and had taken the unnecessary risk of moving into a property, gambling on there being no unnoticed defects.
Of the three-quarters of people who did commission a full survey, 73% said that it gave them ‘some’ peace of mind but around 50% of people thought the service was expensive and were not sure if it represented good value for money. In properties that had not been surveyed and that later showed the effects of previously unnoticed problems, these problems included rising damp, dry rot, invasive plant species such as Japanese Knotweed, cavity wall tie failure due to corrosion, inadequate lintel support leading to cracking brickwork and severe penetrating damp with accompanying mould - remedying these defects attracts an average renovation cost of up to £6,000, and is normally not covered by home insurance policies.
Leslie-Anne Milson is a Valuation Manager and urges potential property-buyers to get their intended property surveyed without fail. “Many defects are not obvious to the untrained eye or may even be hidden within the fabric of the building, behind furniture (and) under carpets,” said Ms Milson, adding that people should be aware of the difference between Mortgage Valuations and Home Surveys - “home surveys are carried out on your behalf whereas a mortgage valuation is considered from the bank or building society’s own lending criteria,” she explains.
Would you spend 100s of 1000s of £££s without looking properly at what you were buying? 25% of people do just that...
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