Why a Home Survey is a Necessity and Not a Luxury

I specialise in home surveys and Surveyor/Valuer negligence cases and it grieves me when I know so many buyers are going to regret buying the home they set their hearts on.

The “builder next door” said it was OK; my brother viewed with us, he’s a brickie, and he said it looked good; the loan company advanced on it so we thought it would have been good. I have heard all the excuses but when it boils down to the heart of the matter several things link to cause this sorry state of confusion and shame in our community:-

1. That Government chose to withdraw Seller Surveys from HIPs.
2. That people think a Survey is not essential (often justifying this by saying “what’s the point, you can’t sue a Surveyor”).
3. General ignorance about what a survey is, the various types available and the value they add to any transaction.
4. Politics and Regulations - the “powers that be” do not regulate adequately to clear the market of dumbed down expertise and survey products.
5. Estate Agents who do not take Home Information Packs and Surveys seriously thinking they are doing sellers a favour by giving biased advice and steering buyers and sellers alike to sources whereby they, the Agent, gets a commission, to the detriment of the seller and buyer.

A few years ago the then Labour Government decided that HIPs would be better without a sellers survey (that buyers could rely on and sue the Surveyor if the report was negligent). Despite HIPs being criticised massively in other ways, the only thing the Government did to be seen to be authoritative was to remove what most thinking people believe would have been the best part of the whole initiative.

If you buy a Mars bar, a Car, a Holiday, you have rights if things go wrong. If you buy a house, probably your single biggest investment, and then things go wrong you have next to nothing to protect you. Why? It just doesn’t make sense and yet everyday the great English public perpetuate this mistake and no momentum exists by the world authority on surveying, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors based in London, to change things fundamentally.

Even more worrying is the question of why the public do not think surveys are essential. Ask people who they do not trust and the answers will include sales people selling carpets, cars and houses plus politicians and the Banks. Yet, when anybody needs a Surveyor the public ask Estate Agents and Loan Companies for recommendations. Again, it just doesn’t make any sense and it plays into Agents and Banks hands to monopolise demand to earn commissions and hidden fees.

Often, in cases where a buyer has moved in and found something seriously wrong, I am called in. So, what sort of thing can go wrong? Typical things are:-

• A brand new house, passed by Inspectors from XXX Homes Co Ltd and by the local Building Control Officer, that had a Utility Room but no outdoor drainage system to connect facilities to
• A brand new house built with next to no insulation within it.
• A Victorian home with ground floor dry-rot.
• A 1990’s house with detached garage built to a 4 degree slope.
• A semi-detached 1949 house “recently refurbished” that turned out to have had a non-approved make-over by an unregistered contractor who had clad a concrete building listed as “defective” under the Defective Premises Act and as such as not mortgageable.
• An ex-Council built house with a side extension self-built but upon somebody else’s land.
• The 1980’s home built upon a former waste landfill site not known about by seller, buyer, loan valuer, seller and buyer solicitors etc……
• Victorian home sold with the Agents Details saying “recently refurbished roof” that was subsequently found to be so weak it had to be prop- supported immediately to avoid sudden collapse.

The point being made is that even if you do not see the benefit of private surveys and advice from Surveyors there can be no doubt that surveys are a cheap form a one-off-premium-insurance spread over the number of years you reside at the same home.

I believe that the Law Society has a protocol that includes that Conveyancers must advise buyers that they should seriously consider commissioning a private survey. If this is being invoked then why does the English house market suffer from this disgraceful state of affairs; only 1-in-12 buyers take private surveyor advice?

People justify or rationalise their own actions by saying surveys are not essential, are too expensive and that because you just cannot sue a Surveyor then they would prefer to buy blind. This is rubbish. I believe that buyers just tend to forget that a loan valuation report (often falsely referred to as the Valuation Survey) is not a survey. Also they cannot see an overriding need to spend a fee at exactly the time when they are financially pushed to the limited. In essence this is the moral and social argument of why Government need to step in and to level the playing field.

In recent years Television has been festooned with Location Location Location shows that focus on Auctions, Interior Design and Lifestyle but NOT on the mechanics of how to buy: not upon the benefit of a good Conveyancer, a good Estate Agent or a good Surveyor.

With this in mind it is not surprising that the public are poorly educated in these directions. The 1970’s saw a swing to right-to-buy, de-regulation, increased-competition and some would say, dumbing down. More recently the HIPs initiative was hijacked and again dumbed-down.

Government and The Public just cannot see the benefits to be gained by extending consumer-power to housing transactions. What is wrong with the premise that if you sell a house you must sell it being “fit for purpose” and warrant a certain base level of suitability and lack of fundamental problems.

As we begin to turn toward green issues (something that I believe we have paid lip service to for far too long) we must not forget that green issues would be easier to accept and invest in if the infrastructure in the property and loan markets was also changed:-

1. Improve the quality and understandability of Energy Performance Certificates.
2. Create a green mortgage mass marketplace - the greener the home the cheaper the loan-rate!
3. Less Council Tax the greener the home.
4. Change the recently reduced buy-back electrical tariff-rate to a much higher amount to encourage local solutions to on-site energy generation.
5. Introduce mandatory Seller Surveys completed by Chartered Surveyors with Energy add-on training and qualifications.
6. Overall and simplify HIPs by including legal summaries of all current documents but to include in the mandatory document listing all electrical and heating/boiler service and alteration records, all Planning Permission and Building Control Approval (plus Building Plans) of all alterations etc…
7. Toughen regulations on “connected persons” and outlaw Surveyors accepting commissions from any intermediatory in any housing transaction. In other words, the Surveyor must be 100% independent from all other parties in all housing transactions and only obtain one fee (from either the seller or buyer, and nobody else at all).

The one final change I would make is that currently my Professional Indemnity Insurers have a big problem with any Surveyor accepting an instruction to “take a quick look” at a home. This is an often quoted instruction and one that Surveyors cannot accept because if something then does wrong, a defect missed, then the Surveyor would find it difficult to defend themselves and they would not be insured (Insurers would effectively dis-own them in these circumstances).

Somehow this situation must change: it is a perfectly reasonably request for a potential buyer to say “take a quick look and talk to me”. This could be done without any liability being accepted by the Surveyor who in many cases could then convert than chat into a properly written, traditional survey instruction tailored to the type of problems already known about and in a report of the best format for the property profile.

Should you have a private survey? Yes. Who should you instruct - how do you choose a private survey product? Call an local, independent Surveyor.

Stuart K. Parrett FRICS, MAE, dipHI is a Chartered Surveyor and owner of PROinspect Consultancy based in southern England. He is a residential property specialist and has over 35 years local experience plus Courtroom skills. He is a Home Inspector, Valuer, Thermal Imaging Consultant and Expert Witness.

To contact Stuart or to obtain more free information plus product recommendation and fee quotations visit him at http://www.proinspect.co.uk