Eyes
wide shut?
Why Have a residential building
survey (RBS)?
When you first decide to move house
you take a lot of time and effort sorting through details
and choosing the properties that look right to you. You
spend a whole day (or several of them!) looking at different
houses and finally you choose one (usually!). You put in
your offer and it is accepted and, of course, you are very
happy that you have started to secure your new home.
However, how long did you really
spend looking at that house closely even if you
went back a second time? And how much did you really see while you were there?
When we look at a house as a potential home we seem to spend
a lot of time imagining whether our three-piece suite will
fit into the living room, what colour we will paint the bedroom
or trying to decide if we can afford to re-fit the kitchen
in six months.
Few of us take the time, or
have the expertise, to look beyond the rose-tinted glasses
and see what work might need doing in the structure of
the property for example, re-pointing chimneys, repairing
roofs, dealing with damp or even more serious problems.
One surveyor has even found that we spend more time looking
at the estate agent than the house we are viewing.
Indeed few of us take the time to instruct an independent
expert in the form of a Surveyor (who does have
the expertise to pick up on these problems) to look after
our interests. Statistics tell us that as few as 20% of homebuyers
instruct their own survey, independent of the mortgage valuation.
So what is available and why should you spend more when
this property seems to be costing you hand over fist already? Many of us will have to obtain a mortgage to buy that desirable
new home and this being the case will have to have a Mortgage
Valuation carried out.
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