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Cheap Building Surveys,or being wrongly advised by yourchartered surveyor
If you need help and advise with regard to structural surveys, building surveys, engineers reports, defects reports, including things such as cracks, dampness, condensation, foundation problems, etc, home buyers reports, please free to phone 0800 298 5424 for a friendly chat.
Cheap building surveysThere are many companies out there carrying out cheap building surveys. The problem is that if they carry out a cheap building survey they have to be quick at carrying out surveys, as the surveyors need to make a living. There is no magic formula to surveying, it is literally the amount of time spent at the property and preparing the report relates to the cost. Equally, there is no magic formula in that a survey generally costs you a small percentage of your overall house value, yet in nearly 90% of cases it saves you that money in negotiating the price, particularly in a normal market or a downwards market. In an upward market sometimes, no matter how much information you have on problems with a property, the owners won't negotiate down, in which case it is best to walk away.
Cheap and cheerful building surveys
We have heard people say that all building surveys are the same. We would argue that all the cars are the same, as they get you from A to B, but there is a great deal of difference between a budget end car and a luxury end car. Our aim is to give you a good quality car, or should we say survey, by the use of technology, which allows us to survey the properties for longer and produce a better report.
Being wrongly advised by surveyors, or simply not listening to the advice you are being given
In a competitive market chartered surveyors are vying for work, just like everyone else. Many, although they are in theory selling all three types of survey, which is a valuation – not really a survey at all, but many people call it that, particularly estate agents, a home buyer's report, which was designed as a budget survey for a standard house construction, not more than 75 years old and certainly not to be used on houses prior to the war years, have been abused, we would say, by larger surveying practices and is used as a standard survey for them, or a middle survey, which it certainly isn't in terms of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) uses a budget survey. The reason it is being used is that the surveyors that carry them out don't have to be as qualified as those that carry out building surveys.
So, many companies are full of chartered valuation surveyors who can carry out valuations and home buyers reports, but have very few chartered building surveyors. For example, there are approximately 100,000 chartered surveyors, with 20,000 chartered building surveyors, of which some of them specialise in project management and dilapidations and party walls and various other things, so we would guesstimate that that leaves approximately 5,000 to 10,000 surveyors, so it is 1:20 chartered surveyors that are qualified to carry out building surveys.
The rare chartered building surveyor
There are some very big companies with large numbers of surveyors have a few chartered building surveyors, but normally have surveyors who, despite having no training, feel that they have a good enough knowledge of buildings to carry out building surveys. To give you an example; we worked for the largest chartered surveyors in the country, with literally hundreds of chartered surveyors and they only had half a dozen chartered building surveyors that were prepared to carry out building surveys. On a regular basis they only had three or four of these. The reason being that the risk for the surveyor is vast if they make errors, as these are an all encompassing tailor made survey, which gives the client complete piece of mind, but from a business point of view it is high risk for the chartered surveyors carrying them out. This is why you are often talked into, or advised, that a home buyers report will do.
Here are two examples of our building surveys and also please see our example reports in the Compare Reports section of the website www.1stAssociated.co.uk/compare_surveys.asp so you can see the difference yourself. This is the most popular page that we have on a very popular property website www.1stAssociated.co.uk .
Questions to ask the chartered surveyor that you pick
We would also just comment that many chartered surveyors are linked to estate agents and mortgage companies. We would advise that we are independent chartered surveyors and part of the Independent Surveyors Association. If your surveyor is not part of the Independent Surveyors Association then it is likely that they are not truly independent. Do not be misled by them advising that they are, as many have links to estate agents and financial companies and you certainly don't want the surveyors to be acting for you and also the “opposition”. See our article: The unhealthy alliance between local surveyors and estate agents
Independent chartered surveyors adviseIf you truly do want an independent expert opinion from a chartered surveyor with regard to structural surveys, building surveys, structural reports, engineers reports, defects report, including things such as cracks, dampness, condensation, foundation problems, etc, dilapidations, homebuyers reports or any other property matters please free phone 0800 298 5424 for a chartered surveyor to give you a call back. If you have a commercial property, be it leasehold or freehold, then you may wish to look at our Dilapidations Website at www.DilapsHelp.com and for Disputes go to our Disputes Help site www.DisputesHelp.com . We hope you found the article of use and if you have any experiences that you feel should be added to this article that would benefit others, or you feel that some of the information that we have put is wrong then please do not hesitate to contact us (we are only human). The contents of the web site are for general information only and is not intended to be relied upon for specific or general decisions. Appropriate independent professional advice should be paid for before making such a decision. All rights are reserved the contents of the web site is not to be reproduced or transmitted in any form in whole or part without the express written permission of www.1stAssociated.co.uk.
Please see these other articles which may be of interest:
Understanding the Estate Agent Estate Agents tricks of the trade Basic outline of what's involved when buying a home "There is no point being Honest" Should I have a Structural Survey? How, in our experience, Insurance Companies deal with Cracks in Properties Please see our section on: Specific Defects Reports
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