Recently heard a horror story where a lady bought a first floor flat, only to be faced with a huge expense shortly after; replacing wooden flooring. She found out after that her Survey did not compensate her for them 'not' finding this hidden problem with her flat.
When we have a Structural Survey done, how can we try to make sure that the Surveyor's Company Insurance would re-imburse us for any serious building defects that they did not uncover at the time of the Survey? Thanks.
I always do my own survey.
But I understand surveyors have professional indemnity insurance.
I think you would do better to get and experienced builder to look at a place.
AIUI surveyors disclaim responsibility from omissions - though you might have some recourse for gross omissions that obviously fall way below professional standards.
Remember a homebuyers survey is for the benefit of the mortgage company, not the buyer.
A full structural survey uses the approach of mentioning every single thing possible, and can be hugely overloaded with irrelevant/trivial information.
Surveyors also do not lift carpets/move furniture etc - so the most trivial attempts by the owner to hide things may work.
I would recommend "Understanding Housing Defects" and "Residential Property Appraisal" and using your own skills to uncover problems.
You need to understand what the law is.
The surveyor will do his best to find defects in accordance with his training. There will be defects that he can't see. You probably can't blame him for that. He will have professional negligence insurance to indemnify him if he makes a mistake and gets sued by a client. The insurance does not compensate you, the client. It indemnifies him if he is found to be negligent. If he isn't negligent, no payment will be made.
More details required. Was it a full survey she had done, or were there limitations to it? What was wrong with the flooring? Would a surveyor be expected to pull up carpets to inspect each carpet. In my experience, no, they wouldnt.
For serious ones, then there may be a chance of getting compensation, but in reality, anything serious would be spotted, if it was visible. I know a Surveyor who no longer goes into attics, as they are nearly all covered in insulation, so there is no point looking, as it would take all day to pull back the insulation. In Victorian houses, I think the roof beams would be a potential weakness, but they are not always inspected. To be sure of covering everything, you need to stipulate what you want inspected.
Anything that may be rotting away, he would just note something like - 'joists look to be rotting, recommend wood treatment company to investigate further'. Same with electrics, plumbing, drainage, they have a quick look, and recommend further investigation. They are not experts in many fields, so cannot give a definitive opinion, hence they hedge their bets, and say there may be a problem with 'so and so'.
Alan.
did she have a structural survey, or just a value survey.? there is a massive difference.
Most survey reports are very restricted. Usually surveyors will not lift carpets, move furniture etc.
I bought a house with dry rot which should have been noticed. After a lot of effort he finally agreed to turn up on the date set for the area to be opened up. He did not appear and ignored all communications afterwards. It was not worth suing him in the end.
In other properties surveyors have reported false positives for live woodworm and for rising damp.
In my current house the surveyor could not been expected to have discovered woodworm under the kitchen floor. Whether he should have noticed it in a board under loose carpet which gave access to the stopcock is more debatable. He did however warn that the cold water tank was approaching the end of its life which could have saved me and my insurance company a lot of money.
If you can prove liability against a surveyor ISTR the indemnity is usually based on any diminution of the value of the house at the time it was surveyed rather than the cost of repairs.
A detailed structural survey would need the details to be agreed in advance and the cost would be horrendous in relation to anything but a suspect, non standard or period property.
Negligence is a strong word... ;-)
IME, Professional Indemnity (PI) insurance does not cover for "negligence". You can have PI insurance which will payout to protect the supplier should they be sued for errors / omissions etc. However a condition of such insurance is that the insured applied due care and attention to their business, and did not behave in a negligent way.
So, a surveyor not warning about a problem that existed, but for which there was no apparent evidence - would be protected in the first instance by a disclaimer, and in the second by their PI insurance. If however there was a problem that was not spotted because they did not even visit the property in question, yet they wrote out a report as if they did, then they would not be protected by their insurers since their behaviour was negligent.
I don't agree.
That example would be fraudulent
tim
Interesting theory, but no. In the scenario you describe the surveyor would probably be acting fraudulently rather than negligently and maybe there would be some sort of exclusion in his policy in respect of deliberate fraud.
Negligence is what the policy normally does cover.
Negligent would describe the advice you have just given, if it came from a legal professional owing a duty of care to the person receiving the advice.
A homebuyers survey or homebuyers report is supposed to cover both the requirements of a valuation survey (which is all the lender will require) and also a basic report to a fixed template for the benefit of the buyer. These typically cost a bit more than the basic valuation survey.
Its worth mentioning that while there are various common names banded about for survey types, there is actually more flexibility in the system if you speak to the surveyor.
In the simplest form a valuation survey will do the minimum necessary to value the place and satisfy the lender that their loan is against a sound property.
The homebuyers survey's use a standard form which reports back to the buyers on key elements - but there is little room for detailed description, and its only really suited to basic properties.
The so called "full structural" is not a standard off the shelf survey, but something you negotiate and customise with the surveyor. Typically to look at a specific aspect of a building that may be of concern to you.
In cases with larger properties, or ones that do not fit the 3 to 4 bed terrace/semi that the homebuyers report is well suited to, you may be better off going for a valuation survey, and then adding instructions for any additional specific items you want checked (and for that matter specific items you don't want them to waste time on).
Indeed.
In my experience someone would have to be reckless or extremely careless for a professional indemnity (PI) insurer to seek to avoid liability. If the PI insurer did refuse to indemnify a negligent surveyor then it would be possible to sue the surveyor or firm that was instructed to complete the survey although they may not have funds to satisfy a judgement.
I have no experience of claims against surveyors but I worked for an insurance company and did not refuse to indemnify PI claims where a wrong knee was operated on or when swabs or drains were accidentally left in patients or when wrong doses were given or blood not properly cross matched.
Perhaps my example was poor - I agree it would be fraudulent, and since it is a case of someone knowingly providing bad advice, I would not expect a PI policy to pay out in case like that. Having said that, it would usually depend on the position of the personal at fault. For example, with my PI policy, my company is covered should a member of staff hurts a client by being malicious, dishonest, or acting fraudulently. However that cover would not be provided if it was I or another director who behaved in such a way.
Indeed. There are in mine anyway.
Yup, on reflection I am probably being too strict with my terminology by including deliberate intent. In the legal sense of negligence being a failure to act in a way reasonably expected for someone of the position
- then PI would still apply.
When a priori deception is involved it may not - depending on who was doing the deceiving.
It came from an engineer on usenet, and so is potentially worth what you paid for it, or possibly a little bit less ;-)
Agreed - see my comments to other respondents. I was using the term in too restrictive a context.
Remind me if I ever have an operation on something I have two of, to write a note to the surgeon on the good one!
The Todal posted
So, to summarise, if a solicitor or surveyor lets you down through incompetence, your compensation is assured through his PII; but if he defrauds you or cheats you, it won't do you a damn bit of good?
I think the Law Society should be forced to make that clear when they tell everyone they should use a solicitor because "you're covered if anything goes wrong".
No, in the case of solicitors the client is fully compensated if the solicitor is fraudulent. Probably by the Solicitors Indemnity fund rather than the professional indemnity insurers. Surveyors probably don't have such a generous scheme.
I certainly would. In private hospitals they normally supply the nursing, facilities etc. The surgeon and possibly the anaesthetist are employed separately. If the nursing staff mark up the wrong knee and the surgeon does not notice or if the surgeon leaves a swab or worse in and the theatre staff do not count them in and out properly there are lots of liability arguments between the hospital's insurers and the surgeon's medical defence union or whatever. For confidentiality reasons I cannot relate some of the more ridiculous and terrifying cases.
Historically solicitors (and other professions) were not allowed to operate under the umbrella of a limited liability business structure such as a limited company. Hence they would always remain personally liable. So even without PI they can't disclaim all liability contractually when they are at fault.
Not sure how that has changed with the advent of limited liability partnerships though.
That is all it does cover for.
But they will only be successfully sued for those if negligence can be shown.
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