My Parents house, the surveyor said the chimney was in need of repair. Only when they moved in and looked for it, did they realise, there was no chimney in the house.
If they advertised as psychics and did things like this, they would be arrested and charged with fraud.
The message from "Alan" contains these words:
You mean it was already twenty years old when it was installed in 1986?
As I've mentioned before on this NG (cf. postings about damp meters) the poor buyer who had our last house surveyed probably payed out £250+VAT (the going rate) for an 8-minute survey. Thats £1875 per hour folks ! I know because I was in at the time.
Zoinks.
But whose bottom?
I've had 3 surveyors ask if we have planning permission for the kitchen extension. We don't have one. Every single house on our estate has a kitchen which is part single story - the house were all built that way in
1954.When this is pointed out - and you can see several others from the garden - they agree. When the report arrives it still asks about planning permission. In one ear....
Well, yes and no... if a vendor is faced with a buyer who says 'Sorry, I'm having to drop my asking price by X grand because this itemised list of repairs needs doing, which I was unaware of when I made my offer', the vendor is more likely to agree to it than when faced with a buyer who says 'I'm reducing my original offer by X grand, just because I feel like it'.
The survey report can provide ammunition for the buyer, and the vendor may well feel obliged to take the hit, particularly if they feel that if the sale falls through, the same problem may occur with a future buyer in 6 weeks' time.
Not that I'm in any way a surveyor fan, mind you!
David
I also have no problem with structural engineers but I'm definitely with the OP on architects! Have had dealings with two of them; the first one 'helped' with finding a builder, who subsequently ran out of money when building our extension; and my subsequent enquiries around town left me in no doubt that backhanders had been involved in the builder originally securing the work.
The second architect, who I used some years later, I am similarly convinced had an extremely unhealthy relationship with the local Planning Department - too long a story to go into here. Suffice it to say that in neither instance did I have any proof of my suspicions, but I now regard these buggers as the lowest of the low.
David
Oh thats okay, mine had pictures in the back of the problems, some of the pictures were not my house, and quite how plastic soffit and fascia boards get slightly rotten is beyond me.
Steve
Lobster is dead right. We saved a lot of money this way but the only way we could do so was by evidencing the outcomes of the survey to detail the work that had to be done. There is no question that our final offer would not have been accepted without the survey report. For our property it was a good investment which paid handsome dividends.
By the way we were careful to employ a different surveyor from the one who did the mortgage valuation so our lender did not see the full survey report.
That's nothing...
As it happens I'm in the process of selling a property. We originally accepted an offer about a month ago, surveyor came round and did his stuff, but a while later the buyer pulled out. We've now accepted a second (better! hah!) offer, and the estate agent rang me today to tell me the new buyer's survey's just been done.
Only it hasn't. As it happened, the new lender appointed the same surveyor as before, who I gather from our estate agent simply collected the keys, walked round the block and returned them, without even visiting the property.
Nice work if you can get it, eh?
David
No they wouldnt... they would get their own TV show
The survey on my brother's house said the chimney breast had been removed in the living room and there was no visible evidence of support for the remainder of it.
Elsewhere in the same report, it also mentioned the presence of a back boiler in this apparently non-existent chimney.
On Tue, 25 Apr 2006 13:03:31 +0100, a particular chimpanzee named "PeterK" randomly hit the keyboard and produced:
D'oh! Been there, done that! Although mine went straight down the sewer. It happened totally accidently just after I'd asked my boss for an upgrade.
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