Stepped crack in brick exterior wall 1930's house

[louisa.king]

Hi,

I've had a search but can't see anything really relating to the above.

First time buyer, seen a property I really like, but don't have the funds to get a survey done on this one, find out it's got a big prob, and have to walk away and get survey on another property etc...

I know the sensible thing is to walk away but I really do like this place, it's got a lot going for it, and I might be worrying about nothing.

1930's brick-exterior (not rendered) semidetatched in Rushden, Northants, UK. It's had Aluminium D/G fitted.

Property seems sound throughout, apart from one thing: a stepped crack from the lower right corner of the large window on the front of the downstairs. Steps along the edge of the bricks, for about 6-7 courses, heading diagonally downwards at about 45deg angle, toward the left, so toward the middle of beneath the window. Not as far as the DPC - it peters out before then, not even hairline to it. Looks to be 1mm or less for the majority, but there does seem to be a fair bit of weathering of the mortar causing larger pockets of gaps in a couple of places - up to about 4mm max I guess.

Checked inside and no sign it's gone through (believed cavity wall) but then inside is wallpapered with at least one layer, possibly more.

Any views on this at all? I know it's going to be expensive to get a homebuyers survey done then find out I need to get deeper investigation (or full struct from outset), so I'm trying to find out if I'm worrying about nothing or not!

Most of the other houses in the road are of a different style, with rendering to part/all of the walls, so it's not easy to compare with similar aged properties.

Any advice much appreciated.

[Steve Walker]

Then you don't have the funds to be mortgaged up to your neck on an unsellable subsiding house!

[Geoffrey]

Do NOT buy a property without getting a full structural survey done, you may think you cannot afford it - I think you cannot afford not to have it done.

If the survey shows a problem you either walk away, make an offer taking into account the cost of repairs or make an offer conditional on the vendors getting the work done before exchange (chances are their buildings insurance would cover it). If the survey is clear you can buy with confidence that should a problem occur you can then sue the surveyors for the repair costs (run this one by your solicitor just in case).

You can bet your life that if there IS a problem, the vendors know about it and are just waiting for a mug to take it off their hands.

[Lobster]

If you're looking for somebody here to say "yes, for goodness' sake get it looked at by a professional" or "no, walk away, now!" then fine; but are you really going to make the decision that you don't need a structural survey, and are prepared to commit a 6-figure sum (I assume) on buying the property, based on opinions in a newsgroup from persons unknown who haven't even seen the place, however well-intentioned?!

Maybe the place has severe subsidence and is falling down; maybe the foundations have moved a bit sometime but have been 100% stable for the past 30 years, who knows? Get a structural engineer in if you're seriously interested in the property.

Word of advice - don't get the structural survey done by your mortgage lender, for 4 reasons: (a) it's ridiculously expensive (b) it's performed by a surveyor, not a structural engineer (c) it's done by someone acting primarily for the mortgage lender not you (d) it's certainly possible the outcome maybe a recomendation to seek the opinion of a structural engineer anyway. Instead, get the basic homebuyer's survey done, and commission your own chartered structural engineer to go in and provide a structural survey. The combined cost will almost certainly be far less than if you went through the mortgage lender (eg I had one done recently on a 2-bed house for about 200 GBP - peanuts compared with the potential financial disaster of buying a totally duff property).

If you play your cards right, you ought to be able to make an appointment with the structural engineer and tag along for the inspection - you can often get far more value for money if you get them talking!

You need a

[Rusty]

My 1890's house had new foundations and a new 3'x3' window installed circa

1975 and there is a crack about 1mm wide from the middle of the window sill going down about 2', then it peters out. As the new mortar is cement based the soft bricks have cracked rather than the mortar. Didn't worry me at all when I bought the house and some cement pasted over the crack shows that it hasn't grown in 15 years. So its probably just the new foundations have settled due to the weight above the sides of the new window. Where the crack is, is not load bearing in this case, at the bottom of window, so I don't see a problem.

rusty

[Owain]

I don't think you'd need a full structural survey, just an opinion on The Stepped Crack. If you got that *before* the homebuyer survey (assuming the StructE's opinion is favourable) and could reassure the homebuyer surveyor as he walked around, he might not make much issue of it in his report -- which is the one which might frighten the mortgagor.

Sounds not unusual to me, the walls each side of the window are bearing considerable load, but the wall immediately below the window isn't.

If the rest of the brickwork is sound, it probably only needs a bit of repointing. Which will be a lot cheaper and easier than many of the other things that could be wrong with a property.

| I know the sensible thing is to walk away but I really do like this | place, it's got a lot going for it, and I might be worrying about | nothing.

I'd ask the vendor to put some tall potted plants in front of the affected parts the day the surveyor's expected :-)

(IANAStructE)

Owain

[JoeJoe]

Just a word of caution - you will be none the wiser after reading the surveyor's report. I have had it done twice - £600 a go (paid by employer, so didn't care). Everything was mentioned: possible dump, possible subsidence, roof would need to be replaced within a year or so, etc, etc. There was never any dump (all the surveyors use this laughable £19.99 gadget probably bought from QVC that make them look very proffesional to the average housebuyer), 3 unrfelated roofers insisted that there was nothing wrong with the roof (was still there 7 years later when we moved on), etc. You get the message.

Oh, and regardless of what they find (or more importantly NOT find) - they cannot be held to account about anything. You will simply be left with a long list of sometihng along the lines of "signs of dump - consult a specialist", "signs of movement - consult a structural engineer", etc.

My advice: unless there are some very obvious and serious problems, don't bother at all. And in your case - find a structural engineer, pay him his £40-50 hourley rate for a couple of hours, and ask him for his opinion. I have done a similar exercise with a dump company before - much better IMHO.

HTH.

[Mark]

This is not that unusual on 70 year old houses, it could be long standing or recent.

The ONLY way you will get a worthwhile answer is with a full survey, not with house a buyer's quick glance that will only report the crack and advise a specialist report.

You may also find problems with getting a mortgage.

Can you afford this, does the asking price reflect this defect.

FWIW I bought a similar house 25years ago with a crack running the full height of the flank wall, very cheep at auction because it was un-mortgageable, I re-pointed the entire wall and sold in on without a problem, and its still ok today without any further movement.

[Chris J Dixon]

My solicitor was suggesting, some time ago, that I should have a full survey done for a place I was buying. I gave a similar argument, that the report would be so full of caveats that there would be great difficulty in taking action in the event of trouble, and selecting a surveyor based on the adequacy of their insurance seemed to be rather missing the point. "Not necessarily" he replied "We have a number of such cases on our hands at the moment." At which juncture I felt that he had made my point for me.

Chris

[John Rumm]

Sounds like a good plan. Would you actually want a homebuyers survey at all though in the circumstances though? I would have thought if you have a report from a structural engineer, then just a basic valuation survey would be more than enough for the mortgage lender rather than a homebuyers survey.

[andrewpreece]

Only a 1mm gap? Eeeeh, you're lucky! My house has a 6mm gap on the east and west side and the north wall has sunk by more than that, so the doorframes are no longer rectangular ( you only notice though when you fit new doors ). My house is on clay, and '30's houses do not have such deep foundations as more modern houses. I had a look at a few houses in the neighbourhood and found that a full 50% had cracks that had been repaired. Is there too much greenery planted nearby, a tree perhaps or a Virginia creeper or suchlike? I believe Willow and Poplar are particularly bad trees to have near the house, sucking all the moisture out of the soil and causing subsidence. Also the hotter, drier summers of thenineties have been blamed for increased subsidence on clay soil. My guess is that unless your 1mm crack appeared recently, and was caused by something like an undiagnosed burst water pipe, then it's nothing to worry about. The house won't fall down or anything. Noone can tell you with complete certainty that there isn't some awful secret that this

1mm crack is hiding, but a great many of the householders in my vicinity just repair their cracks when they become unignorable and carry on. Tedious, but almost goes with the territory on old houses on clay soil. I am not an expert, these are just my observations.

NB; Clay soil is identifiable by the ability to form it into plasticine-like blobs, at least when it is slightly damp, and it will show a shiny surface when such a blob is sheared in half with a fingernail. Get your soil sample from an area not regularly gardened.

Andy.

[Richard Faulkner]

In message , [e-mail] writes

If you are going to buy somewhere, you must have the funds for a survey? What happens if the house which you eventually think is OK, is condemned by the survey, (or merely the survey changes your mind about buying), do you not have the funds for a survey on another house?

If you only have the funds for one survey, you probably dont have the funds to buy and run a house - you will be amazed at how much more it costs, than you think!

I would suggest that you think very seriously about what you are doing, rather than realise that you cant really afford it just before exchanging contracts.

As a first time buyer, how it seems to you, means very little. A surveyor will probably point out lots of areas where it might not be as sound as you think......

The solution is to have a structural engineers report done - which is not a full structural survey, and doesnt cost as much.

However, a quick drawing show that the forces are either lifting the right hand end of the window away from the ground, or causing the brickwork under the window to sink away from the window. Serious?? Maybe, or maybe not.

Many people would say you should run away, very very fast, but you wont know until you have it investigated by an expert - not a surveyor, but a structural engineer.

[Richard Faulkner]

In message , Mark writes

Mark, in situations like this, lay people tend to recommend a Full Structural Survey and, whilst not necessarily wrong, neither is it necessarily the best advice, or even good advice.

I would warn anyone that, even if you pay a fortune for a Full Structural Survey, if the surveyor has any concerns about the structure, he/she will insist on a Structural Engineers Report.

If you have your own concerns about the structure, it is far better to get a Structural Engineers Report done first, for obvious reasons.

Ditto with both a basic valuation, and a full structural survey.

[Peter Crosland]

You cannot afford to take the risk. Walk away and find another property. You have to let common sense prevail over the emotional wish to buy the property.

Peter Crosland

[Lobster]

That's what I meant actually - maybe I've got my vocabulary wrong, but I was indeed suggesting that the OP had the cheapest, bottom-of-the-range survey carried out for the mortgage lender.

David

[Andrew McKay]

Make an offer subject to survey. Negotiate the price down a little to cover the cost of your survey.

Then contact your favourite surveyor and ask him to do an initial verbal assessment on the property - they will take such an instruction and because most of their cost in providing a formal survey is filling in paperwork you save big time if you just get their verbal opinion without it having to be written up.

If the surveyor reckons there's a problem which needs more thorough investigation then you have the choice of bunging more money at it to get it inspected properly - or walking away.

If he says no problem then you can discuss with him further options with respect to acquiring written confirmation. You don't actually need the full SP on the whole house - you could ask him to report on the cracked wall if you really wanted to.

A verbal report will cost you very little. And I know from personal experience that if you use a surveyor for some follow-on work (like when you find another property which you commit to) they will consider discounting the charge for the verbal assessment from their next bill. So the end result is that this could cost you nothing.

What you do NOT do is proceed to purchase this house without having it checked over. You surely don't expect a mortgage company to loan you money to buy without it getting an inspection to prove that it's worth what you reckon it is?

Andrew

[David W.E. Roberts]

Ignore the 'nothing to worry about' brigade.

Listen to the 'structural engineer' brigade.

We looked at a house yesterday (from the outside) and noticed that the lines of pointing (i.e. the run of the bricks) were a little bit 'wavy'.

Coincidentally one of the houses across the street had a property maintenance company there putting a large Acro prop up in the doorway. Pure chance we saw this.

So - no cracks, no obvious signs of major problems, just a wavy line in the bricks. Reflected in all the other properties in this and the facing facing terraces, though.

The risks are not good.

In your case the best you get is a house which doesn't need any major work, but is stretching your budget to the limits.

From there it goes downhill.

Consider the cost of underpinning loaded onto a maximum mortgage with the interest rates risen 3% higher after a year, and a house worth significantly less than you paid for it unless you get this work done.

Just consider the cost of having your mortgage application refused.

How lucky do you feel?

Cheers Dave R

[[news]]

1st time buyer, cracks in the wall ? walk away.

RT

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Peter Crosland writes

I fully support the above recommendations but will tell the tale of my Aunts house for interest....

Built for my grandfather around 1930 in brick on a bit of sand. By the time I knew the property in the '50s one wing had developed a noticeable lean and the windows could not be opened. None of this bothered my Aunt but it became my problem when we came to sell the house.

Luckily for us the buyers were prepared to carry out underpinning and the sale went through. I stayed in touch and learned that the likely cause was a broken drain carrying kitchen sink waste.

Apparently the builder had misread the plans and put the kitchen in the wrong place. Rather than install an extra inspection pit he had fitted a

90 degree bend in the waste pipe.

My grandfather was an enthusiastic DIYer with the consequence that he

*rodded* a hole in the bend!

regards

[Owain]

If the OP keeps doing that he'll never buy a house, because there's no such thing as a perfect house. Certainly not even a new build, sadly.

Owain