Survey on a house built in 2017

[BevS97]

We bought a newish house recently and we didn’t need a mortgage so we opted not to get a survey done.

Was it the wisest decision? Maybe not. But we wouldn’t have had an expensive survey and felt the basic one wouldn’t offer us anything useful.

[YorkshireT]

You never know. I once dealt with an issue where someone bought a big expensive newish house. Turns out it was built over an ancient culvert. Culvert collapses under the house, caused road to flood from nearby sloping field runoff due to water not being able to go down culvert. Owner pursued by local authority for 100k+ to contribute to a new alternative culvert.
Now a very unusual situation but a good example - unexpected things can and do go wrong. Whether any survey would have even picked that up- that’s another matter but maybe we would have had someone else to blame!

[tspill]

Originally Posted by JudyC

He isn't getting a mortgage so not necessary for that. The house is quite near to us and we saw them built, we've not heard of any issues on our local Facebook page.

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Then I would be going for a homebuyers survey.

[Endeavour]

27 years ago we were moving to Cardiff, we found a house we liked which was around 4 years old. We had a full survey done and it revealed early stages of subsidence. There's no way I'd buy a house of any age without getting a survey done.

[megaflyer]

It is part of my due diligence - I haven’t had a mortgage for over a decade but do buy, sell and move. No way would I invest in an asset without full due diligence even for a brand new build I would commission a full survey

[GoldenAvalanche]

We bought a 6 year old house in 2017, we went for the middle one, home buyer's is it? It was only a few hundred and was piece of mind really, I wouldn't rely too much on NHBC it can be controversial. That said we sold it this year and our buyer only had a valuation, and we only went for the valuation on our new build (but paid £500 for a snagging survey)

[Kd0758]

Originally Posted by 2point

Pay the survey.

The NHBC is a con, it in no way replaces the need for due diligence. Protect yourself, the NHBC certainly won't.

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NHBC is about as much use as a Legoland driving licence!

[sam_b]

If it’s for a mortgage they will insist on a valuation survey ... if not, I wouldn’t bother. Surveys tend to cover their backsides when you read them and suggest other surveys to be completely sure.
If there are anything warning flags then I would commission a special survey - such as damp, dry rot, subsidence, asbestos etc but if not, I wouldn’t bother.

[mitch84]

Originally Posted by sam_b

If it’s for a mortgage they will insist on a valuation survey ... if not, I wouldn’t bother. Surveys tend to cover their backsides when you read them and suggest other surveys to be completely sure.
If there are anything warning flags then I would commission a special survey - such as damp, dry rot, subsidence, asbestos etc but if not, I wouldn’t bother.

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This, we didn’t get a survey on our 1900 terrace at all (as no mortgage) we just got our builder friend to come round and check what he could. He was doing the work on the property anyway.

I would go valuation for mortgage purposes (the cheapest one) unless the house was very old or in need of a lot of TLC. Problem is on an older house it all comes back as needing replacing anyway 😂

[Mr Tom Morrow]

Nice to see the NHBC is still much use as a chocolate teapot as it was back when I started on the buildings in 1970 albeit it was the NHBRC back then.

So even dropping the R hasn’t helped.

Homebuyers reports are a waste of money to find issues. Only one report is any good and that’s the full structural. I had one for this house back in 1986. 25 pages of information and everything checked, tested and reported on.

That was from drains to each door handle and how it operated!