fav       How to view a property prior to making an offer .

It still amazes me as a surveyor that people are expecting to make one of the most life changing decisions after spending about 22 minutes viewing a property – that’s the RICS (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) average time spent on viewing a house, and we’ve come across estate agents who allow only ten minutes. You are deciding where you are going to invest a huge amount of money, that  you will need to pay for outgoings every month,  where your children will go to school, how you will travel to work every day – and these are just a few of the points to consider when buying a home.

How can we help?

Contrary to popular belief, Surveyors like to inspect houses that are in good condition – it may not be as challenging, but it is heart-breaking to have to tell a client that their potential dream home is in a terrible state of repair or suffering from structural, damp or movement issues, all of which will prove very expensive to fix. You may be able to get a reduction in the asking price, but you will probably need to spend a great deal of your own time and effort in project-managing the remedial works.

However, you can save yourself a great deal of misery and expense if you have a reasonable idea of what to watch out for when you are viewing a property; over the next few months we will be sharing a series of posts that should enable you to detect a range of potential problems: “What to Look For when Viewing a House”. We want to encourage you to take a cool hard look at the various parts of the building, before deciding whether to make an offer ‘subject to survey’.  This won’t replace commissioning a full Building Survey before you make the final decision to purchase; our many years of experience and state-of-the art technology enable us to identify and quantify those issues and to detect other hidden defects on your behalf.  However, it will make you less vulnerable to nasty surprises after you have begun the expensive purchasing process.

Take your time and all will be fine.

Jon