In this weeks property surveying blog post, we are going to be discussing party wall surveyor fees.
Party wall surveyor fees are generally determined between the building owners surveyor and adjoining owners surveyor upon completion of the party wall award agreement process.
The conventional procedure is for the adjoining owners surveyor to present his party wall surveyor fee to the building owners surveyor, with the building owners surveyor then assessing whether he believes that fee to be reasonable or not.
The adjoining owners party wall surveyor fee will take into account all of the reasonable time he has incurred during the course of the process, and could also include any further visits, either interim or final post construction work.
It will then be the building owners party wall surveyors formal duty, to agree if the presented fees are fair and reasonable, and then ultimately agree them within the party wall award.
If the fees are reasonable, it is simply a matter of the building owners surveyor entering those into the party wall award, sending the award to the adjoining owners party wall surveyor, who will then sign and serve the award upon his respective owner, as will the building owner in due course.
If the building owners surveyor believes the adjoining owners party wall surveyor believes the adjoining owners party wall surveyors fees to be unreasonable, it is then for the two surveyors to ultimately determine the quantum of the fee that is deemed unreasonable and try as best they can to resolve that matter, thereby closing the dispute.
Ultimately if the two party wall surveyors are unable to do that, and there is a sum of money in respect of the fee that is undetermined, the only option the surveyors will have is to refer the undetermined fee to the third surveyor to resolve and ultimately confirm if indeed it was reasonable or not.
Third surveyor referrals do come with a cost risk, therefore we would thoroughly advise fully discussing these with your party wall surveyor in advance of making one, you can also potentially discuss the matter with the third surveyor direct, more than often the majority of them are more than happy to have a quick informal and impartial discussion with owners, hopefully negating the requirement to make a formal referral.
If you are planning on doing party works and would like to learn a little more about party wall surveyor fees, give our surveying team here at Stokemont a call now and we will be more than happy to assist you.
