Hello and welcome to today’s installment of our property surveying blog post. In today’s blog, I am going to be discussing building surveying matters, specifically looking into what are pre-purchase surveys.
A pre-purchase survey is something that you can choose to undertake before buying a property in which a surveyor will inspect all areas externally and internally and write up a report to give you an in-depth analysis of the current condition of the property.
Here at Stokemont, we do feel that a pre-purchase survey is an integral part of buying a property as for most their home is the most expensive asset that they will ever own and as such, no one wants any nasty surprises after they have completed their purchase.
During a pre-purchase survey, this will see the surveyor inspects the differing elements of your property both internally and externally each being given a condition rating similar to that of the traffic light system, green, amber, and red depending on the state at the time of inspection.
Green – Green would indicate that the particular element is in a fair and reasonable condition and free from any major defects.
Amber – This is when an element in the building would be in need of repair, but is not considered to be urgent, so it should be something to consider and look out for in the future but not something that needs immediate attention.
Red – Red would indicate that there are major defects that would need rectifying as soon as possible or would require further investigation to completely assess the extent of the defect in question.
This is done so that you will have an easy indication into what is the current condition of the different aspects of the property that you’re looking to purchase and what would need looking in to and rectifying.
As part of our pre-purchase surveys, we at Stokemont also include a cost rating system to give you an indication of what it would cost it resolve any issues that the surveyor may have uncovered, this is not going to be overly specific and give you the exact cost for each part, rather is designed be more of an approximation in which we will rate the cost of repair from Low, Medium to High.
Low – The low cost rating would be costs that we would consider being on the lower end of the spectrum and can range from £1 up to £1000.
Mid – For the Mid cost rating this would indicate that the cost of repair would be on the mid end of the spectrum and can range from anywhere from £1000 – £5000.
High – Finally the High cost rating would be costs that we would consider to be on the higher end of the spectrum and can range from £5000 to above.
When it comes to pre purchase surveys there are 2 distinct ones that we offer here at Stokemont, that being a Homebuyer report which is a Level 2 survey and we also offer a Full building survey also commonly known as a level 3 survey.
Both are very similar in nature and in terms of the report as they each include the condition and cost rating but the full building survey (Level 3) will see the surveyor go into more detail on the condition of the differing elements of the property than that of the home buyers report.
I hope this gives you further insight into pre purchase surveys and what they will entail, if you have any questions in regards to pre purchase surveys or any of the other services that we offer here at Stokemont.
Please do not hesitate to get in touch today by either giving us a call or popping us over an email and one of our team of experienced surveyors will be happy to assist and advise you.
