Survey peace of mind for older properties

Published on 17/10/2012 05:45

Buyers who are considering purchasing older properties or undertaking renovation projects can now access greater information about the overall condition of the property with the new RICS Building Survey.

Consumers are becoming increasingly less inclined to rely purely on lender information when taking out mortgages, and older or more unusual homes often require a greater level of repair and improvement.

The RICS Building Survey has been designed with this type of property in mind and provides the buyer with a comprehensive analysis of the property.

Armed with this information, the buyer then has the option to potentially renegotiate the price or take or leave an offer with increased confidence about their investment. I

In April 2012, the consumer magazine Which? recommended that consumers commission RICS members to carry out structural surveys when buying, selling or improving a home.

The survey provides a comprehensive and easy to understand report on all aspects of the property, including a full breakdown on the fabric and condition of the property, with a diagnosis of defects, and repairs and maintenance advice.

Mortgage lenders, estate agents and solicitors recognise their role in providing buyers with best advice about obtaining their own independent survey over and above a valuation for the lender and the need to speak to a chartered surveyor to establish what type of service is best suited.

Estate agent John Pocock said: “Older or more unusual properties often require more renovation work than newer homes. When purchasing a property like this, or taking on a development project, it is important that buyers know exactly what they are getting themselves into.

“The new RICS Building Survey offers a detailed assessment of a property’s condition and is designed with more unusual homes in mind. Commissioning a survey helps homebuyers to make a more informed decision on their purchase, and gives them greater negotiating power.”

Lifestyle

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Survey peace of mind for older properties

Top stories

Lifestyle