If you're buying or selling a property but if you're buying a property one of the
strongest pieces of advice that I give purchasers of second-hand property in
particular is the need to get a structural survey carried out on the
property no structural survey as I say time and time again is not to be
confused with evaluation it's a survey carried out by an engineer or an
architect it looks at the structural integrity of the house and should
actually look also at the boundaries and of the fencing and so on on the ground
correspondence with the folio map but once the survey is carried out what do
you do with it then before we look at that the reason you get a survey carried
out on secondhand property is because of the Latin Maxim and principle in buying
secondhand property caveat emptor that means that the buyer
beware so buying the house in the condition that it's in there's no point
finding out afterwards after you've done the deal that there's a problem you need
to carry out your due diligence beforehand and so that's why you get a
structural survey done what you do though with the structural survey if it
throws up issues or problems well obviously it will depend on the extent
or nature of the problems if the survey comes back and your surveyor is saying to you
look this is going to take 5 grand or 10 grand or 15 grand or 20 grand or 40
grand to put right well clearly you're gonna
need to think about what you're gonna do are you gonna proceed with the purchase
or not now you may be very anxious to proceed with the purchase but clearly
you need to build in or factor in whatever money might be required to be
spent on the place and therefore you're going to use the survey as a negotiating
tool the survey remember must be carried out before you sign a contract because
once you sign a contract you are kind of bound you are bound to
all intents and purposes so you need to carry out the survey before you sign
the contract so your survey even if it's gonna cost
four or five hundred euros or whatever will give you a huge benefit in terms of
if there's a problem you'll be able to negotiate with the vendor now if the
vendor says no way a deal is a deal then clearly you have a decision to make you can
walk away or you can plough ahead but obviously you're in a very very
strong position in terms of negotiating if the survey is correct and it flags up
significant expenditure that will be required if you're the vendor then
obviously you have a decision to make you may have been aware of problems with
the house or this survey now may have put you on notice of problems that you
weren't aware of in any event you have a decision to make you are either gonna drop
your price and negotiate or you're gonna dig your heels in and say no way I'm not
doing that you know a bargain is a bargain but the bottom
line is if there's no contract signed you don't have a sale and that's the
difficulty you're gonna have the same difficulty with the next purchaser if
you have a next purchaser so you need to be aware of that so that is the
situation in relation to a structural survey just a couple things that I would
say you're buying a secondhand house you are absolutely stone mad to do so
without the benefit of a structured survey secondly you're not just going
through the motions of a structural survey you need to pay close attention to it
and if it flags up significant expenditure that's going to be required
or significant infirmities or deficiencies or structural problems with
the property clearly you're gonna have to A reconsider going ahead or B
negotiating a better price I hope you find this video useful if you
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my youtube channel thank you for watching