Once you have had an offer accepted on a property, you may wish to have a property survey carried out, whether you are mortgaging it or not. There are 3 types of surveys that are carried out on properties during the buying process, which we will detail a little more below.
Mortgage Valuation
If you are purchasing the property with the use of a mortgage, the mortgage lender will want to have a valuation carried out. This is to ensure that it is going to act as suitable security for the mortgage you have asked them for. This is a face value of the property and is being carried out so that the mortgage company feels happy that if they had to repossess the property it should cover any money owed to them. Mortgage valuations only cover the value of the property in question and don’t look at building defects that are present or could occur at a later date. The mortgage valuation generally is only for the lender you have gone to and not something they will send on to you. If you want to get any details on the property for yourself from a professional, you will need to look at one of the next two types of valuation that can be carried out.
Why not also check out our Top 5 Reasons To Use A Mortgage Broker?
Homebuyers Report
This is probably the most popular survey people look to have done and generally cost in the region of £400 and up. The surveyor will look for obvious defects to the property such as damp and subsidence and suggest repairs that should be carried out, but they won’t go as far as to move furniture, check under floorboards or between the walls. It is important to always check with your surveyor what will be covered in this survey to ensure they will be looking out for any concerns you may have. You can couple this with a valuation, normally in the region of £100 extra. If there is something they don’t cover on this type of report that you wanted looking at, you may need to look at the next type of survey available for people purchasing properties.
See if you've covered everything in our Top Tips For Viewing Properties.
Full Structural Survey
This is the most detailed and the most expensive type of survey you can get carried out and generally cost somewhere between £500 and £2,000. This covers everything in the homebuyers report and all the extra things it doesn’t cover. This type of report should be able to look at everything that could be cause for concern when buying a property and can be especially useful when buying older houses. The only thing with this type of survey is that it doesn’t usually involve a valuation, so you would need to arrange this separately if not mortgaging a property and it was something you felt you wanted.
Check out Which Mortgage Is Right For Me.
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